Aus Aboriginal club+shield

[Tim Simmons]

Lifted from the National Museum Australia.

The digging stick

Another powerful item that the Djang'kawu brought to Yalangbara was the ceremonial digging stick mawalan (also wapitja and djota), used to create freshwater holes on their travels.

The term mawalan can refer to either a digging stick or a paddle, because the oars were used by the Djang'kawu during their sea voyage to Yalangbara to create freshwater pools at various places in the sea.

Once on land, the Sisters continued to create freshwater wells by plunging their mawalan into the previously barren earth. They did this in each of the Dhuwa clan countries they visited, leaving their mawalan as a symbol of their creativity and authority. The water that it created is likened to 'the fluid or source of Yolngu knowledge'.

To emphasise its embodiment of ritual knowledge and land ownership, the senior Rirratjingu men presented a ceremonial mawalan to the Australian government during the Gove land rights case. They believed that the digging stick piercing the ground to create Djang'kawu law and knowledge was like the parliamentary rod opening the doors of parliament. Both staffs in this context symbolise the gaining of entry to culturally different, though equivalent, systems of power.

The exhibited digging stick normally displayed in Parliament House next to the famous Yirrkala Bark Petition has been generously loaned for the Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu exhibition.

Although this stick is from Arnhem Land not the central desert I would not be surprised to find similar culture elsewhere.