Gesturing Across Settler Divides in Marumpu Wangka! Kukatja Hand Talk

William Lempert

doi:10.1163/23644583-00401015

Abstract

In 2014, the government of Western Australia proposed a plan to defund, and in effect close, about half of the nearly three hundred remote Aboriginal communities in the state. During this time, the author collaborated on a hand sign video project with five women Elders at the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre in Balgo, an Aboriginal community in the Great Sandy Desert. The author articulates why Marumpu Wangka! Kukatja Hand Talk—an unassuming and largely improvised video—struck a chord at this precarious moment for Aboriginal communities. The author argues that hand sign videos provide a rare mode of intercultural engagement that is simultaneously culturally specific and broadly relatable. In a mediascape in which most Australian viewers are inundated with visual tropes of Aboriginal communities as either suffering or mystical, representations of jovial gesture encourage understanding beyond these stereotypes by intimately engaging everyday community interaction. Referencing the supplemental eight-minute video throughout, the author (1) overviews the significance of hand sign systems in Aboriginal Australian communities, (2) describes the collaborative and improvised hand sign video production process, and (3) argues for the importance of visual representations that can transcend—even if modestly—settler/Indigenous divides during the current dangerous times for Aboriginal communities.

Highlights

FEATURE Willi Lempert’s article is based on the film ‘Marumpu Wangka! Kukatja Hand Talk’ which can be viewed here
In November of 2014, the government of Western Australia proposed a plan to defund, and in effect close, about half of the nearly three hundred remote Aboriginal communities in the state. It was during this time that I was conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Wirrimanu (Balgo), an Aboriginal community in the Great Sandy Desert
During the height of this existential threat for Aboriginal communities, I collaborated on a video project about hand signs with Elders at the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre (Kapululangu)

Summary

Introduction*

In November of 2014, the government of Western Australia proposed a plan to defund, and in effect close, about half of the nearly three hundred remote Aboriginal communities in the state. It was during this time that I was conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Wirrimanu (Balgo), an Aboriginal community in the Great Sandy Desert. Kukatja Hand Talk (Marumpu Wangka) (Lempert and de Ishtar 2015) would go on to be widely distributed online and win film festival awards, as well as lead to other hand sign productions funded through National Indigenous Television (NITV) that we completed in subsequent years. Referencing the embedded eight-minute Marumpu Wangka video throughout, I (1) overview the significance of hand sign systems in Aboriginal Australian communities, (2) describe the collaborative and improvised hand sign video production process, and (3) argue for the importance of visual representations that can transcend—even if modestly—settler/Indigenous divides during the current dangerous times for Aboriginal communities

Aboriginal Hand Signs

Filming Marumpu Wangka

Aboriginal Representation in Dangerous Times