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'A rare opportunity to connect with the living tradition of women's songlines, as recounted by Yolngu women from far north Australia.
'We want you to come with us on our journey, our journey of songspirals. Songspirals are the essence of people in this land, the essence of every clan. We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.'
'Aboriginal Australian cultures are the longest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape.
'For Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, women and men play different roles in bringing songlines to life, yet the vast majority of what has been published is about men's place in songlines. Songspirals is a rare opportunity for outsiders to experience Aboriginal women's role in crying the songlines in a very authentic and direct form.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Aboriginal Australian Picturebooks : Ceremonial Listening to Plants
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature : Roots and Winged Seeds 2023; (p. 35-50)'Walking through the Australian bush is a walk through a living library. From the moment the Ancestors moved through Country, creating all the sentient beings, we can still see today, and those that we can’t, Australian plants and trees have held both physical and psychic, tangible and sacred knowledges. This chapter explores the possible portals of access that are opened to hearing the stories and languages of Australian plants and trees when shared by Aboriginal Australian peoples through the form of the picturebook. Such contemporary Australian books weave with ancient ways of knowing to create nurturing spaces for all readers to see, touch, smell, hold and taste the world around them. Through their own forms of Story and Language, plants and trees give insight into medicines, tools and food, as well as kinship, seasons and ceremony. When woven with picturebook modalities, they encourage embodied relationships with non-human and more-than-human elements of Country.' (Publication abstract)
-
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards : The Yield and The Lost Arabs Throw Fragile Lines across Cultural and Linguistic Divides
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 10 December 2020; -
Gay’wu Group of Women. Song Spirals : Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country through Songlines.
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;
— Review of Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose 'Longlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize, Song Spirals is a groundbreaking publication, a unique invitation into Aboriginal women’s traditional cultural practices. Written by a collective of Yolŋu and non-Indigenous women known as the Gay’wu Group of Women, their name, Yolŋu for dilly bag, deftly captures the potent container of ideas that reflect the complexity of Yolŋu ontology, epistemology and knowledge. They were given their gay’wu by the Djan’kawu Sisters, ancestral beings who create ‘Country, the people, animals, plants and birds. The Djan’kawu Sisters gave us our knowledge, language and Law’ (xxi). The text, expressed through song lyrics and stories both traditional and personal, spirals in and out, interweaving layers of time and space and all that contains.' (Introduction) -
October in Fiction
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel ; Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose
-
October in Fiction
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel ; Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose -
Gay’wu Group of Women. Song Spirals : Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country through Songlines.
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;
— Review of Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose 'Longlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize, Song Spirals is a groundbreaking publication, a unique invitation into Aboriginal women’s traditional cultural practices. Written by a collective of Yolŋu and non-Indigenous women known as the Gay’wu Group of Women, their name, Yolŋu for dilly bag, deftly captures the potent container of ideas that reflect the complexity of Yolŋu ontology, epistemology and knowledge. They were given their gay’wu by the Djan’kawu Sisters, ancestral beings who create ‘Country, the people, animals, plants and birds. The Djan’kawu Sisters gave us our knowledge, language and Law’ (xxi). The text, expressed through song lyrics and stories both traditional and personal, spirals in and out, interweaving layers of time and space and all that contains.' (Introduction) -
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards : The Yield and The Lost Arabs Throw Fragile Lines across Cultural and Linguistic Divides
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 10 December 2020; -
Aboriginal Australian Picturebooks : Ceremonial Listening to Plants
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature : Roots and Winged Seeds 2023; (p. 35-50)'Walking through the Australian bush is a walk through a living library. From the moment the Ancestors moved through Country, creating all the sentient beings, we can still see today, and those that we can’t, Australian plants and trees have held both physical and psychic, tangible and sacred knowledges. This chapter explores the possible portals of access that are opened to hearing the stories and languages of Australian plants and trees when shared by Aboriginal Australian peoples through the form of the picturebook. Such contemporary Australian books weave with ancient ways of knowing to create nurturing spaces for all readers to see, touch, smell, hold and taste the world around them. Through their own forms of Story and Language, plants and trees give insight into medicines, tools and food, as well as kinship, seasons and ceremony. When woven with picturebook modalities, they encourage embodied relationships with non-human and more-than-human elements of Country.' (Publication abstract)
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Award for Non-Fiction
- 2020 joint winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Non-Fiction
- 2020 longlisted Colin Roderick Award
- 2020 shortlisted Territory Read Book of the Year Chief Minister's NT Book Awards — Non-fiction
- 2020 longlisted APA Book Design Awards — Best Designed Non Fiction Book designed by Lisa White