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Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Iwenhe Tyerrtye : What It Means to Be an Aboriginal Person
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Margaret Kemarre Turner OAM is a proud mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. These responsible relationships are her primary motivation to document for younger Aboriginal people, alongside her student and alere Barry McDonald Perrurle, her cultured understanding of the deep and interwining roots that hold all Australian Aboriginal people: Because if people like me and the other grandmothers we don't teach them now, then they probably won't get much more chances to learn.

'Margaret Kemarre Turner was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1997, 'for service to the Aboriginal community of Central Australia, particularly through preserving language and culture, and interpreting'. With Iwenhe Tyerrtye, Margaret Kemarre lays the knowledge foundations for an enhanced and extended dialogue, so that 'two cultures can hold each other':

'You've gotte talk, and really analyse words...to really get a full meaning of it... You cannot say anything without doing that...And that's how many, many things we as Aboriginal people have never described. Because it's really hard to describe to others the picture that we've got in our head. If they can't see that good picture, then there's no answer. Sometimes non-Aboriginal people go away with no answer then, and we're left with no answer as well.

'Margaret Kemarre's knowledge comes through her own Akarre language, though it is in Arrernte that she shares this generous giving of her profound world view. The translations between Arrernte and English are facilitated through the respectful relationship she shares with her niece, Veronica Perrurle Dobson.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Language: English
    • Alice Springs, Southern Northern Territory, Northern Territory,: IAD Press , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 1552674456290131936.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Book Depository
      Extent: 221p.
      Description: col. illus., ports
      ISBN: 9781864650952 (pbk)

Works about this Work

What I’m Reading Kieran Finnane , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2014;
Caterpillar Childhoods : Engaging the Otherwise Worlds of Central Australian Aboriginal Children Affrica Taylor , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Global Studies of Childhood , vol. 3 no. 4 2013; (p. 336-379)

'This article engages with the otherwise worlds of Arrernte caterpillar children living in the Aboriginal fringe camps around Alice Springs, in Central Australia. It traces the constitutive relationships between these children’s kinship identities and belongings to country, the materialities of the desert environment in which they live, the adaptive and inclusive past and present Arrernte ‘Caterpillar Dreaming’ stories, Arrernte interspecies relational ethics, and the impact of colonial dispersals and interventions upon Central Australian Aboriginal people’s lives. The author poses the question of what we might learn about children’s postcolonial natureculture relations from these caterpillar children’s otherwise worlds. Picking up on Elizabeth Povinelli’s suggestion that the mutually constituting relationship of geographies (places) and biographies (human lives), or geontologies, function as indigenous survival strategies, the author questions whether or not these adaptive caterpillar geontologies can survive in a world irrevocably changed by colonisation and subject to ongoing neo-colonial assimilatory interventions. To make these tracings and to pose these questions, the author draws upon a combination of personal recollections, traditional Arrernte stories and philosophies, and recountings of colonialist and neo-colonialist historical events.'

Source: Author's abstract.

A 'Place' for Reconciliation in Indigenous Writing Adelle Barry , 2011 single work essay
— Appears in: Northern Territory Literary Awards 2011 2011; (p. 85-92)
'The Northern Territory is often remarked for its rich cultures and unique landscape. It is home to many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the overall population quickly growing. The city of Palmerston (approximately 21 kilometres from Darwin) is expanding at such a significant rate that a number of new suburbs (such as Bellamack) are being especially designed with consultation from residents about the construction of ‘place’. ...'
Heart Book Review Maureen O'Brien , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Heart , February 2011; (p. 42-43)

— Review of Iwenhe Tyerrtye : What It Means to Be an Aboriginal Person Margaret Kemarre Turner , Margaret Kemarre Turner (translator), Veronica Dobson (translator), 2010 selected work life story
Two Cultures Can Hold Each Other Michael Giacometti , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 70 no. 2 2011; (p. 14-15)
Heart Book Review Maureen O'Brien , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Heart , February 2011; (p. 42-43)

— Review of Iwenhe Tyerrtye : What It Means to Be an Aboriginal Person Margaret Kemarre Turner , Margaret Kemarre Turner (translator), Veronica Dobson (translator), 2010 selected work life story
Two Cultures Can Hold Each Other Michael Giacometti , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 70 no. 2 2011; (p. 14-15)
A 'Place' for Reconciliation in Indigenous Writing Adelle Barry , 2011 single work essay
— Appears in: Northern Territory Literary Awards 2011 2011; (p. 85-92)
'The Northern Territory is often remarked for its rich cultures and unique landscape. It is home to many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the overall population quickly growing. The city of Palmerston (approximately 21 kilometres from Darwin) is expanding at such a significant rate that a number of new suburbs (such as Bellamack) are being especially designed with consultation from residents about the construction of ‘place’. ...'
Caterpillar Childhoods : Engaging the Otherwise Worlds of Central Australian Aboriginal Children Affrica Taylor , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Global Studies of Childhood , vol. 3 no. 4 2013; (p. 336-379)

'This article engages with the otherwise worlds of Arrernte caterpillar children living in the Aboriginal fringe camps around Alice Springs, in Central Australia. It traces the constitutive relationships between these children’s kinship identities and belongings to country, the materialities of the desert environment in which they live, the adaptive and inclusive past and present Arrernte ‘Caterpillar Dreaming’ stories, Arrernte interspecies relational ethics, and the impact of colonial dispersals and interventions upon Central Australian Aboriginal people’s lives. The author poses the question of what we might learn about children’s postcolonial natureculture relations from these caterpillar children’s otherwise worlds. Picking up on Elizabeth Povinelli’s suggestion that the mutually constituting relationship of geographies (places) and biographies (human lives), or geontologies, function as indigenous survival strategies, the author questions whether or not these adaptive caterpillar geontologies can survive in a world irrevocably changed by colonisation and subject to ongoing neo-colonial assimilatory interventions. To make these tracings and to pose these questions, the author draws upon a combination of personal recollections, traditional Arrernte stories and philosophies, and recountings of colonialist and neo-colonialist historical events.'

Source: Author's abstract.

What I’m Reading Kieran Finnane , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2014;
Last amended 29 Jun 2022 09:23:45
Subjects:
  • Aboriginal Arrernte AIATSIS ref. (C8) (NT SG53-02) AUSTLANG note: There are several dialects of Arrernte (cf. Koch 2004) but in this database, distinctions between Central Arrernte, Western Arrernte, Southern Arrernte, and Eastern Arrernte are not made language
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