page is in Yuwaalaraay and english and there are mistakes and gaps in the Yuwaalaraay. please contact me if you can help improve a line or a word use. english punctuation has been limited as a show that Yuwaalaraay is my dominant voice.
yaamanda yanay barriyaygu? will you come to the window?
yaama dhiiyaan, gayrr ngaya djidjidan, yinaa Yuwaalaraay Muruwari ngaya, a therapist and phd student at Charles Darwin University hello family, my name is Jedison, i am a Yuwaalaraay and Muruwari woman, a therapist and phd student at charles darwin university.
thankyou for responding to my invitation to know more about this project. the rest of this page is in australian english. please contact me for a yarn if it is better for you to hear my project rather than read it.
my idea came together from a crossover of what I am as a Yuwaalaraay woman and what I am as a therapist, so I start this story from two different points to get us to the end.
i first started learning the Yuwaalaraay language from history books and records like the euahlayi tribe by k. langloh parker and research collected by janet mathews and corinne williams. as i didn’t live on country, there weren’t a lot of learning options, until dubbo tafe began online classes run by elders Aunty Beth and Uncle John. these classes gave me a new understanding of the purpose and reason (words Uncle John would never let us forget) behind our language and each word within it. after the classes completed, i started two facebook groups, dhubaanmala to keep in touch with other speakers, and tinnenburra-baa to increase our mob’s connection across the states. these relationships reinforced Uncle John’s wisdom and i realised that in the past, i had been learning how to say Yuwaalaraay, but not how to tell it.
when I revisited some of the original texts, this new “telling” had me seeing stories different to the
whitefellas1 interpretation, in that some of their “tellings” did not match up with what we know about our Ancestors. some texts tried to fit our knowledge into a colonised view, for example if you read from the author Barlow below, it comes across as though our Ancestors did not have the capacity to count [rather than the truth of no need]
Some texts just straight out got the language wrong EXAMPLE, Researchers are are a little smarter now than we were then. There are more inclusive methods, most importantly clarifying with the people involved in the research as to their me
thing is, these are historical recordings, these are the pages that come up when new knowledge holders are looking for information
As an Aboriginal Counsellor, I had come across multiple It has been heavily documented that results from research on our people over the centuries, weren’t always ???. Researcher’s preferences in publications limiting conclusions.
When people seek healing, they come clutching a story that they and others may only have considered from a select viewpoint. Yaamanda yanay barriyaygu? [Will you come to the window] or barriyay for short, is a narrative method that invites clients to journey through a story from several vantage points: AS IT WAS KNOWN, AS IT WAS TOLD, AS IT IS KNOWN, and AS IT WILL BE TOLD to take back the power and be the one who determines the story. The method is being used to assist clients with revisiting historical trauma, and in the reclaimation of historical scripts for the Yuwaalaraay, Muruwari and other Aboriginal language groups. Click here for more general information on how Barriyay is utilised in the healing and counselling space.
Barriyay sought not to rewrite a story, not to make up a story or forget about one part of a story but to deconstruct the problematic story, so we are not looking at something, we are looking into the various chasms within it.
In 2020, I began learning one of my ancestoral languages through Dubbo TAFE under the guidance of Aunty Beth and Uncle John. Learning an Aboriginal Language is very different from learning English,
In my journey so far, I have found many misinterpretations
we have aboriginality in common, for want of a better word, but the historical and cultural differences amongst us, counts
my insider experience as a female Yuwaalaray
we will need to be curious about whether something is something else, not hoping that something is something else
we will need to be fair, as it is of no use to our Ancestors if we utilise different methods that still taint a particular outcome, whether that outcome is wanted or not
(what/how) are alternative understandings possible
when Euhalari descendants deconstruct historical texts
written about their ancestors by non-indigenous researchers
using the Barriyay framework
what i am planning to do will have a chance of success
the thinking that has been happening
As a fellow Yuwaalaraay and/or Muruwari, I would appreciate your feedback on the any or all of the following: Note, these are not research questions, this is me looking for guidance ..
- What thoughts does the project bring up for you?
- Are there protocols that I may not have come across yet?
- How important is it to keep to our Ancestors idea of gender and generation based information, even though whitefellas collections have it open to all?
- Would you attend an online Zoom meeting to yarn about ETHICS, how we could keep each other safe from trauma etc when revisiting and talking
- Would you like to be kept in the loop on this project, regardless of whether you formally input or not?
Charles Darwin University has been really supportive on my wanting to use our own methods of yarning on this project, and in accepting that my presentation of data may not follow the colonised “acceptable” ways. They are stringent on ethics though, and for good reason. Our mobs have been used for research for centuries, and it is important that any discoveries during this project are reported as found, and not fitted into a whitefella assumption.
You can contact me by phone, text and marco polo on 043 555 0084, email at girrabirrii@proton.me or through messenger: jedda wells. Also, if you are passing through the lands of the Gundungurra (Robertson) we can catch up face to face and every few months I make the trek through Tubbagah (Dubbo), Yuwaalaraay (Lightning Ridge), Bigambul (Goondiwindi), Turrbal and Jagera (Brisbane), Kunja (Cunnamulla) and Muruwarri throughout that trek.
this page is the more “get to the point” description, for a longer, more indepth intro about mob history and the project, please click here.
Upcoming Dates
In June 2024, I am presenting my Confirmation of Canditure to Charles Darwin University, that outlines my research intentions. If you wish to listen to my presentation live through zoom please contact me.
Notes on this page
1 sometimes it is necessary to use a general term to refer to a person who is not an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person, I use the term whitefella
explore the site or contact the practice directly for more information.