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Chapter 3: The Anthropologists

3.2 T.G.H Strehlow and the Broken Song

T.G.H. Strehlow is rightly regarded as the greatest of the linguists and anthropologists who worked with the Arrernte. His insight into the relationship between time and Arrernte ceremony breaks open the concept of Altyerre: “Every full-scale ceremonial festival was, in fact, regarded as an occasion when Time and Eternity became one, when the border line dividing visible human beings and invisible totemic ancestors became temporarily obliterated …”151From the 1930s to his death in 1978, although never a professional anthropologist,

Strehlow undertook the deepest and most insightful linguistic research on the Arrernte.

Barry Hill’s book Broken Song tracks the career of T.G.H. Strehlow and establishes that Strehlow’s Songs of Central Australia152 is a hymn in praise of the Arrernte poetic genius. From the 1930s Strehlow had traversed Central Australia collecting Arrernte songs by

writing the words down in his own invented script, and by audio recording and filming staged ceremonies – which he mostly paid for with food. At the same time, he collected sacred objects, tjurunga,153which his informants voluntarily entrusted to him for safe keeping, or for which he paid cash or goods. Through his linguistic research Strehlow came to fully

appreciate the beauty, power and richness of the Arrernte Songs.

Strehlow wanted to know “what it was to be Aranda,154 and what not …”155 Like his father and the other early Lutheran missionaries, he explored the meaning of Altjira (Altyerre156).

151 T.G.H. Strehlow, Central Australian Religion (Bedford Park, S.A.: Australian Association for the Study of

Religion, 1978), 43–44.

152 T.G.H. Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1971).

153 Tjurunga are the tywerrenge (atywerrenge) discussed by Wenten Rubuntja.

154 Aranda is the orthography of the Hermannsburg Arrernte for their language. The Lutheran mission to the

Arrernte at Hermannsburg is discussed in detail in Part Two below.

155 Hill, Broken Song, 139.

156 Altyerre is the way the word is written in the International phonetic system adopted by the Eastern and

Central Arrernte Dictionary. Altjira was the way the same word was written by the Lutherans at Ntaria. The orthography adopted by the Dictionary remains a source of dispute between Arrernte people in Central

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While Spencer and Gillen had translated Altjira as “dreaming”, Strehlow’s father, Carl, was adamant that Altjira meant an “eternal being”. A generation earlier this translation issue had caused a huge battle between his father and Spencer and Gillen. Did the Arrernte believe in God? T.H. Strehlow wanted to know what altjira meant“before the missionaries arrived?”157

After settling to his task, Strehlow asked Arrernte consultant Moses Tjalkabota,158 one of the first Ntaria men to convert to Lutheranism, if the word meant “dream”. The answer was “no”.159 Throughout his life Strehlow maintained this viewthat the root of altjira meant

“uncreated” or “eternal”,160 although he conceded that the verb for dreaming was

altjirarama.161

Why is Strehlow so resistant to accepting that in some contexts altjira means dream? To answer this, it is necessary to consider the Lutheran approach to translation. While Strehlow was never a “missionary” all the men at Ntaria before him who counted as translators of Arrernte were committed Lutheran missionaries. Translation162 is truly a Lutheran enterprise. Martin Luther saw that his great task was to translate the Bible from foreign Latin and Greek into vernacular German and thus make the Word available to the faithful. In this sense, the Reformation was as much about language as about doctrine.163 Lutheran missionaries,

Australia. Western Arrernte people from Ntaria and associated places almost all refuse to use the Dictionary orthography.

157 Hill, Broken Song, 140.

158 Moses Tjalkabota was an early convert to Lutheranism and then later an Arrernte missionary who travelled

thousands of kilometres across Central Australia during his long life bringing the Gospel to Aboriginal people (not just Arrernte but including Luritja and Pitjantjatjara) in the region. He was blinded by contracting measles in his middle years but continued to evangelise with the assistance of his wife, Sofia. He became a close companion of Ted Strehlow in the 1930s and lived with him at Jay Creek for some time. He was also one of the trusted men who assisted Carl Strehlow and Ted Strehlow in Bible translation. His life story is covered in Peter Latz, Blind Moses, Aranda Man of High Degree and Christian Evangelist (Alice Springs: IAD Press, 2014).

159 Hill, Broken Song, 140. At the point in his life it might have been that Tjalkabota answered this way because

he was a thoroughgoing convert to Lutheranism and to accept Altjira as dream would to deny the idea of God that he had learnt from the German Lutheran missionaries.

160 Hill, Broken Song, 629.

161 Henderson and Dobson, Arrernte to English Dictionary, 105. The dictionary provides a reference to Altyerre

areme, which is altjirarama in the western Arrernte orthography. The example provided in the dictionary, however, indicates that this form of dreaming is speculative but secular in nature. For example: “The-arle Altyerre areme kwatye, kele the arratye itelareme mum lyete apetyeme[ If I dream of water, I know my mum is coming today].”

162 Henry Zecher, Christianity Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-34/bible-

translation-that-rocked-world.html (accessed March 15, 2017). “Luther was exceptionally gifted in many areas. But the aspect of his genius perhaps most responsible for his impact is the one least heralded: his skill and power as a translator and writer. Had it not been for that, the Protestant Reformation and the growth of a united German nation might have taken an entirely different course.”

163 Language and doctrine were, however, inextricably combined since the point of Luther’s Bible was to free

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following in Luther’s footsteps, continued the task of bringing the foreign gospel to far-flung “pagans” by translating the Word into their vernacular. To do this the missionaries immersed themselves in the vernacular in order to master it, so that they would be successful in their goal of conversion. Language is the tool of evangelisation in this approach.

As a good Lutheran, Strehlow can’t allow altjira to mean dream. The Lutheran missionaries at Hermannsburg took the injunction in Matthew 28:19 seriously, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” Their mission was to bring their Christian God to the pagans. In seeking to find a powerful and relevant word for God, after many years of translation work, they formed the opinion that Altjira, meaning literally “eternal” or “uncreated”,164 was the best fit. They could not allow an alternative connotation of “dream” to confuse their audience. While never a formal missionary, Strehlow spent a great deal of time voluntarily translating the New Testament into WesternArrernte, which was to be used in

evangelisation. Hill adds: “He would place the Christian message where it needed to be, in the hearts of the natives whose songs had been broken.”165 And here is the crux of the issue.

Strehlow was the ultimate linguist. He was brilliant, thorough, grounded and well served by a group of traditional Arrernte consultants – Conrad, Zacharias, Jacobus, Nathaniel and Moses – who voluntarily supported his endeavour. These men loved him so much that at one stage they begged him to become their ingkata, “boss” or “priest”.166 Strehlow is trapped between being a Lutheran in a missionary tradition and being an Arrernte linguist extraordinaire.

Strehlow became enamoured of Arrernte language and religion. In Songsof Central Australia he writes that the songs/chants of the Arrernte are by no means “primitive”.167 Instead he

points out that they are both ancient and poetic. He compares them favourably to the Greek poetry of Homer and says they serve a similar purpose as a high point of cultural and artistic

164 Perhaps a better way of explaining this is to say that the missionaries were searching for a word for “eternal”

and Altyerre seemed the best fit.

165 Hill, Broken Song, 536. Note that this quote is also the source of the title of Hill’s book.

166 Hill, Broken Song, 185.

167 This contrasts with the view, based on Spencer and Gillen’s work adopted by European theorists, that

Arandic religion was a stage of early primitive religion. Hill, Broken Song, 8, says: “Thus Spencer and Gillen's texts honoured the Aranda even though their premise was that they were a stone age people as doomed to extinction as the kangaroo or the platypus….” Hill then quotes Spencer from the Horn Expedition: “The Central Australian aborigine is the living representative of the stone age. His origin and history are lost in the gloomy mists of the past. He has no written records and few oral traditions. In appearance he is a naked, hirsute savage with a type of features occasionally pronouncedly Jewish … He has no private ownership of land, except as regards that which is not over carefully concealed about his person.”

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expression.168 They are worthy of world renown and can add to the linguistic heritage of the Australian nation. This is best summarised in a quote from the Ankotarinja myth:

… the deep and essential unity between myth and drama, tjurunga worship, and “poetry” in its most primitive stage. As amongst the old races, so amongst the native tribes of the great Central Australian spaces the first falterings of “religion” are the fountain from which springs poetry and drama and the making of decorative and artistic objects: native art, literature and religion, in the widest sense of these terms, form one indissoluble and splendidly complete unity.169

While Strehlow describes Arrernte myth as the “first falterings of “religion”, the conclusion of this discourse expresses powerfully his growing assessment of the richness of the

mythology he is being educated into – “it forms one indissoluble and splendidly complete unity”.170

However, Strehlow sensed that the whole Arrernte world was in crisis and was imploding. While he came to love and admire the wonder of the Arrernte achievement, he

simultaneously came to deplore its collapse. Hill says that by 1937, not long into his research, Strehlow had come to the conclusion that “the Aranda were ‘not so much a primitive as a decadent race’.” He was commenting on the strictures of the culture which to his mind limited the freedom of expression of individuals because “there was no room for

imagination”.171 Hill sums this up well when he observes that “Songs172was predominantly

written as an epitaph”.173 Hill reports an article in the Melbourne Herald of 1936 commenting

on the appointment of Strehlow as a patrol officer. The Herald applauds Strehlow’s

appointment and then goes on to describe his task: “recording the passing of one of the last surviving stone age races”.174

168 Hill, Broken Song, 491.

169 Hill, Broken Song, 214. Hill is paraphrasing T.G.H. Strehlow’s analysis of the Ankotarinja myth of the

Western and Mparntwe Arrernte associated with the Burt Plain/Mpweringke (notably Wenten Rubuntja’s birthplace).

170 Hill, Broken Song, 214.

171 Hill, Broken Song, 227. In light of the use in this thesis of the sociological term “imaginary” this is a

confronting conclusion.

172 Strehlow’s great work, Songs of Central Australia.

173 Hill, Broken Song, 490.

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And so Strehlow began to insert himself into the drama. As he learnt the songs, understood the stories, and accepted the tjurunga, he began to see himself as the ingkata175/ceremonial leader, not just an ingkata, but the last ingkata and repository of the pristine values of his beloved Arrernte. Herein is the tragedy of Strehlow. As he is moved in awe by exposure to the Arrernte culture and religion and sees its “passing”, Strehlow was alert to the impasse he confronted. He did not rejoice in the task he took on. He simply felt there were no

alternatives. He would preserve the songs, stories, chants and myths for posterity, even while the vigour of the culture collapsed. He is basically telling the Arrernte, “you had something great once, but not anymore!” His job is to be that of a museum manager, not the conductor of a symphony.

The old men had gradually, according to Strehlow, begun to hand over their tjurunga to him. Hill summarises: “The message from the old men to Strehlow is that the times had tragically changed, there was no future for the secret-sacred tradition, that the really knowledgeable songmen were the last of the songmen.”176

Moses Tjalkabota, having been catechised effectively, resisted the old men and questioned the substance of the tjurunga. Peter Latz provides an exchange about the power of the tjurunga: “The old men told me [Tjalkabota], ‘This tjurunga is uncreated.’ I answered, ‘This isn’t uncreated. Perhaps a man made this.’ But they answered, ‘Don’t think stupid thoughts. You are only young. You can’t say those things to us’.”177

Remembering that both Strehlows thought that Altyerre translates as “eternal” or “uncreated”, Tjalkabota is here contesting that the tjurunga come from the Altyerre and are also uncreated. Tjalkabota is not convinced, because he has taken on Christianity, and God is the only

“uncreated”. What is also significant from this exchange is that while Tjalkabota has adopted the new Christian faith, most of the other older men have not. Interestingly, it is Tjalkabota rather than Strehlow who is making the association between the “eternal” or “uncreated” and God.178

175 Ingkata [ngkarte] is sometimes used by both Western and Eastern Arrernte speakers for God. In this case, it

means ceremonial leader or “boss”.

176 Hill, Broken Song, 312.

177 Peter Latz, Blind Moses (Alice Springs: IAD Press, 2014), 61.

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What would have been the consequences if Strehlow’s appreciation of the wonder and power of Arrernte myth had been accepted and promulgated among both the settler community and the Arrernte themselves? What if, instead of reluctantly reporting the demise of a complete way of life with all the qualities that provide meaning and mystery within a matrix of

confirming relationships to place and person, Strehlow had advocated for the maintenance of the ceremonies and done everything in his considerable power to ensure they continued? Put another way, can a restoration be conceived of and can it achieve an unlikely outcome? Could Strehlow, if he had had the disposition, have assisted the survival and maintenance of the pristine Arrernte culture, of Altyerre?

By 1949, well past his formative years and now an esteemed scholar, Strehlow sat with senior men at Ntaria and pondered their world-view. According to Hill, Strehlow pointed out, “they believed in natural goodness”.179 Later Strehlow quotes Tjalkabota, who in dialogue with

some who denied the Christian God had them declare: “We are good and morally blameless people. We cannot imagine what your God is like. We are upright, we are altogether different and better – we [are] children of the tjibulkara/brightness. When we gaze upon the tjilpa180 [native cat, a totemic ancestor] on his own ground, then this is altogether virtuous.”181 The

elders’ case was convincing. The irony is that Strehlow actually understood them.

Strehlow’s significant foray into anthropology, as distinct from linguistics, was his book Central Australian Religion.182 Hill sums it up: “The underlying feeling is that everything is actually connected to everything else.”183 “[T]he topic is in this case … a culture that has

woven a seamless web of belief and ritual and social organisation.”184 What Strehlow wanted

to emphasise, according to Hill, was eternity. He had started his quest with his search for the meaning of Altjira and being told by Tjalkabota that it did not mean dream; he was assured for the rest of his career that it did indeed mean what his father said it did, “uncreated, eternal”.

179 Hill, Broken Song, 422.

180 Tjilpa (Atyelpe) is the Mparntwe Arrernte name for the native cat.

181 Hill, Broken Song, 423.

182 T.G.H. Strehlow, Central Australian Religion. This small book is sometimes referred to as Personal

Monototemism in a Polytotemic World.

183 Hill, Broken Song, 633.

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Barry Hill’s view is that in writing Central Australian Religion Strehlow came to an important understanding: “[T]hese acts revealed to the Aranda their belief that ‘Nature and man shared the same life’.”185 Strehlow, according to Hill, deduced from his knowledge of ceremonial life that there was an essential goodness within them that could be a model to the rest of the Australian society. He was, in a sense, extracting the kernel of the Altyerre and offering it as a prototype for emulation by the nation. But Strehlow was also implicitly drawing a comparison between the social organisation and moral base of two competing societies, the settler and the invaded, and concluding that the invaded were actually morally and religiously superior.

Strehlow had come to see Arrernte ceremonies as vibrant religious rituals operating

sacramentally. As Hill puts it, “Strehlow was affirming the daily spirituality of the Aboriginal men, and how they were all priests because of the nature of their spiritual inductions into integrated beliefs.”186

Strehlow’s conclusions echo the Arrernte Voices discussed in Chapter 2. While never mentioning Strehlow, M.K. Turner interacts with him. She relegates Dreaming to the middle of her book in order, in the contention of this thesis, to downplay the distracting power of a belief system based on “fairy tales”. Instead M.K. says, “it’s true”. “It’s not a dream, like fairy-tale dream, it’s a Traditional Story, and that is in us.”187 M.K. has entered into the very same debate that Strehlow had with Spencer and Gillen and has come down on his side.

While she uses the term “Creation” throughout her discourse, and Strehlow uses “eternal” or “uncreated”, the contention of this thesis is that M.K. means the same as Strehlow. For her the Creation is “uncreated”; it is the “eternal” in the complete sense of having no beginning and no end. M.K. says: “Ye, that’s how it is. And there’s a big feeling that people can get back to that place, in the future.”188 The “eternal”, the unmeasurable past, the present and the

future are all Altyerre. Strehlow would agree entirely.

185 Hill, quoting Strehlow’s ABC broadcast of 1952,Broken Song, 636.

186 Hill, Broken Song, 637.

187 Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye, 47.

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Kathleen Kemarre Wallace is more direct. She includes a telling reference to Strehlow in her discourse when he comes to the Keringke Rockhole site at Ltyentye Apurte/Santa Teresa to