4.3 Other Aboriginal languages, and multilingualism 92
4.3.2 Conflict among language groups 98
The last full Magati Ke speaker (PN, b. 1930s) recounted a fateful event in the decline of his language. One day in the early Mission era, Magati Ke men were sitting in a public area discussing how they were going to arrange an upcoming ceremony. Some MP men accused them of planning something subversive behind the veil of their own language, and a spear fight ensued, in which the MP men were victorious. After this the Magati Ke people decided not to speak their language at the Mission, and from that point on, their children grew up speaking MP (story via Mark Crocombe, p.c. 2013-‐12). One question the story leaves open is, did the Magati Ke men underestimate to what extent the Mission would now be their permanent home? Did they realize that by not speaking their language at the Mission, they were consigning their language to terminal decline?
There have been other, deeper conflicts between clan and language groups at Wadeye. One Marri Ngarr clan was in chronic conflict with various MP, Marri Tjevin and Marri Amu groups during Mission era (Notes, 2011-‐07, DP 2012-‐06-‐ 20_25); more recently there has been a long-‐simmering conflict between another
Marri Ngarr clan and a Marri Tjevin clan. Since Marri Ngarr are inland, fresh-‐ water people, and the clans with which they have fought are coastal, the long-‐ term enmities in Wadeye are sometimes characterised by Aboriginal people as saltwater versus freshwater conflict. However this is a radically simplified and generalized analysis, and all fights that have been recounted to me in any detail seem much more complicated in the structure of their alliances.
The more recent alignment of conflict based on metal mobs, especially mobs allied around the poles of Evil Warriors and Judas Priest (§2.7), may be historically based on the older conflicts structured around clan and language groups. Aboriginal people in Wadeye will often explain Evil and Priest groups in terms of clan and language groups: Evil is the saltwater mob (MP and perhaps other coastal clans), Priest is freshwater (primarily Marri Ngarr). This analysis is taken up by various whitefella residents in Wadeye, and resonates with the “ancient tribal conflict” trope of many media reports (e.g. Toohey, 2004); but the connection between mobs and traditional social categories is in fact rather loose. My survey of mob affiliation shows that both Evil and Priest, and many of the smaller mobs I have investigated, have affiliates with highly varied clan and language associations (§2.7). The Priest → Marri Ngarr, Evil → MP equation holds true as a rough overall tendency, but not as a rule. The coastal Marri peoples seem to shift alliances somewhat between these two poles: for example, the Big T mob, which is dominated by Magati Ke and Marri Amu kigay, has in recent years shifted alliance from Evil to Priest, and back to Evil again (Notes, 2011-‐10, 2013-‐01, 2013-‐06).
We will see in the linguistic sections of this thesis that Marri language heritage is an influential factor for some sociophonetic variables, and may also influence morphosyntactic variables in MKK, though the latter requires further data to confirm or disconfirm. On the other hand, Evil/Priest affiliation does not seem to correlate to sociolinguistic variables. I will argue that this is because mob
affiliations have too much overlap and flexibility to be indexed to different ways of speaking, whereas Marri language heritage is both more permanent, and more directly linked to language contact.
Languages of Wadeye 100
4.3.3 “One people, one language”
The counter-‐balance to the history of conflict described above is the extensive social intermingling and inter-‐marriage of all Aboriginal groups at Wadeye, and in particular the kinship ties that allow any individual to relate to any other individual within a very few steps of recognised relatedness. A certain discourse, presumably growing out of these links, centres on statements of unity. The wording in official council or public business is usually something like kardu numida, murriny numida “one people, one language”; but in informal kigay discourse I have recorded it as wan darrikardu, wan femili, wan lengwitj thanamngerrenngime “one people, one family, we speak one language” (MAK, 2013-‐07-‐11_02). But such statements may be made alongside others that draw attention to the differences between various clan groups in Wadeye, so that rather than simple assertions of unity, they must instead be seen as assertions of unity underlying difference. The following statement was made for a video
recording by a Marri-‐heritage kigay, sitting together with another Marri kigay – both of whom affiliate to Evil:
Kardu kanyi thumemluluruy-‐thanam kardu da wan len thanamnime. Kardu wan Murrinh Patha thanamngerrennime da purtek karrim kanyi. Neki-‐gathu-‐ka rispek pumarrabatj pi. Purtkit kanyi-‐yu, da komuniti ngalla kanyi-‐yu. […] Neki-‐ka da manangka da-‐wa kanyi-‐yu. Da ngathayida
tjirrampunmawu Murrinh Patha-‐mup-‐nu.
The people here are always in conflict, (but) we're of the same country. We all speak the same language in this country. This is the Murrinh Patha peoples’ place, the two of us respect them. All of us have respect here in Port Keats, the whole community. […] This country isn't the country of us two. We're just outsiders living here with the Murrinh Patha people. (JL, 2013-‐06-‐22_02)
These two kigay are of Marri heritage, but since they affiliate as Evil, they both have strong social connections to MP kigay. It is unclear whether a similar statement of “respect” and shared language would be spontaneously made by Marri-‐heritage kigay aligned to Priest.