"WE DONE IT!"
THE STORY OF W ARMON WOMEN'S CENTRE AND SAFE HOUSE:
WOMEN'S AGENCY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
By
Anna-Stina Kjellstrom
B.A., Okanagan University College, 1996

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

©Anna-Stina Kjellstrom, 2000
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
AUGUST2000

All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.

ABSTRACT

This thesis documents the history of a women's centre and shelter in the Kija Aboriginal
community of Warmun in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia where gender
relations were characterized by a balance in economic and spiritual realms but have been
threatened by increasing social problems, such as violence against women, introduced through
the colonization process.
I have attempted to answer the question: Why do I perceive Warmun women as having a
stronger status than women from my own Swedish culture? This is divided into three
subquestions: What does the history ofWarmun women's centre indicate about the continuity of
balanced Kija gender roles, what does it show about different aspects ofKija women's agency,
and how can I relate this to Swedish women's gender status?
I have decentered Western European patriarchal ideology by listening to Warmun women
who represent a gender balanced ideology and presented what Warmun women have to say about
women's collective action, their mode of organizing and the ideological base of their agency. My
methodological approach has been my own movement between different worldviews and
feminist histories over time and space; feminist ethnography provided the field data.
The story of the Centre reveals that Warmun women have not allowed the intrusion of a
Western European ideology to weaken their egalitarian status but have adhered to an
organizational independence determined by their traditional culture and based in the spiritual
heritage of"Women's Law." It indicates that Warmun women have an authority as women which
is not found in the Swedish patriarchal democracy.

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract. ....... .. .. .. .... ...... ........................ ........... ..................... ........... .... ........................ ......... 11
Table of Contents. .... ........... ...... ... .. ... ........... ... ... ...... ........... ...... ... .... ..... ....... .... ... ... .. ........ .... 111
List of figures. .... .... .. ....... ..... ........ ..... ......... .. ...... .................. ... .......... ...... ........ ............ ....... .. v
Acknowledgements ..... ... ... ..... ..... ......... ....... .... ... .... .. ............. ......... ... ............ .. .. ... ....... .... .. .. v1
Dedication .. . ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. ... .. . .. .. .. ... .. .... .. ... .. .... .. .. .. .. .. ... ... ... .. ... .. .. .. .. .. ... .. ... .. .. .. .. .. ... . vii
PROLOGUE .... ........ ...... ...... ...... ..... ... ............... ... .... .. .... .... .. .. .... ................. .. ... .. ... ............. .
CHAPTER ONE: VOICES FROM ELSEWHERE ... . ... .... .... ...... ...... ... ..... .. ... .... .... ... .. .. .... 2
A personal road to Warmun .. .... ... ... . .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. ... .. .. . ... .. .... .. ... . ... .. .. . .. .... .. ... .. .... . ..
Research objectives ... ...... .. .. .. .. .. .. . ... .. ... ..... ...... .. .... .. .... ... .. .. .. .. . .. ... .. .... .. .. ... ..... . .. ..
Why listen to Warmun women's story? .............. .......................... .. ...... ....... ........
Matriarchy and gynocracy . .... .. ... .. ... ... .. .... .. .... .. ... .. .. ... .. ... .. .. .... .. ... .. ... ... .
Gender-balanced societies.... ....... ...... ............... ..... ............ ... .... ..... ... ......
An Indigenous perspective.. .. .. .. ........... .. .......... ..... .. ... ............. ... ......... ...
Patriarchy .. . ... .. ... .. .. .... .. . .. .. .. ... .. .... .. .... .. ... ... ... .. .... .. ... .. .. .. ... .. ... .. ... .. .. .. .. ..
To "dismantle the master's house" ...... ... ...... ...... ...... .......... ............. .......
Cross-cultural learning .... ....... .... .... ...... ... .. .. ....... ...... .... .................... ... ..
Research methods .. .. ... .. .. ... .. .... .. ... .. .. .... .. ... .. ... ... ... ... ... .. .... .. .. ... .. ... .. .. .... .. ... .. ... .. .. .
A journey between women's cultures . .. ... ... ... .. .... .. . .. .. .. ... .. ... .. .. .. .. .. ... .. ..
Research carried out in Warmun ............... ... ........ .......... ... ... ... .......... ....
Thesis organization ... ................ . .. ....... ..... ......... ...... ......... ... .. .. ...... .. ..... ... ..... . .. .. ...

2
5
5
7
8
9
11
13
14

17
17
20
27

CHAPTER TWO: WARMUN WOMEN ... .................... ................................................... 28
The community ... .. .. .. .. .. .. . ... .. ... ... .. .. .. . ... ... .. .... .. ... ... ... ... ... .. .. ... .. ... ... ... .. .. ... ... ... .. .. ..
Dreaming stories ............... ... ...... .. ..... .. .... .. .... ............. ..... .. .. ... .... ... ... ....
Geographical location
... ... ...... ......... ...... .. .. .. ....... .. ... .. .. ... ...... .. ... .....
History ofTurkey Creek!Warmun ... ........ ...... ............... ... ... ........ .... ......
Warmun women in the written record ... ....... ...... ... ..... .... ....... ... ......... ..... ..... ... .... .
Women's Law

28
29
30
31
36

49

CHAPTER THREE: "WE'VE GOT TO HAVE A BALANCE HERE:" CREATING THE
WOMEN'S CENTRE AND SAFE HOUSE ......... ...... ....... .................................. 58
The story of a name: Werra Werra Taam ................. ..... .... ..... .. ..... .. ..................... 58
The history ofWarmun Women's Centre and Safe House .......................... ....... ... 60
"That's the house we bin us'em first". ................. .. .. .. .. ... ....... ........ ......... . 60
"That woman she used to be frightened" .. ...... .................... .. .. ............ ... 62
"An area of need that wasn't being addressed" ..... ....... ... ..... ... .. ..... ... ..... 65
"We come in la that bough shed five camp" ................................. ..... .... 67
"We bin still talking and asking for money" ..... ...... ....... ..... ..... ... .. ... .. ... . 70
"And alway talking, alway" .... .. ..... ..... . .... .. ...... ....... .. ...... .... ....... ... .. .. .. . .. 71
"We had a bit of a problem with blokes" . .. .... .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .... .. ... .. ... .. .. .... ... 73
"Builded all this Woman Centre" .... .......... .. .... ...... .. ..... ..,..... .................. 74
"Blokes getting more worse belting up their wives" .. .... .. .. ...... .. ............ 76
"We get our thing there" .. ............................................................... ..... 77
"We brought them in there" ....... ..... ... ....... .................... .......... ................ 79

lll

CHAPTER FOUR: THE CENTRE OF A MANY-PETALED FLOWER ..... ....... ...... ....... 81
The building .......................................................................................................... 81
Werra Werra Taam vehicles: women re-gaining mobility ................. ........ ..... ...... 83
The management: the importance of independence ........ ....... ... ........... .. .. .... ......... 85
Activities in the Centre .. ................................. .. ... ... ....... ... ........... ..... ... ........ ..... ..... 87
How Warmun women use the Centre ........... .... ..... ...... .. ........................ 88
Benefit of Centre to community at large .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 92
Meals -on-wheels .. ...... .. ...... .. ....... .. ............... .. ......... .. . .. .. ...... .. . 92
Fundraising activities .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 94
Use of Centre by outsiders .. .... .... .. ...... ...................... .. .... .... .... ...... .... .. .. . 95
The Safe House .. .. ... .. .. .. ...... .. .. .. .... . .. .. .. .. .... . .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. 99
Violence and gender relations in Aboriginal societies ................ ...... ..... 99
Women's camps .. .. .. .. .. .. .... . .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .... .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. 101
Women's shelters in Aboriginal communities .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .......... .. ............ 103
The Warmun Safe House within an Australian context... ...... ...... ........... 104
Management and funding .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. . 107
Effects of the Warmun Safe House .......... .. .... ............ .. .......................... 109
CHAPTER FIVE: RESEARCH QUESTIONS REVISITED
-AUTHORITY AS WOMEN ............ .... .... .. .. .. .... .......... ...... .. .. 114
Women's agency in W armun .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. ... .. . 114
Collective action .. .. .. .. . .. ... . .. .. .. . .. ... ... .. .... .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. 114
Type of organizing .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 115
Ideological base for women's power .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 118
Identity and independence .. .... .. .... .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... . 118
Swedish women's agency .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 119
Do Swedish women act collectively?.. .... .... .............................. ...... ....... 121
Type of political organizing .. ...... ......... .. .. .. ............ .. ............ .... .. .. .... ...... 122
Do Swedish women have an ideological power base?........ .. .... ......... ... 123
Identity ...... .......... ... . .. .. ........ .................... ................ .. ............... 123
Making a connection: Interest theory to Women's Business .................. ..... ......... 125
What about equality? ........ .. .. .... .. ...... .......... ...... ............. ..... ....... .. ............ .. .. .......... 126
REFLECTIONS ... .. ..... .. ..... ........ ........ ...... .... .. ..... ..... .. ..... ... .. .... .. .... ........ .... ...... .......... .... .. .. . 129
References .. ...... .. ..... ...... ........ ........... ... ... ........... .... ... ..... . .. .. .... ... .. ...... .. ... .. ..... .... .. .. ... .. .. ...... 133
Appendix 1

List of interviews . .. .. .. . .. .... .. .. ... .. .. ....... .. .. .. .. .. ... ... ... .. .. . .. .. .. .... .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. . 143

Appendix 2

Chronology ofWarmun Women's Centre and Safe House ........ .. .......... 144

Appendix 3

Illustrations: Figures 1 - 21 ...... .................. ........ .... ..... ....... .... ..... .. .. ........ 146-162

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure

Page

1.

Warmun Women ................ ...... .... ......... ... ..... ........ ...... ..... ......... 146,147

2.

Aerial View ofWarmun Community.... ............ .... ...... ......... ....... .... 148

3.

Kimberley Region of Western Australia...... ...... ....... ................... ... . 148

4.

Kimberley Language Groups ....... ..... ...... ... .. ........ ............................ 149

5.

Kimberley Stations ...... .. ....... .... ........ ................ ... ........................... .. 149

6.

Visiting Bedford Downs Station .. ....... ............ .............. ...... ... ... ..... ... 150

7.

Mistake Creek Memorial Site ...... .... ........... ........... .... ........ ...... ... ..... .. 151

8.

Barramundi Dreaming Paintings ....................................................... 152

9.

Ceremony for Baby Jacinta ..... ....... ................... ............ ........... .... ..... 150

10.

Symbol ofWerra Werra Taam .......................................................... 153

11.

Warmun with Five Camps and Women's Centre ............................... 153

12.

Architectural Drawings ofWomen's Centre and Safe House ... .... ..... 154

13.

Council Meeting............................................................. ........ ... ... .... . 15 5

14.

Revised Drawing of Women's Centre ....................... ....... ... ........ ..... 155

15.

Women's Centre and Safe House ...................................................... 156

16.

Bush Trip ......................................................................................... 157

17.

Clapsticks and Coolamon ......... ..... ........ ... ... ...... .... .... ... .... ......... ...... 158

18.

Crocodile Hole School Trip ....... ... ....... ...... .... .... .. ...... ........ ....... .... ... 159

19.

Meals-on-wheels... ............. .... ....... .... .......... ....... ............ ...... .... ........ 160

20.

Christmas Card Designs............ ..... ... ....... ........... ................. .... ..... ... 161

21.

Planned Extension of Women's Centre ........................................... 162

Photos by the author unless otherwise stated.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank all the women of Warmun who accepted me into
their community and their Women's Centre. They generously took time out of their
very busy lives to share their stories with me and included me in activities in the
community and out on the land. Included in this wonderful group of women is my
internship supervisor Theresa Morellini, who shared her house, her time, her
insights, and her friendship with me during my stays in Warmun.
I also thank my committee members for their guidance throughout the
process of writing this thesis. It gives me great pleasure to express my sincere
gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Antonia Mills, for her support, encouragement, and
extensive commentary. Thank you to Dr. Marianne Ainley who inspired me to go to
Warmun in the first place and who has given me continuous support during the
whole process. I also thank Dr. Suzanne Leblanc for providing me with insightful
advice and helpful feedback. Finally I would like to thank Margo Greenwood for
accepting to be my external examiner.
I would also like to thank the following women for their intellectual
stimulation and their support in so many different ways during the process of writing
this thesis: Beryl Amaron, Rai Brown, Frida Hoover, Paylig Juniper, Maggie
Kuntze, Naomi McPherson, Deborah Thien, Hsueh-lin Wei, and Diane Wilson.

Vl

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of
my

mother Stina Kjellstrom
for
her never-ending love and support.

Vll

PROLOGUE
"Is the Women's Centre too radical?" 1 I am looking at a clip from the student newspaper,

Over the Edge, pinned up above my desk in the graduate students' office at my northern Canadian
university. The Women's Centre, located within the university, has been in a continual struggle
for its existence since its inception in 1994. Letters to the Editor for and against the Centre seem
to abound. The words in the article "I did not think I needed it" ring true for me. As it did for the
author, it took me a long time to set foot in the Centre, because the thought of a women-only
space was just not a comfortable idea for me. When I finally decided to enter it was because it
had become natural for me to be in a women-only space as I had spent some time working with,
observing, and socializing with women in an Aboriginal women's center in Warmun, Western
Australia. During my time in Warmun, I had experienced another way of looking at gender
relations, because in Australia there is men's business, women' s business, and public business in
an Aboriginal context and women's and men's business are equally respected by either sex. I can,
however, identify with women at our university who have never been in the Northern Women's
Centre and who never intend to use the space. I understand because I too have believed the myth
that we live in a genderless world. I have attended meetings with the undergraduate society as a
representative of the Northern Women's Centre collective and emerged appalled at the
disrespectful way young men deal with the issue of the women-only-space service. I was
surprised at the fact that young men in particular believe that they can have this control over
women. When I analyzed my reaction I realized that it was related to a shift in my own awareness
and way of thinking, a shift which I know is caused by my experience of a group of women from
another culture, the women in the Women's Centre in Warmun, Western Australia.

1

Joella Hogan, Letter to the Editor, Over the Edge, November 15, 1999, page 5.

1

CHAPTER ONE: "VOICES FROM ELSEWHERE"
Feminist thought . .. is a question of a multitude of
alliances and voices . . . and some discourses have
not started yet. 2
... instead of taking the premises and working rules
of the system for granted, they would ask the
question "Why?" or "Is that necessarily so?" 3

A PERSONAL ROAD TO WARMUN
My present acceptance of a women's only space should be seen through a long process of
influences on the formation of my identity as a woman. I will tell a part of this story to situate
myself in this thesis. Naturally, the 'whole story' goes back to several generations of my
foremothers in Sweden where I was born and raised, and where I lived during the 1950s and
1960s as a young woman, wife, and the mother of two children. At that time the new message of
gender equality, inspired by the "second wave" of feminism, spread easily through the media to
what was then a relatively homogeneous country with a population of around eight million
people. Through newspapers, magazines, radio, and television married women were encouraged
to join the workforce and insist that their husbands share in household chores. Women were being
convinced that they had a right to an education and to enter into a profession of their choice. After
studies and work experience in Sweden and after my first marriage had ended I landed a position
with the Swedish Trade Commissioner in Vancouver, Canada, where I eventually formed a new

2

Margareta Lindholm, "Feminism, genus och vetenskapsstudier,"
http://vest.gu.se:70/1s/vest/ 1989/12_ 89/Lindholm.txt.fixed (1 0/16/99) [my translation]
3
Asked by the Icelandic Women's Alliance, a women's political party, to question the male
perspective. Sighrudur Helga Sigurbjamard6ttir, " 'On their own premises': the political project of
the Icelandic Women's Alliance," in Is there a Nordic feminism ? Nordicfeminst thought on
culture and society, eds. Drude von der Fehr, Anna G. J6nasd6ttir and Bente Rosenbeck (London:
UCL Press, 1998), 75.
2

studies and work experience in Sweden and after my first marriage had ended I landed a position
with the Swedish Trade Commissioner in Vancouver, Canada, where I eventually formed a new
family. I soon found out, however, that if I wanted to stay in my new relationship, I could not
realize any of the values and rights that I had taken for granted in my native country. My new
partner told me, in no uncertain terms, that any organized sharing of household chores was out of
the question, and, later, that I should not be going to university because of my responsibilities as a
wife and a mother. My reactions to these statements were to opt out of the double-shift, to
become a stay-home mother, and to give up any plans for further education. I eventually had three
children who were born in Canada and my time was spent homemaking as well as organizing and
facilitating the social and cultural lives of my husband and daughters. I was also involved in
activities in the community where I taught folkdance, worked for ethnic and school associations,
and started an ethnic language school. I eventually found myself in a divorce situation in which,
after twenty years of homemaking, I was expected to enter the labour market with outdated
unmarketable skills and a total lack of self-confidence. Following up on my abandoned plans for
a Canadian education I enrolled in an undergraduate arts program at Okanagan University
College in British Columbia, Canada.
It was at this time that I started to listen to the voices of Aboriginal women, first to those

of the egalitarian First Nations of the Interior of British Columbia and later to those that came to
me from Australian Aboriginal women through Phyllis Kaberry's book, Aboriginal Woman

Sacred and Profane (1939). This reading made me aware of the existence of a more balanced
gender system than that of my own society and prompted me to explore the female culture that
she described. At that time I was not aware of my internalized acceptance of the patriarchal
system in which I had lived all my life, but Aboriginal Woman brought this issue to the forefront.
Enrolling in an Interdisciplinary Master's Degree Program at the University ofNorthern British
3

Western Australia brought me in 1997 to the Warmun community on a First Nations Studies
internship. In 1998 I made a second visit to the community for the purpose of completing my
Master of Arts thesis research on Warmun women's agency and the establishment of a women's
center and shelter.
My interest in, and experience with, gender relations in the Warmun community made me
reflect more deeply not only on my own personal background but also on the status of women in
my own culture. How could I, who had been raised and lived as an adult in a country which was
in 1995, according to the United Nations, the most "equal" country in the world (Mallik 1998;
Stark 1997, 225), have developed such a low esteem about myself as a woman? Without realizing
it, I was starting to look for structural causes for what I had until then seen as personal
weaknesses. During twenty-five years in Canada I had almost lost sight of the political and social
development in Sweden, as I was busy raising my new family. Certainly, I had heard that
Swedish women had gained more equality with men and I had heard about the Equality
Ombudsperson and the equal gender representation in Parliament. Also, when visiting Sweden I
observed that mothers no longer stayed at home with their children. I observed, however, that
problems such as violence against women seemed to have worsened, and I later learned that
Swedish women were, indeed, far from equal to men. This information provided me with some
kind of framework for my own experiences and with possible explanations for my feelings of
powerlessness. If formal equal representation, which Swedish women had obtained, did not
empower women, what did? I wanted to know more about the relationship between the
ideological foundations of the female culture I came from and how I felt about myself.

4

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The purpose of my thesis is, first, to document the actions Kija women in the
Aboriginal community of W armun, in Western Australia, have taken in order to create and
operate a space of their own for the safety of women and children, for job creation, and for
mutual support. Secondly, I want to explore how Warmun women are organized as
women and how they ground their ideas about their roles and status as women. Thirdly, I
want to compare Warmun women's actions, organizational style, and ideas concerning
gender identity - coming, as they do, from a non-patriarchal, gender-balanced society with those same categories within contemporary Nordic feminist thought. Thereby I hope
to give examples of how patriarchy, or its absence, can affect how women think about
themselves and ultimately how they can take action.
WHY LISTEN TO W ARMUN WOMEN'S STORY?
In this thesis I will problematize women's gender roles because, despite an increase in
awareness, research, organizing, and action taken in the last five decades to enhance women's
equality worldwide I am aware of a growing sense of powerlessness among women. This is true
even in societies with a high degree of formal gender equality, such as Sweden where the state
traditionally "has been seen as woman-friendly- both responsive to women's concerns and
responsible for addresing them" (Briskin 1999, 11). Deborah Cameron's review of Is there a
Nordic feminism? (Fehr, von der, et al., 1998) sees this book as a useful challenge to ill-informed
and simplistic stereotypes about Nordic women and notes that "it is ... often supposed that
[Nordic] feminists pursue their goals from a position of strength, since the region leads the world
in terms ofthe numbers ofwomen who hold political and governmental office" (Cameron 1999,
78). The Swedish political scientist Anna J6nasd6ttir is one of the Swedish feminist scholars who

5

are seeking to understand some underlying mechanisms that curtail women's actual possibilities
of realizing their opportunities. She asks:
Why, or how do men's social and political power positions with respect to women
persist even in contemporary Western societies, where women and men are seen as
formally/legally equal individuals, where almost all adult women are fully or
partly employed, where there is a high proportion of well-educated women, and
where welfare state arrangements, which obviously benefit women, are relatively
well developed? Even after decades of benevolent and active policies for gender
equality, inequalities between women and men in today's Western societies persist
and, very likely have increased in some spheres. (J6nasd6ttir 1994, 1)
A lower economic status, the burden of the double day and a fear of violence against
women all affect Swedish women's lives. Western feminists link different kinds of violence
affecting women to a patriarchal form of society (Rowland and Klein 1996; Pateman 1988). The
Indian physicist, ecofeminist, and activist, Vandana Shiv a, sees the spreading of violence as "the
culmination of patriarchal projects" (Shiva 1996, 73). Patriarchy is, however, according to the
Canadian First Nations writer and activist, Lee Maracle, a relatively recent phenomenon in the
history of humankind:
What is little known to white women is that it was the birth and growth in strength
of racism that gave rise to sexism. Legalized sexual discrimination of sorts did
exist before the 1500s in Europe. But the total subordination of women is a recent
phenomenon, which was hothoused by the birth of capitalism and the consummate
industrial revolution. What preceded the glorious revolution that transformed
language, culture and consciousness for Europe was: the enslavement and
commercialization of an entire race of people in Africa and the enslavement of the
more populous Natives of Central America; the transformation of European
women and children into beasts of burden, cheap labour; and, the plunder of the
colonies as both source of raw material and markets for the dumping of excess
goods and people. This major re-organization of the world's hitherto separate
economies into a single global system gave rise to the ideologies of racism and
sexism among the oppressed classes. The cultural renaissance of England that
preceded capitalism's ascendancy included equality between men and women and
the weakening of patriarchy. The industrial revolution, the supremacy of science
over nature, production over humanity and the negation of love and morality in the
interest of profit invigorated patriarchy. (Maracle 1993, 125)

6

Lee Maracle is speaking from a Canadian Native American perspective that does not have
a patriarchal legacy.

Matriarchy and 2ynocracy
The Huron scholar Georges Sioui is also speaking from a non-patriarchal worldview when
he uses the term 'matricentric' to indicate the traditionally strong position of women in many
North American Aboriginal societies. He argues that
to the Amerindian, woman represents reason, the being who educates man, orients
his future, and anticipates society's needs. Man acknowledges in woman the
primordial powers of life and a capacity to understand its laws. As regards the
organization and direction of society, the role assigned to woman is in a sense
superior to that of man. . . . [T]he majority of the nomadic peoples of America are
matricentric in their ideological and spiritual conception of the world. (Sioui 1995,
14)
Another way to describe the pre-colonial Amerindian indigenous social system is to use
the term gynocratic. The Laguna Pueblo/Sioux scholar Paula Gunn Allen states that American
Indian "traditional tribal lifestyles are more often gynocratic than not and . . . they are never
patriarchal" (Allen 1986, 2). She uses the term gynocracy for a women-centered social system
which respects the roles of men and is "focused on social responsibility rather than on privilege
and on the realities of the human constitution rather than on denial-based social fictions" (3).
This is contrary to the definition of matriarchy as a social system where women have
power over men. The evolutionary theor/ within the Eurocentric and androcentric science of
anthropology defined matriarchy as a an earlier cultural stage and thereby confirmed and

4

Lewis H. Morgan and Edward B. Tylor advanced the concept of cultural evolution, which
according to Friedel and Pfeiffer was revisited in the twentieth century by Leslie E. White and
Julian Steward (1977, 294, 306).

7

strengthened racial attitudes in Western European society by placing hunter-gatherers and other
indigenous peoples on a lower cultural level. These theories have been used to justify the
continuation of colonization and its survival in present-day society by a majority of the
population ofWestern European descent. Eleanor Leacock says, however, that "to ... argue a
position of 'matriarchy' as a 'stage' of social evolution is but the other face of the male dominance
argument" (Leacock 1998, 20).

Gender-balanced societies
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a Maori researcher and scholar, indicates that there is another way
oflooking at the relations between the sexes than that of power and subordination. She says:
"Indigenous women across many different indigenous societies claim an entirely different
relationship, one embedded in beliefs about the land and the universe, about the spiritual
significance of women and about the collective endeavours that were required in the organizing
ofthe society" (Smith 1999, 151). By listening to Warmun women's history and stories and by
observing their actions it is obvious to me that their society, even though it has been impacted by
patriarchy, can neither be considered patriarchal nor matriarchal but rather, as in other Australian
Aboriginal societies, as gender-balanced. In The Creation of Patriarchy Gerda Lerner refers to
these kinds of gender-balanced systems when she states that feminist anthropologists have found
that there are "societies in which sexual asymmetry carries no connotation of dominance or
subordination. Rather, the tasks performed by both sexes are indispensable to group survival, and
both sexes are regarded as equal in status in most aspects. In such societies the sexes are
considered 'complementary', their roles and status are different, but equal" (Lerner 1986,18).
Eleanor Leacock also states that in foraging societies "the control women exercised over their
own lives and activities is widely, if not fully, accepted as ethnographic fact" (Leacock 1998,
8

136). Further, Ifi Amadiume contrasts the Western political system, based on a "rigid gender
ideology, since gender does not mediate sexual dualism" (Amadiume 1987, 16) with the
traditional African Igbo dual-sex system working within the political and economic system (16,
27). She suggests for the Igbo case a revival and modification of traditional systems with separate
bodies on different administrative levels to deal with 'women's affairs' and 'men's affairs.'
Warmun is another example of a society where there is equal space and respect for 'Men's
Business' and 'Women's Business.' Inspired by Indigenous women's writings and by
anthropologic material about egalitarian North American and Australian Indigenous societies,
where men and women do not presume control over the other sex, I have sought out societies
characterized by this kind of egalitarian gender relations. I agree with the Swedish writer Elin
Wagner who says: "Just because one is convinced that the world can no longer be run along
existing lines by men assisted by women who have accepted this [patriarchal] system, one does
not necessarily have to want to see it controlled by women alone" (Wagner 1940, 273; my
translation).

An lndieenous perspective
This thesis explores women's agency in a society organized according to an egalitarian
worldview, as found in many Indigenous cultures, compared to that of a patriarchal ideology.
According to Linda Tuhiwai Smith "distinctive differences between technological and natives
[sic] peoples poses starkly contrasting world views which have generated starkly different ways
of organizing social, political, economic and spiritual life" (Smith 1999, 105). She characterizes
these worldviews as "philosophies which connect humans to the environment and to each other
and which generate principles for living a life which is sustainable, respectful and possible" (1 05).
To approach this issue of women's agency from an Indigenous perspective means to realize that
9

there are other ways of looking at the foundations of society and learning about it than those
accepted within the academy or other Western institutions. When I begin placing my thesis within
the theoretical framework of an Indigenous perspective I accept that "approaches [to research]
can be generated from [these] very different value systems" (167). To work within an Indigenous
framework is to listen to and to observe Elders and to realize that their narratives and ways of life
make up and contain this framework. My intention has been to place Warmun women's voices
and my way of listening to them within this framework.
As I realize the gap between different kinds of world views and theoretical approaches that
I encounter on my journey, I am struggling to find bridges between the Indigenous philosophies
that make sense to me as a human being, and the Western European world view that I am brought
up in and live in. I find bridges in the rich array of new feminist attempts to broaden our ways of
thinking, where approaches such as polyphonic historical approach (Lindholm 1989), a
postcolonial science theory (Harding 1998), and ecofeminism recognize and respect the diversity
of women's cultures.
I do not intend to speak for Kija women but I want to be informed by their accounts and
use these as evidence for my claim that for a society to be gender-balanced there needs to be
women' s empowerment as Sandra Harding (1998, 18) notes. I plan to bring in new questions, but
I do not expect to be able to answer them. One such question is the ideological base of women's
power in Sweden that I see as influencing the possibility of resistance to the appropriation of
women's labours and resources. In this way I hope to participate in a discussion regarding the
crucial issues of women's organizing and identity formation. Therefore, attempting to combine an
Indigenous and a polyphonic postcolonial framework I will address the concepts of gender
equality and patriarchy and the possibilities for change.

10

Patriarchy
Since the 1960s, when patriarchy was brought back into feminism internationally,
questions about its origin and mechanisms have been debated (Pateman 1988, 19). Some
feminists see patriarchy as universal and innate, as men's desire for dominance in general or
specifically for the control over women's labour or women's fertility (Fox 1988, 165-8). Radical
feminists claim that patriarchy is a universal value system, an ideology which maintains
patriarchal structures not only on economic, but also on political, legal, and other levels (Rowland
and Klein 1996, 14). These theories claim that patriarchy is and has been a common trait in all
cultures, as Chris Weedon states, an "elaborate system of male domination ofwomen's minds and
bodies which is at the basis of all social organization [and that it] is to be found in all cultures and
at all moments ofhistory" (Weedon 1999, 20). Because ofthe existence of cultures that do not,
however, have patriarchal traits I have to reject the conept of universality of patriarchy. I agree
with the Nigerian sociologist Ifi Amadiume who calls the "position of assuming a universal
subordination of all women at all times in history and all cultures" erroneous and ethnocentric
(Amadiume 1987, 189). The universality of patriarchy has also been questioned by other
feminists who have "challenged many of the earlier generalizations, which found male dominance
virtually universal in all known societies, as being patriarchal assumptions on the part of
ethnographers and investigators of those cultures" (Lerner 1986, 18). This pertains especially to
egalitarian cultures. Eleanor Leacock found that in those societies "egalitarianism [is] applied as
fully to women as to men" (Leacock 1981, 133).
Many feminists agree that patriarchy oppresses women through a social structure of male
domination (Lerner 1986, 239; Nicholson 1986, 41 ; Rowland and Klein 1996, 11; Walby 1990,
11

20) or that it dominates women in a political sense (Pateman 1988, 19; Rowland and Klein 1996,
15). As a representative of Marxist feminism and as an anthropologist working with egalitarian
cultures Eleanor Leacock (1981) argues that the economic structure forms a culture's ideology.
This would suggest that gender equality could be achieved through men and women receiving an
equal share of a society's economic resources. This is, in my opinion, and from an Indigenous
perspective, a much too simplistic explanation of patriarchy. Ifi Amadiume says: "Marxist
materialism or economism is limiting in that the role of culture is denied. The equation of power
with the control of the means of production, and female high status with the degree of
contribution to subsistence, can explain achieved, but not ascribed, power and authority"
(Amadiume 1987, 190). Valerie Bryson states also that "economics cannot ... be isolated as an
autonomous arena of struggle or as the prime cause ofwomen's oppression; struggles for
economic independence may be important, but they cannot on their own bring an end to
patriarchy" (Bryson 1992, 197). Bonnie Fox sees patriarchy as caused both by social structures,
which include economic organization, and by gender ideology/subjectivity, as "two different but
inseparable and constantly interacting levels of reality" (Fox 1988, 176).
Economic factors are certainly important in the case ofKija women and Phyllis Kaberry
(1939) pointed out Kija women's economic independence in relation to men. I did not, however,
make a study of the comparative economic status of W armun women and Swedish women a
focus of my study. I have focussed on the cultural position which empowers Warmun women. As
the story of the Warmun Women's Centre will show, they have fought for continued
independence during their experience of capitalistic patriarchy and are still adhering to their
gender-balanced ideology and reinforcing it through their actions. Thus, without discounting the
economic factor, I do not focus on this aspect ofWarmun women's lives as my research
highlighted cultural aspects that influence women's autonomy. I agree with Ifi Amadiume (1987,
12

191) that understanding women's power "would call for the analysis of culture and an emphasis
on belief systems which have legitimized women's power."
I would like to add here the link I see between ecofeminists who refer to how patriarchy's
"hierarchical, dualistic and oppressive mode of thinking has harmed both women and nature"
(Tong 1998, 246) and Warmun women. Their intimate connection to land and the 'spiritual
ecofeminism' they practice may provide a thinking space for a transformative feminism for
Western European women as suggested by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva (268).

To "dismantle the master's house5 "
When discussing how to improve women's subordinate status in patriarchal society
there are at least two different alternatives to consider: to work within the existing system
and to work from outside the system. Christina Bergqvist (1999, 9) discusses the conflict
on the ideological level in Nordic countries between "those feminists who argue that the
best way for women to look after their interests is to organize separately in independent
women's groups and organizations, and those who argue that women ought to strive for
integration in order to change the presently male-dominated organizations and
institutions" .
Thenjiwe Mtintso, the African National Congress representative in the South African
Parliament, writes that "there is a real problem with the women who enter the sphere of
parliament with an acceptance of its male orientation and thus play the game according to the
rules dictated by male domination instead of trying to change the whole game and its rules. To the

5

Audre Lorde 1979, 'The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House', comments at
'The personal and the Political' pane, Second Sex Conference, reproduced in Moraga, C. and G
Anzaldua (1981), This Bridge Called My Back, Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, New York,
pp. 98-101. (Smith 1999, 40)
13

extent that this leads to the creation of domineering, strong, competitive, unemotional people, it
does not help in the restructuring of society and the changing power relations" (Waring 1997, 10).
To change a system where women contribute to the continuation of men's superior status,
and where they continuously recreate it by repeatedly validating, fearing, and using it, Yvonne
Hirdman, a Swedish social scientist, suggested that one has to create "free zones [without] these
deforming male norms" (Hirdman 1992, 7; my translation). The question is then how you create
these 'free zones.'

Cross-culturallearnine
With its long history in Western European societies patriarchy has been internalized and
deeply entrenched in the minds and bodies of men and women. Considering this internalization,
how do women get to a place outside of the system from where they can act in their own interests
to fulfill their own needs? For Mohawk Patricia Monture-Angus this was done by returning to her
Indigenous culture: "I had another alternative. Most people do not walk into an alternative
lifestyle, an alternative value structure. They do not have the same kind of access to those things
because they are not people of a 'minority' culture" (Monture-Angus 1995, 21 ).
I and other women of Western European background seldom have this alternative, nor
can we, like Alice Walker, use the word "womanish" and feel that it denotes assertive behaviour
as it does in her Black American women's heritage (Walker 1993). By going to Warmun I found,
as Elin Wagner had suggested "a possibility to step outside, in [my] way of thinking" (Lindholm
1990, 185; my translation). She suggested the utility of comparisons with other cultures
(Lindholm 1990: 179). On another continent, Diane Bell recalls the power of the actual experience
of women's strength in a gender-balanced society in the Central Desert of Australia: "Because my
teachers were patient and dedicated to teaching me 'straight' I learned to see much through the

14

eyes of Aboriginal women" (Bell 1993a, 231 ). She was referring to an experience of being
influenced by women from a different culture:
My initial fieldwork literally changed my life . . .. the clarity with which I began to
see the dynamic of the diverse ways in which women are trivialized, ignored,
misrepresented, marginalized and demeaned by western societies and the strategies
of resistance, survival and strength I learned from my Aboriginal women
friends ... .This insider/outsider positioning is a point taken up later by feminists
such as Teresa de Lauretis where she speaks of the need to generate 'the voice
from elsewhere', one that acknowledges the pervasive power of the 'master
narratives' but also interrogates their agenda. (Bell 1992, 297).
An earlier example of the effect of the contact between women guided by different
worldviews is the experience of 19th century women's rights activists in the United States.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott personally knew Iroquois
women who were absolute sovereigns of their lives and through them they "caught a glimpse of
the possibility of freedom" (Wagner 1999, 62). They fought for the right for women to vote after
learning from their Iroqios mentors who pointed out the place of Iroquois women selecting
leaders, and the position that men do not have the right, assumed in patriarchal society, to inflict
physical pain on women.
To attempt to place ourselves as women outside the patriarchal system by referring to
other Indigenous cultures can raise the question of cultural appropriation. This can be countered
by seeing it as cultural appreciation and, in fact, many Aboriginal women have expressed their
frustration that learning seems to be moving in one direction only, from Western European to
Aboriginal peoples. In general there has been little recognition of the influence Aboriginal
women have had or could have on Western European society. Sally Roesch Wagner pointed out
the importance Iroquois women neighbours had on early radical feminists (62), but it seems to me
that this inspiration has been lost to later generations of North American women. Similarly, in
Australia, the Aboriginal activist and scholar Roberta Sykes has argued that there is a general lack

15

of awareness that Aboriginal women could have something to offer white women. She says that
white society is being "deprived of the contribution it could receive and the rich variety of
cultural perspectives, which it could enjoy- if they only knew how!" (Sykes 1991, 53). In
particular, she refers to the absence of Aboriginal instructors in Australia and stresses the
importance of learning across cultural boundaries in regards to university education. Lack of
cross-cultural learning was also noted by Wendy Weeks, an Australian non-Aboriginal social
work scholar, who claims that within her field "white society has learned little from Aboriginal
culture" (Weeks 1994, x). She argues, that "regardless ofthe differences in areas of need and in
experience in running services, common struggles and successes cross boundaries" (x) and that
"white Australians can learn from traditional Aboriginal culture" (2). Wendy Weeks considers her
interview with Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist and scholar, to be the central part ofher book
on social services in Australia, Women working together: Lessons from feminist women's

services, and argues that white women have much to learn from Aboriginal women when it
comes to gender relations.
I, too, feel that it is useful to use cross-cultural learning in order to problematize issues in
my own culture and to listen to, in this case, Aboriginal women's voices. Thus, I posit that when
attempts to improve women's lives seem to be sabotaged by the continued internalization of
patriarchy by both men and women, then female identity formation, modes of thinking, strategies,
and actions which are based in other, non-patriarchal worldviews may offer solutions, hope, or at
the very least, a glimpse of viable alternatives. Such alternatives have existed, exist, or have been
recreated by those who never became an integral part of mainstream Western society. My
experience with Kija women in Western Australia showed me one such alternative, and I suggest
that Warmun women's actions to ensure the safety of women and children and to regain their
traditional balance in gender relations need to be shared with other women. I consider it even
16

more important to explore some of the ideology behind their actions as well as the way they are
organized as women.

RESEARCH METHODS
As projects proceed, new experiences are
interwoven and new voices heard. 6
A journey between women's cultures
Like Cory Silverstein, a doctoral student in anthropology at McMaster University, I see
my work as integrating inspiration from "feminist[s], Native peoples and contemporary
anthropologists who have a preference to narratives [and to] draw upon personal experience to
explore a critical social issue of our times: the relationship between identity and power" (cited in
Howard-Bobiwash 1999, 289). My thesis has been developed within the disciplines ofFirst
Nations Studies and Gender Studies using the method of feminist ethnography. One way of
describing feminist ethnography, according to Shulamit Reinharz, is to state its goals as
mentioned by feminist researchers: to document the lives and activities of women, to understand
the experience of women from their own point of view, and to conceptualize women's behavior as
an expression of social contexts (Reinharz 1992, 51).
Following this definition of feminist ethnography my own goals were 1) to document the
activities ofWarmun women in connection with the establishment ofthe Women's Centre, 2) to
try to understand Warmun women's experiences of their struggle for a Centre from their own

words as "only with the direct involvement- the words- of the people in the presentation of
history can one approach a Native perspective" (Haig-Brown 1988, 150, 3), and 3) to

6

Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1992), 212.
17

conceptualize their experience as well as my own in the context of the societies we live
in. Following Reinharz, my study can be considered to be feminist ethnography because, first, I
am a woman researcher, a fact that has given me access to women-only spaces. The spaces used
for story-telling and the events I have participated in and observed are mostly women-only sites
and events, for instance the Women's Centre in Warmun, women's sacred sites on the land, and
women's gatherings be it women's ceremonies or social get-togethers. Moreover, all my
consultants have been women (Reinharz 1992, 55). Because I set out to explore women's actions
and decision making I did not see any reason to consult men. Diane Bell, referring to men in the
community she worked in, stated: "I was simply not privileging their experiences and assessments
... "(Bell 1993b, 40). Similarly I will privilege Kija women's experiences rather than Kija men's.
Included in my research methods are reflections on certain processes in my own life as a
woman, both those that led up to my actual choice of my topic and to my visit to the Women's
Centre in 1998, and those of analyzing my data which in tum led to further investigations and
research. According to Reinharz, this process can be described as a journey (Reinharz 1992, 197)
which, in my case, is also circular because it has brought me back to where I started out, in my
own Swedish culture. In the process, I have been "crossing both disciplinary and psychological
boundaries" (Bell 1987, 258).
The research journey can be said to have started in 1994 with the above-mentioned
reading of Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane by Phyllis Kaberry (1939). This book focussed
on Aboriginal women's status in the Kimberley region in Western Australia and depicted a
society with what struck me as a remarkably balanced gender structure. The next phase followed
in 1995 when I met Theresa Morellini in my hometown of Vernon in British Columbia, Canada.
She had worked since 1979 as a teacher and as a pastoral worker in the Warmun Aboriginal
community where some of the women described in Phyllis Kaberry's ethnography had settled.
18

Theresa Morellini was at the time studying towards a counselling degree at the Round Lake
Native Treatment Centre in Armstrong, north ofVernon. She told me about Kija women's
contemporary life and I became particularly interested in a Women's Centre project which
Warmun women had undertaken in response to some of the destructive effects that colonization
had had on their lives. In 1997, as a Master's Degree student, I sought the opportunity to meet
Warmun women and work with them in their Centre; I received permission to do an internship in
the Women's Centre as required by the First Nations part of my Interdisciplinary Master of Arts
degree. During my internship I realized that to get a better understanding of how and why
Warmun women had started the Women's Centre project, I needed to hear the stories of the
women who had been involved. I therefore returned to Warmun in 1998 to record women's stories
about the Women's Centre, about why and how they had established it and how it worked for
women in the community. The research process that followed in Warmun will be described in the
next section of this chapter.
As I have already intimated, what had started my project was the question: Why does Kija
women's culture seem to be so much stronger than my own? The next step in the research process
after my data collection came when I analyzed my data and tried to answer this question. I then
asked how these same categories that I had found to be significant in the shaping of the Warmun
Women's Centre worked in my own culture. To get an idea of how Swedish women experience
and think about their power as women I had to reconnect with women's situation in my native
country. I used multiple methods, such as Internet and library searches, conversations with
scholars, friends, and relatives, conference participation, and observations ofwomen's lives. I
read Swedish newspapers regularly on the Internet and followed the coverage of issues of
women's economic situation, gender equality, and violence against women. I searched the
Internet for information on the organization of Women's Studies at Swedish universities and I
19

followed it up in the summer of 1999 by visiting faculty members at Women's Studies
departments and Women Studies Centres, or fora , at five Swedish universities: Gothenburg,
Orebro, Stockholm, Umea, and Uppsala. I made a point of discussing women's issues with female
friends and relatives. I used Swedish university libraries, particularly the Women's History
collection at the University of Gothenburg, and I read student newspapers. When attending a
women's conference in Troms0, Norway, in 1999 I listened to presentations dealing with Nordic
feminism, past and present, and picked up material such as newsletters, journals, and books on the
topics of women's political agency in the Nordic countries. Another step into the exploration of
Swedish women's empowerment, or lack thereof, was taken through a visit, while in Sweden, to
the heritage home of the 1930s Swedish feminist, Elin Wagner. It opened my eyes to yet another
aspect ofmy feminist heritage, that ofthe importance of Swedish feminist history. Elin Wagner
had suggested that we look at other time periods or other cultures for inspiration in the fight
against patriarchy. I saw this as connecting my own feminist history and my interest in Kija
women's gender roles . Thus, for this thesis I have drawn upon the interplay between my own life
experiences of acquired knowledge oflndigenous peoples and lived and studied feminist theory
while moving physically and mentally from Sweden to Canada to Australia and back to Sweden.

Research carried out in Warmun
In 1997 there was no comprehensive documentation of the history of the work done by

W armun women to establish a Women's Centre and shelter. One of my tasks during my
internship was to collect and record source material in preparation for application submissions for
recurrent funding. How many women was the Centre servicing? What was the history of the

20

Centre? How was it used? How was it organized? How to describe it for funding agencies: its
history and operation? The records available had chronological gaps, but Helen Pinday, a
Warmun resident and a former Women's Centre coordinator, was helpful in locating additional
records from the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) 7 office. Some records
pertaining to the planning and construction of the center were located at the Argyle Diamond
Mine and we received permission to borrow them so we could copy them for the Women's Centre
and for W armun Council. It was during this process that we found the survey report Services for
Women and Children at Warmun Community and Outstations, March 1992, which had been
instrumental in establishing the Women's Centre. This report gave a background to the role of
women in Warmun and to the resource allocation necessary for childcare, a women's center and
shelter, and education in the community (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. 1992, 1).
As a result of my work with organizing the documents available to me in the community I
compiled a booklet that would give an easily accessible introduction to the Women's Centre and
Safe House to visitors as well as to new employees. It contained the history of the Centre in the
form of a chronology as well as excerpts from the previous survey report. It also had information
on its management, including job descriptions and different forms used in the operation ofthe
Centre (Appendix 2). The information in this booklet was used as a source which was built on by

7

The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme, starting with a pilot
operation in 1977, in 1993-94 involved 279 communities totalling approximately 28,000
participants. In 1997 it accounted for $361 million of the ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders Corporation) budget. ATSIC provides local communities with a grant, which is
approximately equivalent to the unemployment - related social security entitlements. The
community is responsible for creating work programs and monitoring daily operations (Bernardi
1997, 36). Bernardi criticises, among other things the impact of the CDEP program on communal
relationships and on the maintenance of cultural traditions (3 7). The Warmun area joined the
CDEP program in 1987 (Ross 1989, 73). My field notes of August 21 , 1998, report: "Notice on
Administration Office building: All CDEP workers cut back to max 15 hours per week."
21

a Policy and Precedures project for the community in 1998 (Warmun Community (Turkey Creek)
Inc. 1998).
During the actual thesis work period ofnine weeks in 1998 I built on the information I had
gathered during my internship. I did additional archival research and used information from the
Women's Centre, the Administration office, and the community school. I added locally available
books, newspapers, and reports. This material told me, however, only part of the story of the
Centre. I wanted to create a written story by using the voices of the women who had been
involved in the process during its different stages. Therefore I used story telling and interviews
and my main goal during my second visit to the community was to record the women's own
stories about the Centre and its formation. The story is compiled of interviews conducted at
different times and places in the community. By sitting down to talk to Madigan Thomas, while
she was cutting boomerangs outside her house, and with Mabel Juli in the Women's Centre, I
asked who had been present in the community and active in the fight for a women's centre and
shelter. Madigan and Mabel mentioned the following women: Goody Barrett, Eileen Bray,
Shirley Bray, Winnie Budbaria, Betty Carrington, Mabel Juli, Queenie McKenzie, Lena Nyauby,
Helen Pinday, Shirley Purdie, Maudie Rendy, Madigan Thomas, Ruby Walgil, Dottie Whatbee,
and Ivy Bindai. I had an opportunity to talk to many ofthese women.
I had originally planned to have a series of group sessions but once in Warmun I realized
that women were tired of going to meetings. In the course of the last few years and especially
since I left in 1997, there had been extensive development work done in the community and
women in Warmun had been called upon to attend a multitude of meetings. Women had always
been very much involved with the Warmun Council, but recent developments in the community
had required even more of their participation. The community had recently taken over the
management of the arts centre, which had been privately run the previous year and women

22

seemed to constitute the majority of the artists involved in it. Furthermore, Warmun Council had
been involved in a policies and procedures manual project for the different agencies in the
community (Ethel McLennon b, interview) and the Women's Centre had been part of this process.
Women were also involved in the new Daiwul Gidja cross-cultural centre, which required their
attendance. And naturally the collective management of the Women's Centre required women's
input. Helen Ross had noticed the effect of too many meetings on people in the community during
her Community Social Impact Assessment Study in the Turkey Creek Area where she wrote that
"people are saturated with meetings" (Ross 1989, 16). In 1992 the Warmun Women and
Children's Centre report also commented on the meetings: "Many people complain of too many
meetings oftoo long duration" (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. 1992, 14). Margaret
Stewart expressed the same sentiments in her book, Ngalangangpum Jarrakpu Purrurn, about
Warmun women's healing methods: "I believe that one of the reasons the women were keen to
share their knowledge with me was because we often met informally, at the Women's Centre,
where there were always large numbers of babies and small children. This was a far better
environment for sharing information than formal meetings, which can be held at times that are
inconvenient for the women. It is my experience that the women are sick of such meetings and
see little point in attending them" (Stewart 1999, 78).
I had noticed as well that the word 'meeting' seemed to have a negative connotation, so I
felt privileged to have one group meeting on September 7, 1998, with eight women, mostly
Elders, or Senior Law Women, who had been involved from the beginning of the discussions
about establishing a Women's Centre. I decided to continue my research by talking to women
individually, whenever such an encounter could fit into their lives. We would have a cup of tea
together in the Women's Centre or at the kitchen table in 'my' house, or sit down on the school
grounds. All interviews were unstructured and took the form of story telling with very few
23

questions on my part. Helen Ross notes about her use of story telling that "the format was as
unstructured as possible ... The story-telling method allowed people to introduce the topics of
their choice, and to explain issues in their own ways" (Ross 1989, 16).
While recording the women's stories I had to remember that 'why' is not an appropriate
question in Kija culture. The cross-cultural course taught by the Warmun community gives the
following recommendations: "Avoid using 'or' and 'why' questions where possible- there is no
equivalent for these terms in traditional language so this too can be very confusing and result in
communication breakdown. Instead stick to the 'who', 'what', 'when' and 'where' questions"
(Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 71). Thus I asked open-ended questions such as "Tell me about
the Women's Centre" or "Tell me about when you started to talk about a Women's Centre." I
made eighteen tape-recordings of individual stories with eleven Aboriginal and three nonAboriginal women. Two of the non-Aboriginal participants were women who had been involved
with the community for a long time: the Safe House counselor, Theresa Morellini; and a teacher
who had worked in the school for many years and who wanted to remain anonymous and who is
referred to as 'Teacher' in the thesis. The third non-Aboriginal woman, Lisa Gellie, had been
employed by the Daiwul Gidja Cultural Centre for three months.
All but one of the Aboriginal women interviewed were older and middle aged women. My
attempts to interview more younger women were not successful. At the time this concerned me,
because I had wanted to have the views of young women in the community on how they used and
saw the Women's Centre and I thought that I needed a 'representative sample of the population.' A
closer reading of Helen Ross' report on the impact of development on the people in the Turkey
Creek/Warmun area explained young women's reluctance to be interviewed: "Participation in the
study was dominated by the generation involved in community leadership. These are the people
with the right to relate stories and the responsibility to promote their group's aspirations. Within
24

this age bracket of mature adult and the active elderly, a comprehensive range ofwomen and
men, leaders and more reticent people, joined in ... some as young as their thirties were included.
It was impracticable to include people below this age, because ... younger people did not feel

confident to relate stories that were the prerogative of living elders" (Ross 1989, 15).
The stories are told in Kriol, Aboriginal English, and Standard English. Although Kija, the
native tongue of the majority of the people in the community, is spoken by older women they did
not use it because I did not understand it. The written sources on languages spoken in Warmun
are not consistent, but all of them state Kija (or Gidja) as spoken in Warmun. Other indigenous
languages mentioned are Miriwung and Jaru (Hudson and Yu 1988, 42; Warmun Community
1998). Yet another language spoken in Warmun is Kriol (Sandefur and Sandefur 1979, 6; Ryan
1991; Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 57). Whereas Veronica Ryan states that Kriol is not
Aboriginal English, other sources call this language Aboriginal English Kriol (Butters and
O'Donoghue 1995), or Kimberley Kriol (Warmun Community 1997). Different age groups have
different language uses with the use ofKija decreasing in the lower age groups. Most Warmun
residents are bi- or multilingual.
I tape-recorded and transcribed all the interviews. After my first attempt at transcribing
the group session I realized I needed some assistance and I had invaluable help from Helen
Pinday. She spent several hours with me sitting on the deck in the Women's Centre assisting me
with what Helen Ross calls "second opinions on unclear passages" (Ross 1989, 17). I gave copies
of all the tapes and transcriptions to the Werra Werra Taam, the Women's Centre, before I left the
community. In this thesis I will use italics for quotations from my recorded interviews in order to
differentiate these primary sources from quotations from written sources. I will use block
quotations for all interviews, even short ones.

25

In addition to tape-recording and transcribing the women's stories I spent every weekday
during the research period in the Centre observing and participating in the activities going on in
the Centre. Whenever possible I joined in women's activities outside of the community.
Weekends were usually spent on trips to other Aboriginal communities, to outstations, or to
neighbouring towns. Camping out on the land, visiting stations where women used to live gave
me a sense of the women's history and the timeless connection between Warmun women and
their surrounding traditional 'country.' All these experiences were recorded in my field notes,
which appear in the text as "(Kjellstrom 1998 +date).'' Photos of the women who told me their
stories or in other ways appear in this story are introduced in Figure 1. In the text the name of the
story-teller appears in brackets after each quotation. A list of the participants, dates, and locations
is provided in Appendix 1.
As indicated in the Prologue and earlier in this chapter, there is no doubt about the great
benefit I have received from my learning experience with Warmun women. The feeling of
empowerment as a woman that resulted from getting to know Warmun women is invaluable to
me. One could ask, however, how Warmun women will benefit from my visit to their community
and their Women's Centre. Even though there can never be a perfect wunan, or exchange, in this
case - since I have received much more than I can ever give back - I am hoping that I have given
a few contributions to Warmun women's history that will make this exchange somewhat less
uneven and counteract the risk of cultural appropriation. First, the stories about the Warmun
Women's Centre that I collected are recorded on sound tape and transcribed and deposited with
the Centre. These stories include Queenie McKenzie's (1916-1998) story about the Werra Werra
corroboree. This may be the only recording of this story. Secondly, I have included as much of
the women's voices as I saw as possible in Chapter Three and Chapter Four and have refrained
from my own interpretation to make this part of my thesis Warmun women's own story. Thirdly,

26

Chapter Two gives a summary of the literature available about Warmun women. I am hoping that
the primary data as well as the literature review can serve as source material and inspiration in the
future for Warmun women to expand this material through additional stories and to tell their own
story in their own way of the Women's Centre and Safe House.

THESIS ORGANISATION
In Chapter One I have discussed the learning that could be gained by women like myself
who come from patriarchal societies by examining women's power in cultures with more
balanced gender systems. My theoretical approach is listening to and presenting an Indigenous
perspective and allowing voices from different cultures and historic periods to enter into the
present discourse. I have also outlined the methods of research, which include the long periods
before and after the actual formal research period, involving crossing borders of cultures. Chapter
Two locates W armun women and their community geographically and historically and introduces
the concept of Women's Law. Chapter Three tells the story ofthe Women's Centre in the Warmun
women's own words: their needs, the survey process, the acquisition of funding and the fight for a
shelter. Chapter Four describes the building, the function, and the role of the Women's Centre for
the women and the community. It also situates violence against women and the need for the
shelter in a wider cultural and national context. In Chapter Five I analyze Warmun women's
agency as it appears in the establishment of the Centre. I then compare the categories that I found
to be significant for Warmun women's agency to the same categories in Swedish contemporary
society as they are discussed within feminist discourse. The final section, Reflections, queries
how this knowledge can be used in the lives of Swedish and other women living within a
patriarchal paradigm.

27

CHAPTER TWO: WARMUN WOMEN

In this chapter I will first situate the Warmun community geographically and historically
in the context of the changes Kija people have experienced after cattle stations were established
on their traditional land which, like the rest of Aboriginal Australia, has a history of at least
50,000 years of cultural continuity. Secondly, I will trace Warmun women's history through a
review of available literature about Warmun women and related personal observations and
communications. This positions the Warmun women in the context of the devaluation of
Aboriginal men and women by the colonizing settlers and their government. Finally, I will
provide some background on the concept of Women's Law or Women's Business, as it exists in
Aboriginal culture generally and in Warmun in particular.

THE COMMUNITY

On August 17, 1998,
[I] [a]rrived by Ansett 374 from Perth to Kununurra after landing in Broome, a 4
hours and 15 minute long trip over a mostly desert like landscape. Sr. Theresa
Morellini was there to meet me ... Wonderful to drive through the Kimberley
landscape again. The colours shifting from the clear blue, cloudless sky, red soil,
yellow grass, including green trees, white gum tree stems to the red/yellow sky of
the sunset turning into pastel pink/blue as the sun disappeared. The familiar sight
of silhouettes of gum trees "on line" on top of the hills ... My accommodation
will be the same as last year during my internship here. I will share Sr. T[heresa]'s
"Boab Cottage," a 2-room trailer with added kitchen and porch, with her. It is
located in the community, close to the school, actually within the fenced, but not
locked, school area which includes the school- kindergarten to grade 12 -, Sisters'
Place, lunch house, ball court and a couple of other buildings. (Kjellstrom 1998,
August 17)
I had once again arrived in Warmun Community in the East Kimberley region of Western
Australia (Fig. 2). The landscape surrounding it, which is of vital spiritual importance to Warmun
28

women and which also used to be the basis for their economic survival, is perceived differently
by western science and by Aboriginal peoples. Geologists describe it as "a series of escarpments
of Upper Proterozoic rocks made up of sandstones, siltstones and shales which run generally
north to south [and] rise to a height of 560 metres and are, in general, between 200 and 400
metres high" (Dixon and Dillon 1990, 5). Aboriginal women do not regard their "country as so
much geological strata, so much sand, stone, and spinifex. The boulders and pools are garuggani"
(Kaberry 1939, 193).1)aruggani, also spelled ngarrankani, and in English called the Dreaming or
the Dreaming, is very much part ofWarmun women's worldview. As it is for other Aboriginal
people in Australia, the concept of the Dreaming is always connected to land, to 'country.' In the
words of Marcia Langton
the land for Aboriginal people .. . is peopled in spirit form by the ancestors who
originated in the Dreaming, the creative period from time immemorial. The
ancestors traveled the country, engaging in adventures, which created the people,
the natural features of the land and established the code of life, which we today
call 'the Dreaming' or 'the Law'. (World Council of Churches, Justice for
Aboriginal Australians, 1981, p. 13 quoted in Daylight and Johnstone 1986, 62)
Dreamine stories
Considering the great importance of the Dreaming to Warmun people I will first locate
W armun women by referring to the Dreaming stories that are contained in the hills and plains
close to the community. These stories describe and explain the features surrounding the land on
which Warmun people live. Winnie Budbaria, a Warmun woman, has shared the following story
about Warrmam 8 with the children in Ngalangangpum school in the community:
The name of Warrmam comes from Warranany, which means eagle. A long time
ago the crow was the eagle's wife. They lived on top of the hill. They went hunting
for food but the crow never gave anything to the eagle. One day the eagle was
cooking a kangaroo. He was really angry with the crow for not giving him food.
The crow was sleeping when the eagle threw the fat from the kangaroo into his

8

W arrmam is an earlier spelling of Warmun.

29

wife's eye. The eagle's eye came out. This is why the crow got its white eye.
(Budbaria, n.d.)
Shirley Purdie, a Warmun artist, gave the following story about her painting "Warrmarn
Dreaming":
The painting tells the story of the Eagle Hawk and the Crow who were sitting on
either side of a patch of white rock (Quartz). The Eagle Hawk was busy making
spearheads from the quartz and asked the Crow to help. The Crow was lazy and
refused to help, and the pair started to argue. In anger the Eagle Hawk threw a
piece of the quartz rock at the Crow striking her in the eye. This story explains
why the Crow has white bits in her eyes still to this day. The area of white quartz
rock upon where this story is based is still clearly visible today behind Warmun
community. (Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 29)
When Warmun was established as an Aboriginal community in the mid-1970s, a
derivation of the Kija word warranany, 'eagle hawk', was chosen as its new name to replace the
English name for the community, Turkey Creek. The spelling was originally 'Warrmam' but this
was later anglicized to 'Warmun' (Eileen Bray, pers. comm.). Turkey Creek is still used in the
official name of the community, which is Warmun Community (Turkey Creek) Incorporated.

Geoeraphicallocation
Warmun is located on Aboriginal Reserve No. 34593, which is vested in the Aboriginal
Lands Trust and leased to the community for ninety-nine years (Community Review 1980). The
community was incorporated in 1977 and is situated between Turkey Creek and the Great
Northern Highway in the Halls Creek Shire in the Wyndham-East Kimberley area of the
Kimberley region of Western Australia (Fig. 3). It is 200 kilometres south west ofKununurra, its
main support and service Centre, with a population of 4,061 (Australia The Final Word. May 9,
2000b). Its closest neighbour is the smaller town of Halls Creek, 160 kilometres to the south, with
1,305 inhabitants (Australia the Final Word. May 9, 2000a). Residents ofWarmun have
30

historically maintained, and do in the present, keep close connections with Wyndham, a town of
860 inhabitants (Australia The Final Word. May 9, 2000c), 221 kilometres north ofWarmun. On
August 29, 1998, I attended a funeral in Wyndham for a young woman. From my field notes I
read that Theresa Morellini at the time told me that "Wyndham is basically an Aboriginal town ..
. A few white people live here, because they want to live here. There are no government
administrators etc. Race relations are very good, not like Kununurra, which is very racist.
[Wyndham is] not as traditional as Warmun ... [and] . . . [b]usinesses are owned by white
people" (Kjellstrom 1998, August 29). Warmun is located in a comparatively sparsely populated
part of Australia. In 1998 the Kimberley region had a population of27,716, which is projected to
double by the year 2026. Forty-five percent of the Kimberley population is of Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander descent (Kimberley College ofTAFE, 10 April, 2000). Major
developments are foreseen in irrigated agriculture, tourism and mining (Commerce & Trade
Western Australia, June 15, 1999). Non-Aboriginal use and development of natural resources as
well as government policies have historically played and presently play an important role in the
lives ofWarmun women (Coombs et al. 1989; Dixon and Dillon 1990).

History of Turkey Creek/Warmun
Turkey Creek which is located in the geographical centre of the traditional country of the
Kija speaking language group (Fig. 4) was first established after gold was discovered at Halls
Creek in 1885 (Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1996b, xv). A telegraph line was built
between 1888 and 1893 from the Northern coastal town of Wyndham to Derby on the West Coast
and a post and telegraph station was built on the banks of the Turkey Creek, a tributary to the
Bow River (Ross 1989, 25, 26). The telegraph station served the short gold rush of 1886-88 in

31

Halls Creek, south of Warmun and the subsequent establishment of large pastoral properties 9
through the Ord Valley (Warmun Community (Turkey Creek) Inc. 1998) (Fig. 5). In 1908 a
police station was set up on the site (Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1996b, xvi) after a
road was built as a transport route from Wyndham to the gold fields. From 1901 to 1912 Turkey
Creek served as a rations depot 10 for Aboriginal people and had a store until 1938. Aboriginal
people were employed there by 1900 and it also became a major holiday gathering place for
Aboriginal people during the cattle-working era, from the late 1890s to late 1960s. 'Holiday time'
occurred during the wet season from November to March when station owners did not need their
Aboriginal workers and it was during this time that "Aboriginal subsistence, ceremonial and
social activities were maintained" (Ross 1989, 41, 49). This was also a time when Aboriginal
people visited elderly relatives who lived all year around in Turkey Creek (41 ).
In 1965 the Federal Pastoral Industry Act was passed, which in 1967 introduced
compulsory award wages to Australian citizens. In 1969 the exemption from this legislation was
lifted in the Kimberley and station owners were now required by law to pay wages to all their
Aboriginal employees. As a consequence, many Aboriginal people, particularly women, who had
previously worked without pay were expelled from the stations and, in the mid 1970s, when most
stations ceased to maintain station camps, families from surrounding pastoral stations moved to

9

Establishment of pastoral stations in Kija country included Texas Downs, 1897, Mabel Downs
1897, Frog Hollow 1900, Alice Downs 1901, Mistake Creek 1904, Bedford Downs 1906, Bungle
Bungle 1907, Greenvale 1910, Han Spring 1915 (Ross 1989, 25). All land leased to pastoralists
was Crown land (Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 52).
10
To intervene in the mass killings of Aboriginal people (Ross 1989, 32) and to "provide for the
hungry and homeless people newly dispossessed by the pastoral industry" (Kimberley Land
Council1996, 14) the Western Australian government issued rations at Turkey Creek (1901),
Moola Bulla (1910) and Violet Valley (1912) (Ross 1989, 32). Another reason was to reduce the
killing of cattle by Aboriginals. Ration stations were considered "a cheaper option than mass
incarceration at a time when cattle spearing in the East Kimberley was rife" (Kimberley Land
Council 1996, 14).
32

Turkey Creek (Ross 1989, 40). After this second displacement of Aboriginal people Warmun was
then established as an Aboriginal community on a small parcel of reserve land near Turkey
Creek; the first displacement occurred in the late 1800s when settlers encroached on Kija land for
the establishment of cattle stations starting in the 1890s (Ross 1989, 25, note 2; Warmun
Community 1998, 4). The community was incorporated in 1977 and people settled in residential
areas, or camps, which developed according to traditional family groupings . These were both
based on affiliation to country and kinship and to stations (Ross 1989, 49). While one ofthe
camps, the Other Side, or 'Queenie's Camp', was situated on the eastern side of the creek, on land
which did not originally belong to the reserve but was later acquired for the community
(Community Review 1980), the main part of the community was located on the western side of
Turkey Creek, adjacent to the highway.
Schooling was a big problem for the community from its beginning as an Aboriginal
community in the 1970s. At the time even primary school children had to be sent away to school
in towns like Halls Creek. Members of the new community therefore started talking about getting
a local school: "We bin come talk-talk now .. . 'Hey how about we get a school here. No good
takem down ta Hall Creek. Why can't we get little bit of a bough shed school here', we reckon . . .
We talkin, talkin, talkin ta alla kartiya what useta work for us ... We bin try la Wyndham .... We
always bin look about and we find em dis two Sister Clare and Sister Theresa 11 dem first teacher"
(Queenie McKenzie in Ryan 1991, 184). The community approached Bishop Jobst ofthe
Catholic Church in 1978 and asked him to send teachers so that children could remain at home for
their schooling (Ryan 1991, Appendix 7, 244). In 1979 the first school started under a tree

11

Sr. Clare Ahern and Sr. Theresa Morellini are of the Australian order of The Sisters of St.
Joseph of the Sacred Heart with its motherhouse in Sydney (Pers. comm.).

33

between the Garden Area camp and the creek 12 , but older children still had to attend residential
schools in Beagle Bay, Broome, or Wyndham at great distances from the community (184).
Further inquiries were made from the community and resulted in a contract with the Broome
Diocese for a 'two-way,' that is a bi-cultural school, which together with the English Australian
curriculum would also include the teaching of the Kija language and the involvement of the
students in Kija cultural activities (Ryan 1991). The school was given the name Ngangangpum,
meaning Mother and Child, a name suggested by Winnie Budbaria (243). At this time living
conditions were very unsatisfactory in the community. In 1980 people lived in tents, humpies 13 ,
bough sheds, corrugated iron shacks, and car bodies (Community Review 1980; Crumlin and
Knight 1991, 34; Stewart 1999, xi).
At the end of the 1970s the population of Warmun was estimated at 100 persons (Warmun
Community, Turkey Creek 1979/80), in 1980 at over 200 (Community Review 1980), living in
twelve houses, in 1991 to 318 (Clarke and Voros 1996, 16) and in 1992 to 500 people. This
number included, however, the outstation population. Outstations or home land centres are small
settlements, which share services and resources with Warmun but "represent a return to the main
places of peoples' spiritual experience, as centres in their own right" (Ross 1989, 69). Some
people have returned to country "acquired through descent and/or long family residence" (71).
Outstation communities have spiritual, social, political, and economic importance through
closeness to sacred sites, the possibility to live with kin and easy access to bush food (71-2). In
my field notes I recorded a meeting with a young woman in Kununurra airport:
Her husband is working out there [on the outstation] and lets her do the dealing
with Balangarri [outstation administration office at Warmun]. They have horses,
12

This tree still stands and according to Theresa Morellini who starting her teaching in Warmun
under that tree it cannot be cut down because of its historical value. (Theresa Morelllini
pers.comm.)
3
Australian English for 'hut.'
34

cattle; breeding Herefords - not Brahmans. The meat is sweet, more tender than
Brahmans. "The best thing we ever did, " she says. Her grandfather is very sick,
took him bush from Halls Creek, nursing him now. She talks to T[heresa] ab[ou]t
schooling for her kids. Son wants to go to Abor[iginal] school. Being buggered for
money where he is now. They are also going to raise horses for the stations that are
now in the process of being bought, arranged by Kimberley Land Council. Many
millions now sitting in the bank for that purpose. (Kjellstrom 1998, November 3)
In Warmun the administration of outstations was handled by the Balangarri office located in
Warmun until 1999.
In 1995 the population in Warmun proper had increased to 464. In 1997 it was still
approximately 400, sharing forty-five houses in the community, with another 200 living on
outstations (Aboriginal Affairs Department 1997). The census of June 1998 shows a similar
distribution in that, out of a total population of 650 including outstations, 431 lived in the central
community in sixty houses (Warmun Community 1998). As can be seen from these figures, one
of the problems Warmun women have had to confront and still have to live with is overcrowding.
This was confirmed by my interview in 1998 with the Community Executive Officer Ethel
McLennon who revealed that there were actually only about fifty houses for a population of over
600, since most of the outstation people also live in Warmun. More people would like to live on
the outstations but one reason preventing them is the need for the children's schooling. The
male/female distribution in 1980 was 58/42%, in 1997 52/48% and in 1998 50/50% (Community
Review 1980; Aboriginal Affairs Department 1997; Warmun Community 1998).
Since its incorporation in 1977, and especially after 1988 when Ethel McLennon became
its first Aboriginal and first woman community advisor, Warmun has worked on developing its
infrastructure. In 1998 the following services were available: the Walumba Aged Care Hostel, the
Werra Werra Taam Women's Centre with the Ngalim Purru Taam Safe House, the Child Care
Centre, the Wungkul Community store, as well as an airstrip, a clinic, a mechanic workshop, a
youth recreation Centre, and a roadhouse which includes a restaurant, a store, and a gas station
35

(Warmun Community 1998). Adjacent to Middle Camp are both the Holy Place, which is a round
covered structure open on all sides and used for Catholic ceremonies and individual worship, and
the Ngalangangpum Catholic School. In 1997 Warmun was working on a town plan and in 1998
on a Policies and Procedures project sponsored by the Argyle Diamond Mine.
W ARMUN WOMEN IN THE WRITTEN RECORD
Warmun women appear for the first time in the written record in Phyllis Kaberry's
ethnography Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane (1939) which was originally presented as a
Ph.D. thesis in 1938 at the London School of Economics. It was based on six months of
fieldwork, from September 1934 to March 193 5, in the Kimberley district of Western Australia
with the Kija 14 people and neighbouring tribes. Kaberry attended intertribal meetings, both men's
and women's, and accompanied women on hunting and foraging expeditions (Kaberry 1939, x).
She declared that "the women are the focus of attention throughout this book" (xii) and she was
opposed to the anthropological'truths' of her time, which assumed that Aboriginal women had a
low social status: "The widely held belief that women were less important than men was a view
she totally rejected" (Toussaint 1999, 23) and she argued against "male anthropologists in the
early part of the twentieth century" who stated "that religiosity and sacredness belonged to men
only" (2). According to these views women were considered to be only 'profane' compared to
men who were seen as representing the sacred. Another contribution Phyllis Kaberry made to
anthropology was to record details ofKija women's lives that are not available elsewhere.

36

There is a strong connection between Phyllis Kaberry's ethnography and Warmun. Some
of the women I met in the community had lived on the stations Kaberry visited and had been her
consultants. A transcribed interview with Warmun resident Dottie Whatbee, made by Helen Ross
with the assistance of Dottie's granddaughter Eileen Bray who also lives in Warmun, appears in
Nancy Williams' article "'She was the only one ... ': Phyllis Kaberry in the East Kimberley"
(Williams 1988). Another interview in the same article, recounted by Shirley Bray from Warmun,
tells about how Kaberry camped with DottieWhatbee, Boomer Kuli, and Maudie Rendy, all of
whom still lived in Warmun in 1998. They taught her how to find sugarbag (wild honey), bush
fruit, and bush potato, to catch fish and use bush medicine (95), practices which are still in use in
Warmun today. On my first trip to Warmun in September 1997 I made a visit to Bedford Downs
station together with Dottie and her sister and co-wife Maudie and found that the memory of
'Miss Kaberry' was still very much alive among Warmun women. Standing on the lawn on
Bedford Downs Station, in front of the manager's house where she had worked as a young
woman, and surrounded by the trees she had once planted, Dottie told us about how she had
answered Kaberry's questions about kinship and marriage (Fig. 6).
A month earlier, in August 1997, I had made a trip to Violet Valley, 15 a former Aboriginal
settlement and government ration station, 16 with Shirley Purdie. This was Shirley's country 17 and
we visited her house on Norton Bore outstation nearby. Shirley told us the story about a dramatic
14

Phyllis Kaberry spelled it Kidja. Another name she used for the Kija people was Lunga.
Violet Valley was established in 1911 (Kimberley Language Resource Centre1996b, xvi); it
was acquired by the government to be run as ration depot and cattle station (Human Rights and
Equal Opportunity Commission 1997b, 106) and closed in 1940 (Kimberley Land Council 1996,
42) or in 1943 (Ross 1989, 40). It was attached to Moola Bulla (Kimberley Land Council1996,
42).
16
Ration stations were intended to be alternatives to the more expensive option of imprisoning
large numbers of Aboriginal people for cattle spearing as well as 'raising beef to feed them and ..
. training men for work on the station' (Long 1970 page 192)" (Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission. 1997b, 106).
15

37

event that occurred when Aboriginal people left the ration station in 1940. When the station
manager locked up the women, the men had tied him up and everybody had fled to Mabel Downs
Station. People hid in caves during the day and moved at night (Shirley Purdie, pers. comm.). She
also showed us where the old Violet Valley station house and the brick water tower had stood,
close to the corrals on the other side of the creek from the present station buildings, and we
walked over the place where Kaberry camped in 1935 .
According to Phyllis Kaberry "most of the natives in this region are concentrated about
the station homesteads, and are employed in stockwork, gardening, and domestic duties. They
wear European clothes and receive rations of flour, tea, beef, and tobacco" (Kaberry 1939, x). She
estimated the Kija population to be 600 to 800, living at Moola Bulla, Bedford Downs, Alice
Downs, Violet Valley, and Turkey Creek (x). Kaberry was following the Kija people during the
off work season, from November to March. This was the time when Aboriginal people were
given time off from work at the stations because the owners did not need their labour and did not
want to feed them. Her description ofKija life was therefore for the most part limited to life away
from the stations, when people returned to their traditional hunting and gathering areas. In the
Kija area she described one camp northeast ofBedford station and one camp at Moola Bulla 18
(Kaberry 1939, 29-30). Moola Bulla was a government station for Aboriginal people with a
school (Ross 1989, 45) but "indigenous families did not willingly move to these settlements ... .
The living conditions at the settlements were not significantly better yet they were highly
regulated. The parents rightly feared that their children would be placed in segregated dormitories

17

'Country' denotes land that a person has connection to and responsibility for.
Moola Bulla was founded "in 1910 as a ration depot and government-run cattle station. A
school was established there in 1929 and a mission in 1939. The station was closed in 1955 . In
1996 Kija people lodged a Native Title Claim over Moola Bulla. (Kimberley Language Resource
Centre 1996b, xvi).
38
18

ifthe family moved to a settlement" (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1997b,
106).
In her book, Phyllis Kaberry described camps, foraging activities, plants, animals, the
social relations between women and men, including kinship rules, and the status of women within
their groups. She took into account the economic, social, and spiritual life ofKija women and
found them not only to be economically self-sufficient but also to have both an economic and a
spiritual life independent from men. She wrote: " . .. they possess totems, have spiritual affiliations
with the sacred past, and perform their own sacred rites from which the men are excluded ... ",
and hoped that "in future they will be more closely analyzed in relation to the social status of
women" (Kaberry 1939, xi). Nearly forty years later, Diane Bell gave a similar description of
Aboriginal women in the Central Australian desert: "What I saw was a strong, articulate and
knowledgeable group of women who were substantially independent of their menfolk in
economic and ritual lives" (Bell 1993a, 231 ).
Another source of W armun women's history is Helen Ross' Social Community Impact

Assessment: A Cumulative Study in the Turkey Creek Area, Western Australia (EKIAP) (Ross
1989). This study, Working Paper No. 27 of the East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project, tells
the story of Aboriginal peoples' lives in the Warmun area. 19 Ofthe forty-six participants in the
study twenty were women, including Queenie McKenzie, Judy Turner, Eileen Bray, Ida Milbaria,
Shirley Bray, Ruby Kilinyil, Dottie Whatebee, Madigan Thomas, Winnie Budbaria, Shirley Drill,
and Topsy Wungal. While Phyllis Kaberry's ethnography rarely included women's own voices,

19

Together with other EKIAP studies that were summarized in H.C. Coombs et al., Land of
Promises: Aborigines and Development in the East Kimberley (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies
Press,) 1989.

39

the method used in Helen Ross' study was story telling, and therefore women's words are
frequently included in the report. The stories cover the impact on Aboriginal people of white
settlement and mining activity from the 1886 Halls Creek goldrush, through the cattle station
period in the late 1890s, through periods of massacres, forced removal of children, evictions from
the pastoral stations, dealings with the Argyle Diamond Mine, the outstation movement, and,
finally, land claims and protection of sacred sites.
Story-telling is also the main method used in Veronica Ryan's Master of Education thesis,
Aboriginal Women in the Face of Change: 'We gottem Two-Way Right Through Now ', (Ryan
1991) which is a women's oral history project providing a composite story ofWarmun women's
lives. Veronica Ryan, a former non-Aboriginal teacher in the community school, lets her reader
follow twelve Warmun women through their life stories, including the Ngarrankani or Dreaming,
told in their own words. Many of the elders ofthe Warmun community were born and worked on
the surrounding cattle stations. Beside the stations that Phyllis Kaberry visited, the accounts in
Ryan's thesis also included Texas Downs, Springvale, Mabel Downs, Argyle Downs, and
Lissadell stations. The stories told to Veronica Ryan contain details of women' s station work in
addition to description of traditional camp life. Women, like men, were working with pick and
shovel, mixing cement, carting water, mustering, cutting wood, gardening, doing housework and
kitchen work. Veronica Ryan's account also included conflicts with white people, and the mass
killings of Aboriginal people in the period ofwidespread massacres, mainly between 1888 and
1894 (Ross 1989, 27) with at least nine recorded massacre sites in traditional Kija territory 20 (24).

20

Massacres occurred in Jailhouse Creek, Mistake Creek, Horse Shoe Creek, Bedford Downs,
Warlupany, Koondooloo Gorge, Spring Creek, Manjalngarriny, Lightman Creek, Panton River,
Texas Downs and Linnekar Gorge (Ross 1989, 28)

40

One site close to and North ofWarmun at Mistake Creek, appears in several stories told by
Warmun people:
The women and children were massacred in an act of reprisal for the loss of a
milking cow owned by a nearby property. The group had been hunting kangaroos
which were then buried in the ground for cooking. An aboriginal station hand from
Darwin saw them and told his boss 'that lot out there must have killed that cow.'
The white man took his rifle and with companions, rode to the group's camp.
Without checking what lay in the hole, the men began firing. All the Kiji [sic]
were killed except one who escaped, later to tell the police. (Burke 1998, 33)
The following is another account of the Mistake Creek massacre which, according to Theresa
Morellini (Pers. comm. June 25, 2000), occurred in the late 1920s:
A milking cow kept by the hotel-keeper at Turkey Creek went missing. Two
Aboriginal stockmen from Queensland, who were working on the nearby station
said that the cow had been killed by the local Aboriginal people (Kija). In a fit of
rage, the hotel keeper set off with the two stockmen and found a group of Kija
women and children relaxing after their day's work at the station. They were
rounded up against a big boab tree and shot and their bodies were burned, 26
women and children. The police told the white hotel-keeper to leave the district
and he went to Wyndham. Shortly afterward, the milking cow wandered back!
(Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 50)
Through the initiative of Theresa Morellini the people of Warmun in 1988 or 1989 erected
a memorial to their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters who were killed at Mistake Creek
(Theresa Morellini, pers. comm. June 25, 2000). The large stone block surrounded by chains has
the inscription: "In memory of our ancestors who were shot and burnt here. R.I.P. Mistake
Creek.'' When I attended the annual commemorative ceremony under the huge boab 21 tree on
October 3, 1998, Hector Sandaloo, a Warmun Elder, told us about how his grandmother had not
been allowed by her employer at Turkey Creek to join the women and children on this particular
day and was thus saved from being killed (Fig. 7).
The above-mentioned visit to Bedford Downs Station in 1997 triggered for Dottie

21

Boab tree is the word used in Warmun for baobab tree.

41

Whatbee the memory of another massacre, that of Mount King, a site which is located close to
this station where she used to live as a young woman. We were trying to find the exact place
where the massacre had occurred for a possible future memorial site but it was getting too late
and we did not succeed. Nevertheless, Dottie told us the story about the massacre at Mount King,
which she has also related for the book Dreaming of the Resurrection: A Reconciliation Story:
They killed them with poison at that station. They all went mad. Right in front of
the big Mount King, they killed them. Not too long ago. I was small, living in
Violet Valley. The Aboriginal men and women were working at the station. Some
Kartiya [white] men married some of the Aboriginal girls. But they were already
married to Aboriginal men. One woman, Jarnamil, ran away to Avadale, to live
with a Kartiya. Her Aboriginal husband was looking for her and sent a letter. The
Aboriginal men got very angry when their women went away with Kartiya men.
But they shot all the Aboriginal boys that the girls were making trouble for. A mob
of Aboriginal men were made to pull the wagon with the bodies of the men who
had been shot to Mount King. When they got to Mount King, the Aboriginal men
who had been pulling the wagon full of the bodies of the Aboriginal men who had
been shot, cut big mobs of wood, leave 'em heap, heap, heap! And made the
biggest fire. That much wood! The Kartiya men started to put the bodies on, heap
'em on the fire. Then they said to the Aboriginal men who had pulled the wagon:
'We have tucker here now.' All bin put poison in the treacle, on the bread. All bin
eat 'em out tucker now. They bin sit down now and eat. That's the place they killed
them. (Burke 1998, 59. Translation by Eileen Bray)
Such violent aspects of Aboriginal experience are absent in Phyllis Kaberry's 1939
account. Nancy Williams recorded one comment from a man who lived on Bedford Downs at the
time when Kaberry visited the station which could give some explanation to the differences in
content between Kaberry's and Ryan's accounts. He said that "everything was nice and calm when
she [Kaberry] was with Aboriginal people. The Station people didn't bash up Aborigines or
mistreat them when she was around" (Williams 1988, 96).
Dottie Whatbee, Maudie Rendy, and Boomer Kuli had shown Phyllis Kaberry how to
survive in the traditional Kija way. Half a century later Dinah, Queenie and the other women in
Warmun related for Victoria Ryan similar experiences about both traditional hunting, gathering,
42

and fishing activities, and the transfer of dances from older to younger women. They also told her
about how children of mixed descent were taken away to mission stations. Queenie McKenzie's
life story is an example of how parents sometimes managed to keep their children from being
'stolen', because her mother, Dinah, put up a fight and managed to keep Queenie with her. Most
other Kimberley children were not so lucky. The introduction to Bringing them home: a guide to

the findings and recommendations of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander children from their families states that
[i]ndigenous children have been forcibly removed from their families and
communities since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia. In
that time, not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects. Most families have
been affected in one or more generations by the removal of one or more children.
Nationally, the Inquiry concludes that between one in three and one in ten
Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities
between 1910 and 1970. (Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission
1997a, 4)
A survey in the Kimberley region in the late 1980s showed that "one-quarter of the
elderley people and one in seven of the middle-aged people reported having been removed in
childhood" (Human Rights Commission 1997b, 36). Removal of children of mixed Aboriginal
and European descent in East Kimberley was done by government officers who from 1920 took
children to Beagle Bay and Forrest River and from 1929 to Moola Bulla. Most of the abductions
of Aboriginal children were done in the 1930s and 1940s (Ross 1989, 45).
Both Ross' and Ryan's accounts include the expulsion of Aboriginal people from pastoral
stations as a result of the 1965 Award Wages legislation after an exemption which had been in
place for the Kimberley region was lifted for in 1969 (Ross 1989, 48). Aboriginal families moved
to the fringes of neighbouring towns where they had to live in shacks or improvised shelters
under very harsh conditions. One such fringe camp was the Nine Mile camp outside of
Wyndham, which lacked even such basic amenities as an adequate water supply.
43

The liberalization in Australian legislation relating to Aboriginal people included a 1971
law through which "[a]dult Aboriginal women and men became legally entitled to drink alcohol
in the Kimberley" (Toussaint 1999, 97). This coincided with the above-mentioned expulsion of
Aboriginal people from the cattle stations. In that situation of disruption ofpeoples' lives, 'grog'
became a serious problem and women told Veronica Ryan about the subsequent battles they had
to fight with their own and family members' alcoholism. After the establishment of the Warmun
community women became engaged in new kinds of work in the childcare Centre, the school, and
the administration office.
Veronica Ryan's thesis also covers the introduction of the Christian faith, in which Winnie
Budbaria played an important role. She had come in contact with Catholicism during her stay as a
patient at the Derby Leprosarium, (Ross 1989; Ryan 1991). In This is your place: Beagle Bay

Mission 1890-1990, (Nailon and Huegel1990), Winnie tells her own story about growing up in
the old Police Station in Turkey Creek, being sent to the Derby Leprosarium, when it was
discovered that she suffered from leprosy, and starting teaching Christianity to her family and her
community after her return (133-5). During my two visits to Warmun, in 1997 and 1998, I often
witnessed Winnie's continued involvement in religious teaching in the community, during
gatherings in the Holy Place, or sometimes sitting down in the shade beside a school building,
when she would take a book out of her bag and tell us one of the stories from the Bible.
Both Ross' and Ryan's accounts give witness to the sadness caused by the destruction of
the Dreaming site at Tayiwul, a women's sacred site related to the barramundi fish, by the Argyle
Diamond Mine. The destruction was discovered in May of 1980. The Tayiwul Gap, 'the basin
contained within the Blatchford Escarpment and the southern Blatchford Escarpment' (Dixon and
Dillon 1990, 48) is a "gap in the metamorphosed spinifex fishing nets" made by the escaping
barramundi in the Dreaming and "is a site of importance to Aboriginal women in the area, who
44

believe that it is a spirit centre ... and that any interference with the site would have serous [sic]
spiritual as well as ecological consequences" (Palmer and Williams 1980, 68 quoted in Dixon and
Dillon 1990, 49).
The impact on Warmun people of the development of the Argyle Diamond Mine, the
world's largest diamond mine, is considerable. It is the main topic of the book, Aborigines and

Diamond Mining: The Politics of Resource Development in the East Kimberley Western Australia
(Dixon and Dillon 1990). As compensation the mine has given some financial support to the
Warmun community through their 'Good Neighbours Program' but "the financial benefits are
poorer than many would like" (170). This program was "interpreted by some Aboriginal people in
terms of an Aboriginal win an system providing payment for the extraction and trade of the
products of their land" (170). Tim Timms, a member of the Warmun community, said, referring
to the traditional trade system in which a trade item moves one way and returns in some form:
"With the mine, it's only going one way. I don't know where it goes to. Melbourne is it? And it
finishes there" (84). "By failing to match fully Aboriginal expectations of equitable exchange" the
mine did not adhere to the traditional concept of winan (68). Peggy Patrick, in 1998 a Senior Law
woman and Boss for Law, 22 had earlier expressed her frustration at this: "Winan means that if we
want anything from the miners, they'll have to give it to us. We can't understand it when they say
no. They can't understand us either. Kartiya 23 winan seems different to blackfella24 winan." (83).
The question of compensation was of special importance to the women at Warmun since it
was a women's sacred site that had been forever lost. Queenie McKenzie had very strong views
on the fact that the compensation from the Argyle Diamond Mine went to the men of

22

'Boss for Law' is a women's ritual leader
Kartiya means 'white person'.
24
Blackfella means 'Aboriginal' in Kriol/Aboriginal English.
23

45

thecommunity when it was women who had suffered the loss:
... why can't dey give some money la woman ... dat money for woman really ... I say dat
la meeting . . . . 'Dis da money for women sacred place. Dey bin damage em and dis
[money] gonna go la Warrmarn [woman] now' . . . but you know what make me can't
understand too long? Dat boys [Warrmarn men] always be in da lead dat money days, ...
dey oughta say: 'Half go to man la Warrmarn, half can go ta Warrmarn woman' (Ryan
1991, 189) ..... dey oughta give it mefellas fair go, little bit. . .. And something just for
girl side (191)
Queenie states the importance of standing up and talking for oneself with the support of other
strong women in the community:
"I always talk dat, but dis lot man can't help you dere some way. I gotta talk
meself. I'll get alla lubra25 back me up. Dis next year, I gonna get alla woman back
me up, see ifdat money can go half and half." (Ryan 1991, 190)
And she said: "I gotta keep talk, I tellin you. I always keep thinkin about dat. Any,
I got . .. all dem strong" (191).
Queenie McKenzie also brings up the difference in doing things the kartiya, or the white
people's way, and the Aboriginal way: "No fair [way] in it. Dey don't give us fair go . . .. Dey
takem all da money away. Give it da kartiya way. Makem house for dem, makin anything for
dem. Dat not right. Dey supposed to give us something. 'Dis da woman money, we'll give you
motor car', ... " (Ryan 1991 , 191). It is important to notice that Queenie expects the mine to deal
directly with the women. She implies that if money is handed over to men in the community this

25

'Lubra' means 'Aboriginal woman'.

46

does not mean it is given to the whole community but only to the men.
The distribution of money from the mine caused "new friction within the community" and
has led to "paternalistic influence of mining company personnel in community affairs" 26 (Ross
1989, 61). The paternalistic bias was something which Veronica Ryan wrote about: "From my
observation during six years of residence at Turkey Creek, there was always pressure put on the
community by the mining company to spend the money on capital works. Whatever project was
agreed upon by community members, it still required the approval of the mining company" (Ryan
1991, 192). In 1983 a report to the Western Australian Aboriginal Land Inquiry stated that not
only did "the ADM 27 method of administering Good Neighbour fund [allow] little scope for
community discretion and little room for growing community independence in the practical
management of day-to-day affairs" but the influence that ADM exerts over Aboriginal
communities like Warmun has come to supercede that of governmental administrative bodies
(Christensen 1990, 105).
Furthermore, the possibility of receiving funding from the mine for community projects
will disappear, when it ceases production in a few years. In short, Warmun women have lost a
spiritual and physical source of survival without receiving what they consider to be fair
compensation according to their own tradition ofwinan. The close connection between Warmun

26

This attitude was evident during a meeting which I attended in 1998 with the Daiwul Gidja
Cultural Centre and the Community and which was called by the manager of the Argyle Diamond
Mine. The issue was the protocol that the community had set up for outsiders to follow in dealing
with the community. The mine management did not see why they would have to follow this
protocol. Protocol was also an issue with cattle station managers who at a meeting I attended in
the community, also in 1998, threatened to deny access to land if they had to follow protocol. In
both cases the representatives for the management of the white businesses developed on Kija land
singled out individual members of the community. They referred either to how well the
Aboriginal person had been treated by them or to how well the Aboriginal person had behaved in
following the rules set by them. Singling somebody out is a culturally inappropriate behaviour,
which is embarrassing for the individual Aboriginal person. (Field notes)
27
Argyle Diamond Mine

47

women and the Barramundi Dreaming site can be seen in the large number of paintings done on
this theme by women in the community (Fig. 8).
The intensive period of art production which started in the 1980s in Warmun, as it did in
other parts of Aboriginal Australia, have included many women and especially Queenie
McKenzie (1916- 1998) who became one of Australia's leading artists. Her art is described and
analyzed in Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley (Ryan and Akerman [1993]) Her
life, art, and extensive work for her culture and her community are also the subject of many
newspaper (The Kimberley Echo, August 28, 1997, September 17, 1998, October 22, 1998;
Woolnough n.d.) and Internet articles (Greene 1998; Redback Art Gallery 2000).
Another written source ofWarmun women's history is Ngalangangpum Jarrakpu Purrurn

=Mother and Child: The Women ofWarmun as told to Margaret Stewart (1999), a former clinic
nurse in Warmun. The main purpose of this book was to present women's healing knowledge as
told by eighteen Warmun women. It covers their traditional way of dealing with pregnancy, birth,
and child rearing as well as descriptions of bush food and bush medicine. By introducing every
participant's age, birthplace, and life stories and her involvement in the spiritual, educational, and
economic life in the community it also contributes to Warmun women's history. The book launch
took place in Warmun, on April 15, 2000, with a traditional ceremony. A message stick was
presented to the Minister of Health, Mr. John Day, by the women, saying that they were sending
out their words about health. Eileen Bray delivered a speech and the women performed the
"Werra Werra" corroboree, the dance that has given the name to the Werra Werra Taam, the
Warmun Women's Centre (Theresa Morellini pers.comm., Aprill6, 2000). The story ofthe
name is told in Chapter Three.

48

WOMEN'S LAW
According to Warmun residents Charlie Cann and Patrick Mung, Queenie McKenzie was
also, "the driving force behind the reintroduction of Women's Law in the region in the early
1980s" (Greene 1998). The Women's Law is the ideological base from which Warmun women
organize and act. It provides them with an authority granted to them on a spiritual level by the
Ngarrankarni or Dreaming beings who laid down Women's Law, as well as Men's Law, at the
time of creation. Phyllis Kaberry used the term the Time Long Past or garuggani (Kaberry 1939,
192) for the mythical past of the Kija people:
The belief that the ancestors were beings who unite in themselves the qualities of
man and animal. . .. These ancestors did not have the physical characteristics of
animals or birds, but they did possess some quality which made their
transformation later into real birds and animals possible. The myths attribute
superhuman feats to them. Under the hands of the marsupial the hills rose to their
colossal immobility, and the river courses were carved out by the rainbow snake.
There are myths of fire and flood, of totemic-ancestors that wandered over vast
tracts of country, hurled spears from one mountain to another, and left their
footprints in solid slabs ofrock." (Kaberry 1939, 193)
According to her "garuggani stamps a practice as legal; it invokes a religious sanction for its
performance. Now, when a woman describes garuggani, she speaks as though revealing an
irrefutable dogma ofthe utmost importance" (Kaberry 1939, 193).
Even though there are local variations in mythology, Aboriginal men's and women's
source of spiritual power has some common basic traits: " ... all Aboriginal people believe in this
concept of The Dreaming, like the language and cultural practice, these vary between language
groups. There is no one Dreaming which is accepted by all Aborigines as 'the' creation story"
(Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 27). The Aboriginal scholar, Marcia Langton, says:
The Law has been passed on through countless generations of people through the
remembrance and celebration of the sites which were the scenes of the ancestral
exploits. Song, dance, body, rock and sand painting, special languages and the oral
explanations of the myths encoded in these essentially religious art forms have
been the media of the Law to the present day. (World Council of Churches, Justice
for Aboriginal Australians, 1981, p.13 quoted in Daylight and Johnstone 1986, 62)

49

The Daiwul Gidja

28

Cultural Centre, a Warmun owned cross-cultural educational centre,

explains the role of the Dreaming and especially the role it plays at present in Warmun:
The local Gidja people refer to this concept as 'Ngarranggani' .. . Whilst the
Dreaming provides a framework for Aboriginal people to explain and relate to the
past it also provides an important link to the present. Aboriginal people do not
think of the Dreaming in the past tense, it is just something that is, was and will
continue to be, due to the fact that people are linked to the Dreaming from their
birth and their day to day activities and relationships with others.
To this day, traditional Aboriginal people still cling to and practise all of
their beliefs in their Dreaming. To Aboriginal people, The Dreaming is not
something that can be picked up or discarded again at will - it is as inherent a part
of an Aboriginal person as the colour of his eyes or skin.
The Dreaming is a very complex and often under estimated and misunderstood
belief system, but one that is very real and alive for the Gidja people today.
Locally belief in Ngarranggani is very strong and a source of great pride (Butters
and O'Donoghue 1995, 27).
Diane Bell described those aspects of this Law for Central Australia, which has to do with
women only: "Women represent their world as one which is self-contained, known and secure.
The authority to control this world and the power to exclude men from this domain are
underwritten by the Dreatime - the all-encompassing Law of the past and now. In acting out the
responsibilities conferred upon them as women by this Law, women engage in work which is
distinctively theirs" (Bell 1992, 367).
Women's Law structures or in some way effects the lives of all Australian Aboriginal
women. The strength of this Law in contemporary society was demonstrated during the so-called
Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair in South Australia, in which a group of Aboriginal women
claimed that "a site of special significance to them will be desecrated if a bridge is built and

28

There are two spelling systems in use for the Kija language. I have used the spelling system in
Introduction to the Kija language (Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1996a). 'Daiwul' is an
example of another spelling system used for 'Tayiwul', the Barramundi Gap. This was the
women's sacred site which was destroyed by the mine. The mine was in 1998 sponsoring Daiwul
Cultural Centre and was also trying to get some control of the Culture Centre by requesting to be
included on the board of directors.
50

basing their claim on knowledge which is privileged to women" (Bell 1998, 1). At a hearing into
whether Ngarrindjeri women had fabricated their claims to a sacred site they refused to validate
the Royal Commission's authority by presenting a powerful declaration saying: "[W]e do not
recognize you Madame Commissioner, as a custodian ofLaw in our society" (Langton 1996,
214).
According to Phyllis Kaberry, the Law, or "The Time Long Past," worked for Kija women
with a mutual exclusion from either sex's ceremonies in that "men represent the uninitiated in the
community in regard to women's secret ceremonies which, if less spectacular are, from the
women's viewpoint, just as sacred" (Kaberry 1939, 221).
In the 1990s customary law was still important in the lives ofthe descendants ofthe
women Phyllis Kaberry had worked with fifty years earlier. For instance, Sandy Toussaint found
that "[a] life style based on beliefs and practices enshrined in religion and Aboriginal Customary
Law is common in many parts of the Kimberley. Comments such as 'this thing is happening' or
'that person is behaving that way because of the Law' are made to explain otherwise
unexplainable phenomena and human action" (Toussaint 1999, 92).
Despite the fact that the invasion29 has had destructive impacts on Aboriginal women's
lives, spiritual traditions have survived, especially in rural settings and have lately been
revitalized (Bell 1993a, 231 ). Veronica Ryan's account describes how survival has been possible
through the work of women in Warmun. Starting in the early 1980s and continuing at present,
Aboriginal women are working to restore "their spiritual, economic and social base, lost when

29

I use 'invasion' instead of 'contact', as it is a term which is used in Australia. It refers to the
arrival of British people in Australia starting in 1788. I also chose to use it because I consider it to
better describe the actual events of English take-over of Aboriginal land and labour.
51

Europeans took their land." (Daylight and Johnstone 1986, 4). Large regional meetings are being
held by women in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Warmun women have played
and continue to play an important role in this revitalization of the Law. In October 1983 a
meeting was held on Warmun women's secret dancing ground:
[O]ver 300 women turned to their own cultural tradition in one of the biggest
ceremonial meetings of Aboriginal women in recent times. The women came to
Turkey Creek in Western Australia from the Northern Territory and the
Kimberleys. They sang, danced, laughed and talked over three days in dry and hot
conditions which they ignored as they each in their own way strengthened their
cultural bonds under the large bough shelters.
The ceremonial songs, dances, rituals and body decorations had been
handed down over many generations. Each group performed their own ceremonies
for the benefit of all the women present, some for the first time in many years.
Sharing, good will and support were major features of all the activities.
Many of the conversations centred around the importance of ceremonial
life. Queenie McKenzie, law boss for the Turkey Creek women and consequently
the meeting, said,
This is women's business. Men have their own business somewhere else.
From now on no man can come here to Billingani. This is the site for us
women. Men will get very sick or maybe die if they come here. (Daylight
and Johnstone 1986, 61)
There is ample evidence ofWarmun women's strong adherence to the Law. Veronica
Ryan tells a story about an incident at a meeting at the Warmun women's dancing ground from
"about 1985" which shows the seriousness with which Warmun women defend the space oftheir
Law:
Upon my arrival on the second night, I sensed tension in the air. I was soon to
discover the cause of the unease. The women were very upset because a man had
been seen taking photographs. Just at that point, there was a further commotion as

52

Peggy and Queenie pushed their way through the crowd wielding fighting sticks 30
and threatening to break every bone in the body of the unwelcome male observer.
From the expression on their granite-like profiles, it was apparent that the offender
was now within their view. Time appeared to stand still and the assembly of
women sat with bated breath as the two defenders of "The law" were about to
swing into action. The raised arms, brandishing their hard hard-wood weapons
were transferred to an "on hold position" as a feminine voice begged for mercy.
The figure, clothed in stubby shorts, a check shirt and a stockman's hat turned out
to be a business woman from Kununurra who had been invited by one of the
participants. (Ryan 1991 , 183)
One example of the power of the Women's Law in Warmun is the reaction of people in
the community to women returning from Women's Law meetings. A non-Aboriginal teacher gave
me the following account of such an event:
There was a Law meeting held in Warmun which is about 10 km from the
community and Law women had come from the desert areas and Kununurra and
for this particular Law ceremony . They wanted all the teenagers to attend and
some hadn't so on the second day of the Law meeting ... everybody came in to the
community from the Law ground to collect the teenagers who hadn't gone and
immediately the men scattered when they saw the trucks coming, Some hid in the
library but I remember one elder, Hector, he was walking through the playground
and he stopped and put his head down while the women blessed him with water,
and I was very moved because he is a senior Law man and it was just his humility
and again the respect that he showed to these women .

. . .the women told me that when they are doing Law they are actually very, very
powerful . . . I was also blessed with the water, they also poured water on me and
they said now I wouldn't get sick. Ifyou look at them you can get sick, apparently, .
. . because when they come back from the Law meeting at the end everybody in the
community has their heads bowed, and people have told me not to look, until they
come around. Sometimes they would just put their hands on your head and say
something. On other occasions they actually used branches of eucalyptus and they
cleanse your body with that.

30

A fighting stick is a woman's weapon, "some four feet long made from wood, round smooth
with both ends slightly pointed" (Kaberry 1939, 5). Victoria Burbank reports the following in
Fighting Women from the south-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia:
"Women have their own weapons, fighting sticks, .. . three- or four-foot-long sticks of eucalyptus
wood" (Burbank 1994, 74). As for Kija women in Warmun, Betty Carrington mentioned that
women needed to get out on the land to get wood for 'fighting stick.' (Betty Carrington, interview)
53

. . . when they come back from Law there is always a gathering. Even this year
there was a gathering in the bough shed and everybody from the community
attends that, and it's like the culmination of the Law meeting. . . . Usually they
stand in a circle, the women, and they chant for quite a while and they usually
have branches of eucalyptus with them and then they go around and they sort of
rub you with that eucalyptus branch. (Teacher, b)
The power that the women have acquired on their sacred dancing-ground not only invokes
fear and respect in men but also benefits the whole community, as noted by Margaret Stewart,
describing Warmun women's return from Law: "The strength of Aboriginal culture rejuvenates
the community. No better example ofthis can be found than in the return of the women from
Law, their dancing and singing in the community boughshed (Stewart 1999, xiii)." She is
referring here to the boughshed beside the administration building where meetings are held. It is
an open construction, consisting of vertical logs holding a roof made from boughs and grass
which provides shade and air circulation. Margaret Stewart also comments on how Warmun
women themselves, "are fiercely proud of their Aboriginality and are the custodians of their
culture" (3). They ascribe the health of their people to Women's Law: "The Aboriginal women of
Warmun believe very strongly in the importance of the spiritual dimension in health practices and
outcome" (4) and" believe that it is as much a failure to adhere to the Law as it is some medical
condition that makes little children sick" (25). Margaret Stewart also noted that "the smoke, the
water and the oil are powerful symbols of healing and of connection to the land. Their use in
community gatherings and ceremonies is a natural outpouring of a holistic approach to life, a life
in which health and spirituality cannot be separated" (4).
During my stays in Warmun I noticed that the performance of these ceremonies using
smoke and water was always done by a group of women on a variety of occasions. This could be,
as I witnessed, the first visit by the new bishop, a visit from a group of high school girls from the
East, or as a greeting, protection, and statement of land ownership at a land claims court session
54

held on traditional land. For the smoking ceremony the women used eucalyptus branches that
were passed through smoke. With these branches the women touched the guests' head, chest and
knees. Warmun women have brought their ceremonies into the Catholic liturgy, which plays an
important role- together with Women's Law- in many women's lives. I witnessed one such
ceremony. The following is from my field notes: "Holy Place. I bring tape recorder for mass but
no camera which I regret when I find out that there is a christening ofVanessa's and Alfonse's
baby Jacinta. Beautiful ceremony with bush oil, water in Abor[iginal] painted "tub", fire;
grandmother and mother heating hands over fire and putting on baby's ears, eyes etc ... Putting
[baby] through smoke." (Kjellstrom 1998, September 7) (Fig. 9).
Another substance used for healing is red ochre. Lisa Gellie, a non-Aboriginal woman
from Adelaide, who was working as an administrator for the Daiwul Gidja Cultural Centre told
me her story of the healing she had experienced by Warmun women. She had received word that
her eight year-old nephew, whom she raised as her own child, was on a life support system in
Adelaide with his brain swollen up from encephalitis. She said:

I was just beside myself . . I saw Chocolate and Mona ... I just said: "This is a
story of darkness. I don't know if my son is going to live or die" ... Chocolate
[Mona's brother] sort ofjust stepped back . .. Mona just came and embraced me
and put her hand on my heart and I just cried and cried and cried . . . and then
Peggy Patrick took me out bush, took me out to Crocodile Hole and gave me a big
pot of red ochre ... and she and Mona told me what to do and when to do it and
how to do it. And so I sat for two weeks by his hospital bed, night and day putting
this red ochre on him, with the physio and the doctor saying "What's this red stuff
on his head, what's this on his arm, on his leg?". .. He had to sniff it and I had to
put it up on his head and where he hurt, so all around on his head and all over him
.. . And I dreamt of them. I was down there [in AdelaideJ and I saw them, standing
over his bed and I said to them: "Are you Kija women?" ... And it was Peggy and
Mona and they said: "We are here to make your boy strong. " And when I came
back [to Warmun] I talked to Mona and she said: "Yes that's how we come to you.
We visit you in the dreams." They still don't know what it was ... it was almost
like medical technology couldn't help us. But he came back and he is not a
vegetable. He can talk. He can walk. He can see. ... (Lisa Gellie)

55

This and other experiences in Warmun in 1997 and 1998 showed me that Warmun women
are indeed strong in the Law but the content ofthe secret and sacred nature of Women's Law was
not revealed to me. I did not ask to be shown, nor did I inquire further. I understood that as a
non-Kija woman, who has not been initiated into that culture I should not know about it unless
the women decided that I should. Like other non-Aboriginal women, I was allowed, however, to
participate in certain ceremonies, such as a healing corroboree on the women's sacred dance
ground. I was also allowed to listen to songs to be heard by women only in the Women's Centre
or out on the land. What I have observed and learned is not the contents of Women's Law but
something about how the Law impacts on and empowers women. W armun women and their
foremothers have been victims of the patriarchal system through mass killings, dispersal of their
people, loss ofland base, and being used in forced labour. The theft of their children who were
denied their own culture has been a major blow to their Aboriginal gender-balanced society. Yet
Kija people could still continue to practice their culture to a certain extent. On the stations, they
were close to their traditional land, they were living together in groups, and they had seasonal
time away from stations that allowed them to practice hunting and gathering and to perform
ceremonies. They have also preserved their culture since the move from the stations to the new
community.
The fact that the Warmun Aboriginal community was established helped preserve and
revitalize Aboriginal women's culture, and the outstation movement is hoping to further
strengthen this culture. Warmun people still have had and do still fight the effects of the
surrounding patriarchal culture that comes with dealing with the larger society: the mine, the
stations, the government agencies, the medical establishment all represent it. Through their own
local government they can control parts of that influence through establishing their own protocol,
their own by-laws, and making their own plans for the future. The Women's Centre's
56

independence in relation to outside agencies is one example.
Thus in the case of Warmun it is a question of a world view and a way of life that has
never died but survived in spite of and within the larger patriarchal and very much maledominated Australian society. Non-Aboriginal Australian ideology was imported from Britain
and was strengthened by the historic facts of Australia being a penal colony with a high
percentage of male population and the ensuing mateship culture. These Aboriginal women have
not opted out of white Australian society; many of them were never really in it. At the same time
as Warmun people adopt aspects of white culture and build alliances with other Australians there
is a strong feeling for the differences in the rules and ways of operating between Kija and kartiya
ways which is shown in the establishment and operation of the Women's Centre and Safe House.
The story ofWarmun Women's Centre, of how the women perceived their needs and what
actions they took to remedy what they thought was a serious, dangerous, unbalanced, unfair, and
unsatisfactory situation for them as women will be told in Chapter Three.

57

CHAPTER THREE: "WE'VE GOT TO HAVE A BALANCE HEREJ.l:" CREATING
THE WOMEN'S CENTRE AND SAFE HOUSE
No house bin here before, that's what we bin
bringing it here for ... Well we bin talk we
want the Women's Centre here because lot of
woman getting hiding. We want to keep them
safe. We done it. 32

This chapter is one version of the story of how the Warmun women created the Werra
Werra Taam and the Ngalim Purru Taam, that is, the Warmun Women's Centre and Safe House.
The story is mostly told in the words of the women, both through interviews and through
quotations from written sources of women's stories. 33 Queenie McKenzie's story about how the
name of the Centre was chosen will provide the introduction.

THE STORY OF A NAME: WERRA WERRA TAAM

The official Kija name of the women's center in Warmun is Werra Werra34 Taam; taam is
the Kija word for camp or place (Kaberry 1939, 30; Dixon and Dillon 1990, xii). I wanted to
know the meaning of the whole name, so I asked Polly Widaljil and Eileen Bray what werra
werra meant. They told me that it meant 'mermaid', but that they could not tell me anything about

it, because that was "Queenie's story." I arranged to see Queenie McKenzie, a senior Law
Woman, to ask her if she wanted to tell me the Werra Werra story, from which the Women's

31

Ethel McLennon, interview, October 9, 1998
Queenie McKenzie, interview, September 7, 1998
33
A summary of events, mostly from archival sources in Warmun, is provided in the Chronology
(Appendix 2).
34
Another spelling is Worra Worra Taam, which in 1998 was used on the Women's Centre troupe
carrier. This spelling also appears in the Warmun Women and Children's Centre report (1992,
17).
58
32

Centre got its name. She did so on October 29, 1998, while taking a break from her painting at the
Pensioners' Unit where she was a resident. The story is about her mother seeing and hearing
mermaids in Turkey Creek, the river that runs through the community. Queenie's mother was
standing on the Other Side, the camp on the eastern side of Turkey Creek, when she heard some
singing. Since the school was located on the opposite side of the creek, she thought that it was the
school children who were singing, but she could not see any children. Then she saw the
mermaids. Queenie said:

One time he bin like this river my mother bin come up from cross the river.
He bin come up cross the school up'n that school. He bin comin' cross and that
werra werra bin singin' out loud, singin' out, singin' out, singin' out. Him bin
lookin' out: where's all the kids, where's that kid, I don't know where them kids are
nothing. He bin seen them two lubra stand up. Them bin come up he bin know, he
bin know werra werra bin come up.
Werra werra look like a woman, she's like a woman, right woman, kind of long
hair hanging down, long hair nice girl, pretty face, she's like a half caste
woman, that's the way he is, and he livin Ia the water there, water . . . Turkey
Creek, everywhere, everywhere fa water place. Sometime you might run in on a
big hill country and you go down, and you go down sneakin you hear them
'aaaaah' all about Ia water. You come out, you stand up fa bank, not Ia bank you
stand up Ia bushes looking at alia about nice, nice woman, werra werra. When you
get close nothing they disappear, they gone, that's it.
Because of my own image of mermaids I asked if the werra werra had fish tails, but
Queenie said:

No, he got no tail. He got two leg. He got two leg and two arm. He can walk, he
can race about anywhere fa bank, fa water, that's the way it is that mermaid. And
he got a long hair, that much hanging down.
Another senior woman, Buttercup Mung Mung, had then made a corroboree, a song about
this event, called "Wurra Wurra" or "The Mermaids' Song" (Jovial Crew 1992). Queenie said:

They bin find im corroboree 'bout that. They bin findem that corroboree they bin
findem that old woman
(sings) werra werra la werra werra la turambiran la turambiramla

59

That werra werra woman blow away leavin' mommy. They bin leavin' mommy
what they bin singin' out Ia mommy. That's the corroboree bela bla old Buttercup
And Queenie concludes:

That's the way they call them werra werra that woman center, see all the women,
call, we call all them ngalli ngalli35 and that werra werra bin given name, what
you call them. See ngalli ngalli, all the lubra werra werra that what his name36.
When the time came to name the Women's Centre, Queenie suggested that it be Werra
Werra Taam.

THE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN'S CENTRE AND SAFE HOUSE

Several W armun women have contributed to the story of the Werra Werra Taam, the
Women's Centre and Safe House, and selected quotations from these stories are used as headings
to indicate the chronological stages in this process.

That's the house we bin use'em firsr 7
The stories I heard from women in Warmun in 1998 indicated that during the 1980s
women had been using a smaller building, a "donga" (Shirley Bray), next to the present Women's
Centre and south of and across the road from the administration building as a meeting place. It
had been used for different activities such as hairdressing, facials, sewing, printmaking, and
different kinds of crafts.

35

'Ngalli ngalli' means 'women' in Kija.
This may be the first time this story has been written down. Besides signing a consent form for
me when I was in Warmun to use the interview for my thesis, Queenie McKenzie also sent me a
message with Theresa Morellini after I returned to Canada that I was allowed to use this story.
37
Madigan Thomas, interview September 7, 1998
36

60

We had a little place there ... That little house just behind the office, opposite
from Woman's Centre . . . that's the Women's Centre where they used to painting
and all that . . . they used to paint shoes, T-shirts, skirts and they used to print . ..
that building there. (Betty Carrington)
Everything bla we bin start that way first cut but alia shoes, hair, painting
sewin .. . . There now they bin show'em bout us for wash'em hair, haircut up there
Ia that nother house .. .. Alia shoes, they bin painting'em but, all differ different
small size, big one ... That's the house we bin us 'em first. (Madigan Thomas)
Helen Pinday especially remembered the painting of shoes, which had been very popular
and had also created some income:

When we had the old Woman's Centre, the woman used to go there, we used to
have a lot ofyoung girls interested. Plain shoes ... black kung-fu shoes . .. that
thing just went like that when we sold them. (Helen Pinday)
It was during this time, in the late 1980s, that women started talking about getting a bigger

building for their activities. The "old Women's Center" was one of the places, where women
gathered and talked about their wishes for a meeting place that would better meet their needs:

"Yes, we was start to talking for the bigger one" (Betty Carrington).

Ethel McLennan who is the daughter of Madigan Thomas and who holds a degree in
teaching and in social work was employed as the first Aboriginal and first woman community
coordinator in 1988. Her work in the administration office, which lasted until 1991, made her
familiar with women's living conditions and concerns. She said that she became

aware of what the women were talking about when I worked in the office [and} I
heard the need from the women, I could see the need myselffor the women. (Ethel
McLennan, a)

61

Ethel listened to women's concerns. They talked about the necessity for a meeting place
for their activities and for a refuge in cases of violence and other disturbing influences in their
lives. She understood
that women wanted somewhere where they could go to, a central meeting place,
where they could be involved in activities of their choice. At that time they talked
about art, craft, painting, sewing, screen printing, all of those activities, but also
that they wanted for those women who were in a violent family situation . . .
somewhere safe to go. Actually not just the women in violent situations but the
grandmothers, other family members, women around the community, who couldn't
get a good nights sleep because of the drunkenness in the community. In a small
community like this you don't have to live in the same house, you can live in
another camp, you still hear the noise, and people are being drunk and loud and
disturbing other people's sleep; (it's) disruptive, disturbing. (Ethel McLennon, a)
Ethel also saw the need for employment for women, because government funded jobs
were usually held by men:
The way I saw it, there was so much happening for men. CDEP was just centered
around men's work. I just couldn't accept that. We've got to have a balance here
somewhere. (Ethel McLennon, a)
That woman she used to be (rightenetf 8

Several other women I talked to also confirmed the need for a safe place for women in
cases of family violence. One of the non-Aboriginal female teachers, who had been teaching in
the community for several years, described the situation:
Before [the establishment of] the Safe House it was very noticeable violence on
Monday mornings. A lot of young girls in particular would come to work with
bandages on their legs or some wouldn't be able to come, because they had been
beaten on the weekend. (Teacher, b)
Usually the first plan of action for a woman, who wanted to get away from an abuser, was
to tum to her family:

38

Shirley Bray, interview September 7, 1998

62

Sometimes when they had family, they stayed with their families . So that bin going
on for quite a while... (Helen Pinday)
Some of them ... when they used to drink, you know, they were very aggressive,
and maybe that girl used to run away sometime and go to family, and that man
used to come and chase im maybe got a knife or axe or whatever. (Shirley Bray)
... and wife run away at nighttime and might be got to family, family house, and
that man gone looking around there Ia family. (Madigan Thomas)

There was a warden system in place with both men and women patrolling the community
at night. Warmun is a 'dry' community and according to its by-laws no alcohol is permitted within
it (Warmun Community (Turkey Creek) Inc., Policy Manual1998). Even with the warden system
in place this by-law is difficult to enforce and alcohol, 'grog', consumption especially during the
weekends, is, if not the only reason for, certainly the most important contributor to violence in the
community. Shirley Bray talked about how they used to try to deal with violent men:

Well what those women used to do when we were on the council, wardens team, us
mob, you know, our main role was to talk Ia men, see if we can talk them out of it
you know.
In more serious cases the police station located at the Argyle Diamond Mine was
contacted, and the men would be taken there if need be.

Before we had this Woman's Centre we used to ring the diamond police. We used
to takem all the men Ia diamond mine (Mabel Juli)
Shirley Bray mentioned, however, that the police did not always respond:

That woman she used to be frightened, this way we used to ring right away to the
police. Sometime the police wouldn't take notice. (Shirley Bray, a)
Another refuge sought by women was that of the sisters at the Mirrilingki Spirituality Centre
run by the Broome Diocese and staffed by Sisters of St. Joseph. It is situated a few minutes' drive

63

to the north of the community and adjacent to the Turkey Creek Roadhouse on the Western side
of the Great Northern Highway.

Well before we had this Safe House in the Womans Centre every time a woman get
beat up by her husband, they used to go to Mirrilingki. Stay there for the night ...
(Helen Pinday)
Yeah, before the Safe House was built the young women would seek refuge at the
spirituality centre Mirrilingki . . . a lot of women used to go to Mirrilingki .
... sometimes the men would go up tere and create a fuss. (Teacher, b)
Women also sought refuge with the schoolteachers, whose residencies were located close
to the Turkey Creek Roadhouse and the Mirrilingki Spiritual Centre:

[I]n some occasions the women would ask teachers in the school if they could
actually stay with them, if they knew the husbands were likely to drink on a
particular night ... . So on one occasion one woman who was working with me, she
asked if she could come to dinner, and I said, "Of course" and during the course of
dinner she said to me she wanted to stay the night, because she knew her husband
would be drinking that night and she was likely to be abused. So I then contacted
the priest, who was living close by, and he offered to keep her in his house, and
then meanwhile this woman's mother-in-law and husband came looking for her.
They didn't actually search my house and the woman's mother-in-law told her
daughter-in-law's husband he should go to ... one of the outstations, and I think it
was just a way of getting him away from the community for the night, so that her
daughter-in-law would not be injured, so then the priest took her to another
community. (Teacher, b)
The teacher's experiences and feelings probably also expressed those of many other
women at this time:

[Y}ou never felt quite at ease, because what if somebody finds these women in
your house, and you are going to be blamed. It was a horrible situation to be in.
(Teacher, b)
Ethel McLennon summarized how she looked at the women's situation:

Everyone has a right to live in safety and peace. As human beings we have a right
to expect that regardless of what men think, what authority they may think they
may have over their women. That is one point that I would argue with anybody at
that time. Who gives you the right to beat your wife up? They have just as much
right to have somewhere where they can be safe. (Ethel McLennon, a)
64

An area of need that wasn't being addresset/ 9
Ethel McLennon wanted to do something about the problems she had seen and which had
been articulated by the women. She said:

Probably around 1991 I had finished working with Warmun council as the advisor then,
but I stayed in the community and I wanted to work with the women because I could see
that was an area of need that wasn't being addressed sufficiently at the tim. (Ethel
McLennon, a)
Her desire to work with the women on their issues resulted, in May of 1991, in an
initiative from Warmun Women and Children's Centre, 40 for a project to be carried out regarding
women's needs in the community. Northern Buildings Consultants (W A), an Aboriginal agency, 41
was invited to submit a consultancy proposal and fee offer utilizing the services of Ethel
McLennon and Judy Taylor, a former non-Aboriginal schoolteacher. The Council accepted the
offer put forward, and the project started on 22 July 1991, with consultation with women in the
community and was followed by a research phase extending over the following seven weeks.
Funding for the project was provided by an Aboriginal Organization Training Grant from
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation, administered by the Balangarri Aboriginal
Corporation, the Outstation Resource Agency at Warmun. The authors of the report stressed that
the ideas presented in the report were to be "those of the women of Warmun as articulated
through the Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. and other formal and informal

39

Ethel McLennon, interview October 9, 1998
Warmun Women's and Children's Centre had been established by local residents several years
before as a sponsor and management body for the proposed child care service but has since taken
on a wider role in enhancing women's services at Warmun. It was not directly connected to
Warmun Council. (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre 1992, 3)
41
"Northern Building Consultants has operated as a wholly owned Aboriginal consultancy,
established in the Northern Territory in 1983, and since early 1992 owned and controlled by
Aboriginal Resource Agencies in the West Kimberley. NBC specializes in remote community
planning, development and architectural services." (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc.,
1992,3)
65
40

groupings including the Warmun Council. It was not intended that the proposals conveyed in this
report be those of an "independent expert" (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc., 1992,
3).
Thus, the decisions and recommendations recorded in this report were strictly those of the
women in W armun. The consultants first had formal and informal discussions with women in the
community to determine their main concerns followed by structured meetings to cover specific
matters (5). Meetings were held mainly under the bough shed beside the administration building
but also in the old Women's Centre building mentioned above. The consultation process included
about a dozen meetings with groups of20-30 women,

big mob meeting (Shirley Bray, a) with a
good cross section ... ofwomen age wise (Ethel McLennon, a)
. . . and then some of the womans that was interested in having a meeting for a
woman's centre and a safe house got together and they started talking for our own
woman's centre and a safe house. (Helen Pinday)
The consultation process also included a series of meetings with the architect for the
project, Steve Ervine, with "extensive discussion on location and necessary spaces" (Warmun
Women's and Children's Centre 1992, 17). He asked the women's group to make drawings
showing how they wanted the Center to be designed. These drawings were used as a basis for
preliminary sketches, which were then taken back to the women's group for further consultation:

We just did a sketch of how we wanted it and the person, Steve Ervine, he is the
bloke, we had a meeting with him. He just told us "Just draw on a piece of paper
how you want it, " and when we did it on a piece ofpaper he went back, and he did
it up properly, and he came back and he told us to have a look and if any changes.
So we look at it and we told him: "We put some changes in for the Safe House
now, how many rooms we should have and a storage place for all them stuff in, all
them mattress and thing, " and that was alright, and then one day when he started
working on that plan he brought it up in a meeting, a council meeting. (Helen
Pinday)

66

We come in Ia that bough shed five camp42
The symbol for the Women's Centre is five circles joined by lines to a sixth circle in a
central position (Fig. 10). The circles and lines consist of dots, typical of Warmun art. This
symbol was chosen through the following process. The architect asked the women during the
consultation process to each make a drawing that would symbolize their work in getting the
Centre. One of these designs would then be used as a symbol for the Centre. Madigan Thomas, a
Senior Law woman and artist whose design was chosen for the official symbol told me her story.
She had been thinking about how all the women had come together from all the five camps to the
meeting place under the bough shed, where they had been fighting for their center:

Right that kartiya bin say: If you want a Safe House you fella have a talk, have a
meeting, talk, and next time he bin come back again, second time he bin give us a
paper, nah, for draw'em how you come into meeting he said, right.
We got'em la paper that one kartiya, all right. You gotta draw how you come in,
how you think about im asking us. You gotta draw your paper up. Everyone he
even bin give us paper there now we bin drawn bout la bough shed. (Madigan
Thomas)
The architect then asked the women to think about how they have been fighting for the Centre:

Like that now he bin say and him say how you fell a keep fighting, what make you
fella think abou, he say. (Madigan Thomas)
Madigan explained:

Well, me I bin havin'fair bit idea myself I've been thinking about how we come in
la that bough shed five camp. I've bin draw'em right around la middle and five
camp come in la that place . ... That's their thing they bin have a look at em that's
good idea. Another lot bin draw'em but another way.
I've bin drawing like never I didn't paint em but I've bin draw in' them like that,
that bough shed in the middle like where we all come in la meeting, right. Other
Side Camp - Queenie mob - , Top Camp -you fellas -, and Garden Area, Middle
Camp, Bottom Camp. We have a talk for this house, we still fighting, well, that the
way I've bin win that house. I've bin thinking about my idea, you know, because
42

Madigan Thomas, interview September 7, 1998

67

that kartiya have bin question about us how we gotta, you know, where us fighting
for, ... what the reason you fell a fighting for that house, him bin say .
Madigan's design illustrates where the meetings were held, and where the women came
from, the five different camps in the community, Top Camp, Garden Area, Middle Camp, Bottom
Camp, and Other Side (Fig. 11).
In their report the consultants Ethel McLennon and Judy Taylor placed Warmun women's
concerns within the wider framework of Aboriginal women's situation generally in Australia.
They found that" there is little or no recognition of the very positive contribution and further
potential of Aboriginal women in developing the social infrastructure necessary to the well-being
and growth of Aboriginal communities" (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. 1992, 5).
They also stated that the "nurturing, cultural maintenance and community building role of women
is marginalized and under-resourced" (2). As an example of this marginalization they mentioned
that there is 'just $60,000 available to women's initiatives in the entire East Kimberley region in
1991/92. Nationally $2.5 m is allocated to the Women's Initiatives Program (WIP) out oftotal
ATSIC expenditure of$543 million" (5). They saw that these attitudes were also evident in the
Warmun community in that "Warmun's 5 Year development Plan (1989) does not acknowledge
women's roles and interests, and we are not able to have our projects incorporated into CHIP, 43
CDEP or other public (sic) funded programs"(2). The report stated that "the fault lies with the
established ideas and institutions which define legitimate activities and projects in communities
and in how these programs are received and administered locally. There is greater satisfaction
amongst many outsiders to the community in seeing material projects - houses, roads, water
pipes, buildings, plant and equipment ... The social and cultural well-being of our community is

43

Community Housing and Infrastructure Program, an ATSIC program for environmental health
through providing grants for housing and infrastructure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities (DPIE 1998).
68

something that outsiders find hard to grasp" (2). During these consultations women clearly stated
the need to have a place that would be "theirs exclusively as there is great emphasis on the mutual
support that women can give to each other through the interaction of many activities and projects"
(14). They felt that they needed a place of their own to do arts and crafts, sew, hold meetings
regarding Women's Business, teach young women culture, 44 enable a laundry service for old
people and have a meals-on-wheels service. Eileen Bray said:

Well, we wanted it just for woman to do like things they want to do or learn and
cook meals-on-wheels for old people.
One of the most pressing needs stated by the women was a refuge from family violence or
just a place "to get away from drunks and get a good night's sleep." The report stated that "women
hope that there is an appreciation that much abuse and violence is felt in the home and in families,
and mostly by women. The security and safety of families in such situations is equally as
important as the humane and sensitive treatment of offenders" (6). To remedy this "women feel
that it is their unity and co-operation that can singularly avert this confrontation and violence by
facilitating a retreat into a secure 'Safe House'" (16). As for the management of the Centre, the
goal of independence, of women having control over all the decisions for the Centre, was
particularly strongly stressed. It was considered important that the women "be able to manage the
Women's Complex by themselves in such a way that they make the decisions for that place and
have control of that place" (6-15).

44

The word 'culture' is used by Warmun women to denote many aspects of traditional culture,
such as bush tucker and medicine, healing methods, kinship rules, social behaviour, ritual, stories,
etc.

69

We bin still talking and asking for monel5
The building cost for the Centre was estimated at $335,200. From August 1991, to March
1992, grant applications were made by the Warmun Women's and Children's Centre to federal
and state agencies and to corporations.

We basically had to send it in ourselves by that stage and we'd say what we
needed ... it was under Warmun Women and Children's Centre. (Ethel McLennon
a)
We bin talking, talking, talking. We bin still get knock back but we bin still talking
and asking for money. From different place we bin keep asking for money.
(Madigan Thomas)
The Argyle Diamond Mine, which by its construction had destroyed the women's sacred
Barramundi Dreaming site, was one of the agencies to which Warmun women directed their
requests for funding. One woman said:

Yeah, we had to have meetings ... Under the boughshed. Used to have meetings
askin'for Woman Centre till I think we got some money from the Good Neighbour
mob, ... Yeah, asking them in the council meetings. (Eileen Bray)
Ernie Bridge put some. We've bin have argument about that diamond mine.
(Queenie McKenzie)
One part of it there we had an argument over the Diamond Mine . . . "and when
we finished that football oval we'll give you mob half of that money for set up this
building now" they bin talk Ia we .. . I think we bin get'em from Diamond Mine.
(Madigan Thomas)
Another agency was the Lotteries Commission: Yah, we bin asking them lottery mob. (Madigan
Thomas). Other submissions were sent to the Commonwealth Department of the Arts, Sport, the

45

Madigan Thomas, interview September 7, 1998

70

Environment, Tourism and Territories, Homeswest/DCS (Crisis Accommodation Program46),
Balangarri Aboriginal Corporation, and W armun Aboriginal Corporation.
The independence that the women insisted upon for the management of the center caused
problems, when it came to funding applications:

They were very clear about what they wanted and how they wanted to run the
Women's Centre. The management structure that they were proposing was very
different to the way that government and other funding agencies usually did
business with community organizations. Anyway that's what the women wanted to
do and ... I had quite a job explaining and convincing one of the funding agencies
that because this was a different way of doing things it wasn't necessarily not a
good way to do it. It's just that they were so used to a certain way of doing it, a
certain kind of structure. They had never tried this before, it was different, it . . .
didn't mean to say that it was wrong or that it wouldn't work. And what it was: the
women didn't want to bring in another outside person, they wanted to have control
of it themselves, because they were also looking at the costs involved with bringing
an outsider in, a qualified person in. You have to look for salary, accommodation,
vehicle, all those associated costs and because we were looking for funding at the
time what they wanted was to get the facilities established and not really concern
themselves with recruiting somebody with those associated costs. So finally
fortunately the woman that I was dealing with in Lotteries Commission was quite
good actually. She came to accept what we were saying, and they agreed to
provide the capital funds for the Women's Centre and Safe House. (Ethel
McLennon, a)
Some more work was done on funding applications, and in November 1992 Homeswest

47

had accepted the Women's Centre/Safe House proposal and the funding was, finally in place for
the building project.
... and alwav talkin, alway48

In December 1991 Northern Building Consultants (WA) presented drawings for a
Women's Centre and Safe House and a report based on the needs expressed by the women during

46

Government of Western Australia, Ministry of Housing
Homeswest is a government building corporation within Western Australia Ministry of
Housing, Aboriginal Housing Infrastructure Unit (Ministry ofHousing. 2000).
48
Queenie McKenzie, interview September 7, 1998
47

71

the consultation process (Fig. 12). The report, which included drawings and funding proposals,
was taken to Warmun Council in March 1992. Meetings started with Council, where many
women stood up and talked for a Women's Centre and a Safe House (Fig. 13).

We bin have a meeting .. . here la bough shed . .. We've bringing up this one, we
bin bringing up la picture one, do them up here ... yarram 49 . . . and alway
talking, alway. (Queenie McKenzie)
We had to take it to council to have it endorsed and submitted through council,
and that in itself is a job. This is when we actually got to having the heated
discussions at meetings with mainly men, some women as well. (Ethel McLennon,
a)
The proposal was not accepted without resistance. Ethel got into discussions with men
regarding women's rights to their own space:

And to try and sort of sell this idea for submission for a Women's Centre and Safe
House was no easy task, and what it meant was just standing by what we believed
in and arguing very strongly for that and pointing out the obvious that "it looks to
me that you don't mind using the women when you need to and have them argue
for the community and fight for the community. " And most of the women were the
people who were sober and a lot of the older men, I mean, I am not being critical,
but as far as standing up as leaders for the community a lot of the men were
drinking . . . and the other ones were young, inexperienced so we had to fight
really hard to get that through Council and have Council support it. (Ethel
McLennon a)
Ethel also brought up the employment inequity:

In one of our heated meetings I argued with my brothers about it. They had to be
challenged. I said "Now hang on a minute ... .you look around you and you look
at the jobs that are provided through CDEP. They are for men. Women are not
even thought of unless you have a problem with women operating graders and
trucks and so forth. Look at what you have created. You haven't looked at it,
maybe it's time you did look at it and question that. " There just wasn't a balance of
employment being offered for women as opposed to what was offered for men.
(Ethel McLennon, a)

49

'Yarram' is Kija for 'talk'.

72

Ethel saw the women's request for a Women's Centre and shelter as a matter of fairness .
Women were putting in time, energy, and caring into the community, even more so than men, and
she thought that they should get a fair share of its resources.

What I noticed was that when it came to the crunch it was the women who would
fight for the community ... . I looked around and 70%, maybe higher50,
representation on the council was by women. Whenever there was an issue to be
argued, or a stand to be made it was the women who did the fighting for the
community. Where were the men ? So as soon as they asked for something for
themselves, specifically and separately for themselves, there was this uproar, and I
said "That's not right." I just had to remind them of a few obvious facts . Women
represented the majority on the council. They were the ones that argued. They held
the families together. "So what is this problem that you have, when women ask for
something for themselves?" That just didn't make sense to me, and I didn't accept
it. It was an interesting realization. (Ethel McLennon a)
Queenie McKenzie and Madigan Thomas expressed the resistance the women
encountered as well as their persistence in the fight for their center.

MT: We bin hard to get'em first
QM: We bin hard to get'em alright
MT: They bin arguing Ia we, alia men bin arguing
MT
. .. arguing why we want this Woman Centre for. We need im we bin tell
im, we need im, something for a safe house for woman where we can save 'em from
getting a hidin ... We bin talking, talking, talking ...
We had a bit o(problem with blokes51
At this point, however, some men rejected the idea of having a refuge in the community.
As a result of this rejection a revised drawing was passed in December 1993, which did not
include the planned shelter (Fig. 14). Helen and Ethel explained the background to that decision:

We had a bit ofproblem with blokes. We had a meeting with all the blokes and we
had an argument against each other and they was telling us: "If you do build up a
Safe House then you have a woman there the bloke might jump over or go in and
50

In 1992 75% ofWarmun councillors were women (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre
Inc. 1992, 2).
51
Helen Pinday, interview October 12, 1998

73

smash everything, " and we still fought with the blokes that we really needed a Safe
House. (Helen Pinday)
The other interesting thing that happened at that time is the reaction from the
men. That was a real challenge for them, as I see it. At least the Safe House idea . .
. really the problem was in their perception of the idea. It wasn't in anything stated
by the women or by myself It was purely in their perception, their
misunderstanding, in how they perceived it . . . that's what they believed without
having talked to the women. So we had a couple of heated meetings with the men
and challenged their perception, their understanding of what was being proposed.
And there were threats that men were going to bulldoze the Safe House down
because of what they believed; that by building this place we were going to take
their women away, their wives away and lock them up. . . interfering. It wasn't the
case at all. What it was, was providing a safe place for women to go to if they
chose to. That's their right to do that. What we're doing is providing somewhere
safe for them to go if they needed to. There is certainly nothing wrong in that.
(Ethel McLennon, a)
However, not all men were opposed to the shelter. The opposition carne particularly from
younger men.

It was seen as radical by younger men. There might have been something in
traditional Aboriginal society, but I am not aware of it, but what I can say is that
those who felt threatened were the younger men, not the older men .. . they didn't
seem to have a problem with it, they didn't voice objection to it. Not that I was ever
aware of, but then there is a difference . . . the influence by white culture and
maybe not as strong identity as the older ones have in their aboriginality. So this
perception on their part that this was a threat to themselves, to their family, to
their relationship with their women. So it was seen as a radical move by the
women to segregate themselves and have something totally different, separate, for
women. (Ethel McLennon a)
Builded all this Woman Centre52
The construction of the center started on March 28, 1994, following the 1993 revised
drawing, which did not include a shelter. Shirley Bray whose camp is close to the Women's
Centre watched it being built:

They were unloading all these things and all this roofing that's belong to here now,
Woman Centre. That's where it went from there now, that's how we got this

52

Shirley Bray, interview September 7, 1998

74

Woman's Centre. They started building, those contractors, you know. What see this
area now . .. Builded all this Woman Centre. (Shirley Bray)
The construction was completed on September 14, 1994, with the final inspection on April 5,
1995. The feeling of anticipation expressed by the women in the community to have a women's
only space is described by a teacher:

I vaguely remember people saying: "We will be able to go to our own place, and
we will be able to work there, and we will not have the men hassling us. We will be
able to do our own thing. We can have our artifacts there, and we can do our
singing there and have our meetings", and I think it was a source ofgreat pride for
them, because now they were going to have their place . . . away from the
interference of the men, because no man is allowed to go in there. And I remember
once I had a friend from Sydney and I stopped outside the Women's Centre, and I
was about to go for something, and I was met by Peggy, and she said: " .. . no way
are you going to bring that gentleman in here, " so he raced back to the car very
quickly. (Teacher, b)
One month after the final inspection a Home And Community Care (HACC) operation started in
the Women's Centre, which included cooking meals for pensioners and helping them with their
laundry, using the Women's Center kitchen and laundry facilities . Also, a sewing grant was
received by the Centre from the Lotteries Commission and was used to purchase sewing
machines. The Centre was now used for general meetings and for Women' s Law ceremonies, for
doing paintings and producing traditional women's artifacts, such as clapsticks and coolamons.
Clapsticks are used by women as a rhythm instrument. Coolamons are the traditional wooden
containers used by women for holding anything from nuts to babies. According to Phyllis
Kaberry, "kulamon is an aboriginal term that has passed into general currency in Australia. It is a
shallow boat-shaped vessel made ofwood (Kaberry 1939, 22).

We wanted that Women's Centre part for things like cooking meals for the old
people that can't cook for themselves, mea/s-on-wheels, and we used it to do
sewing and other, like do boards and you sell them through there. (Helen Pinday)

75

Blokes ~:ettinf: more worse beltinf: up their wives53
After the Warmun Women's Centre had opened in May 1995, without the planned shelter,
violence against women in the community continued to be a serious problem. Women
increasingly felt the effects, and it also continued to affect non-Aboriginal women, who worked
in and with the community. Helen Pinday said:

Blokes [were}getting more worse belting up their wives, and the sisters at
Mirrilingki, they said they didn't want any more womans going there and . . .
sometime when they have a woman there and a bloke still drunk he go and
harming the sisters there too so they said: "Why don't you use your own Safe
House now instead of sending womans here," because they had problems on the
husbands. So we had a meeting and they supported us too, these sisters. We had a
council meeting with all the counsellors, and all the people from the community
and we got support from Mirrilingki to open up our own Safe House. So the blokes
agreed then. (Helen Pinday)
Due to the increased need for a safe place and with the support of the Sisters at
Mirrilingki, the women again approached Council requesting a shelter. On September 24, 1996, a
54

collective Worra Worra Taam meeting discussed the establishment of a shelter within the
premises of the existing Centre and the safety procedures that would be needed to be put into
place. Four strategies were suggested to ensure safety of women using the planned Safe House:
women's Dreaming objects to be relocated into the Centre, non-drinking young men to work as
support wardens, two-way radios for Safe House workers and to install a telephone in the Centre
for access to police and other community members as needed. Theresa Morellini was called to a
meeting. She was at that time settling back into the Kimberley after her studies of Native
counselling in Canada, living in Wyndham, and engaged in workshops at Mirrilingki Spirituality

53
54

Helen Pinday, interview October 12, 1998
Worra Worra is an earlier spelling of Werra Werra.

76

Centre and part of a drug and alcohol program along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous. She was
asked by the women to become the counsellor for the Safe House. Eileen Bray remembers:
... and then all the woman got together and Sr. Theresa was here and asking her
if they can used one side of it for woman safe house thing, because woman used to
get into trouble by their husbands, you know, beating them up when they're drunk,
so they was asking if they can have somewhere safe to stay, and we was having
meetings and asking for money to get the other part of the Centre, so that we can
keep woman in there away from their husbands .... and then like I said before that
woman then was thinking about getting safe house in there somewhere so we
asked for that other part of the Centre and we got it. (Eileen Bray)
Theresa Morellini agreed to become the counselor for the Safe House:
... and then the women . . . sent for me to come down here for a meeting, and they
asked me, would I run the Safe House and be the counselor for the Safe House,
and I agreed to it, and then I said "How do I get money to pay to live ", so they
asked Council if I could go on CDEP, and they agreed, and that's how they pay
me, through CDEP. I get 30 hours a week through CDEP. I became the counselor
for the Safe House, and they asked me to help them to get it up and running. So
basically I see my job just to coordinate the Safe House and make sure it runs.
(Theresa Morellini, c)
We get our thing there55

As a result of this meeting a committee was formed in October 1996, to set up the Safe
House and by October 22 the shelter was already operating within the existing facilities. At the
same time the Warmun Women's and Children's Centre was seeking funding of$50,000 from
Homeswest to be able to build an addition to the existing premises in accordance with the original
plans for the Safe House. As had been suggested in the September 24 meeting the 'women's Law
things', the secret ritual objects used for women's ceremonies, were moved from their location in
a small building on the school grounds to the Women's Centre. This decision was pivotal in the

55

Eileen Bray, interview September 28, 1998

77

Warmun Council's approval of a shelter being opened within the complex, as it was felt that they
would secure the safety of refuge seekers.
Well, we get our thing there, that woman thing in there, see? And that's the thing,
yeah, make it safe. Otherwise if men go in there they'll be in trouble. It's breaking
the Law for all the womans. They're not allowed to be in there. (Eileen Bray, a)
Furthermore, in November of 1996 the women met with Argyle Police,
community wardens and interested community members in the local school. The
following strategies were drawn up to ensure the safety of women and reported in "There
is no excuse for family violence" (Hedland College Social Research Centre 1997, 25):

Women's Law- We have put our Women's dreaming objects in a special room in
the Women's Centre to make sure that men don't come in. The men will be too
scared to go against the Law. If any man goes against the law they would get very
sick.
Argyle Police56 - The Argyle Police are talking with the men. Telling them that
they are not to go near the Safe House and humbug the women. If they do, the Safe
House workers will ring the police and they have promised to answer calls and
come straight down and take the offender away.
Wardens' Support - The wardens are the people who see that the By-laws are
kept in the community. They will watch out for women who could be having
problem with people who are drunk. They will help the women to get to the Safe
House and will attend to the calls of the Safe House if the women are having any
problems. To have this contact we have 2 way radios.
Health Nurse - She will attend to health needs of the women and children in the
Safe House. When a woman goes to her in the middle of the night because of
Domestic Violence reason. She will have a 2-way radio to contact the Wardens.
Then the Warden will go to the clinic and escort the persons to the Safe place.
Women in the Community- The Women are rostered for each night of the week,
to go and care for the women using the safe place. These women have done some
training as care givers and understand Domestic Violence effect on the victims.

56

The Argyle Diamond Mine has a police force located on its property.

78

The Counsellor -The Counsellor will do individual counselling and group work
during the day with the women in the Safe House. She will also continue to give
counselling after women go back to their homes."

We brought them in there57

On December 17, 1996, the Safe House, Ngalim Purru Taam, 58 officially opened within
the Women's Centre. It was using a separate part of the Centre, a one-room unit. Warmun Council
had contributed $7,000 to the building of a shower, a toilet, laundry facilities, and a small kitchen
adjacent to the sleeping quarters to serve the Safe House. At this time counsellor Theresa
Morellini was working with the women in the Safe House. The Women's Centre office was to be
used as the counselling room for the shelter. Eileen Bray describes how the women were brought
to the Safe House and how a group of women would go there to support the refuge seeker by
singing traditional songs at night. A couple of women would then stay there to look after the
woman and her children. Eileen said:
. . . when we first started, . . . with that safe house thing and when we had
woman in there, maybe one woman got into trouble with her husband, we brought
them in there, and then we used to get all the womans and then go singing there,
you know. Every night we used to sing, enjoy ourselves, just all the woman
singing, and then we used to just leave who ever looking after the woman, and
then the others go home ... couple of womans ... used to stay with that woman
there and look after her . .. and then maybe the husband used to come there, you
know, in the middle of the night, so we had these little walkie-talkies. We had to
ring Sr. Theresa and let her know, and then if the sister wasn't around, we used to
get the nurse or someone or the warden. See the warden used to have one walkietalkie. (Eileen Bray)

57
58

Eileen Bray, interview September 28, 1998
Ngalim means 'woman',purru 'all', and taam 'place'.

79

Polly Widaljil got involved in working with the Safe House when she came back to the
community:

Well, I wasn't here, when that Woman Centre was built up. I was in Derby. That
was long time, see, and when I came back and I see that Woman Centre was built
up and I was start helping the warden. I was a councillo, when I came back from
Broome and we helping one another putting the woman in Safe House . .. and me
and Eileen we used to help woman put her in the Safe House until Sr. Theresa
come. (Polly Widaljil)
One of the non-Aboriginal teachers answered my question about the effect of the Safe
House by recollecting what teachers assistants and clinic personnel had told her:

I remember there was a lot of talk about it from the teachers ' assistants . . . and
they said, that if there was any problem in the home, they could actually go there
and talk to someone and feel safe. I've also heard from various nurses over the
years that actually the violence has lessened quite dramatically. [A nurse}
mentioned that recently. She said that it has really lessened their load. Yes I spoke
with her in connection with Theresa as well and the admirable job she was doing.
(Teacher, a)
Chapter Four will describe the Warmun Women's Centre facilities and how Warmun
women use them. I will also describe its functions as I experienced them during 1997 and 1998.

80

CHAPTER FOUR: THE CENTRE OF A MANY-PETALED FLOWER

THE BUILDING
The Warmun Women's Centre and Safe House (Fig. 15) is located in the southern part of
the community across the road from the Administration office and the bough shed, where the
Council meetings are held. The site was selected because it was easily serviced with sewer, water,
and power, for its physical proximity to the offices ofWarmun Council and Balangarri outstation
administration buildings, and its convenient location near to the community store, the school, and
the proposed Community Education Service. This was seen as important in fostering a cooperative and a mutually supportive relationship between these services (Warmun Women's and
Children's Centre Inc. 1992, 17). The following description is based on my two visits to the
Center in the winters of 1997 and 1998.
The entrance to the Women's Centre is through a gate in the wire fence, about two meters
high through which a visitor steps onto a covered deck. This deck is the most frequently used area
of the complex where women prepare for cooking or relax with a cup of tea and where meetings
are held. It allows a slight breeze to come through and gives shade from the blazing sun even
during the hottest time of the day, from late morning through the afternoon. On the western side
of the deck is the main building, where a hallway leads into a large all-purpose room equipped
with a television set and two sewing machines, a table, a couch, and chairs. In this part of the
building there is also a craft room used for storing sewing and art and crafts material, an office, a
kitchen, and a dining area, which was used for storage. The following intentions were expressed
in the architect's report:
.... The facility is viewed as multi-purpose, providing flexible activity space for
younger and older women, and accommodating both customary and contemporary
cultural and social interests .... The design provides for progressive levels of

81

security and privacy for distinct activity areas . ... The Entry and main activity and
meeting area is relatively "public." The large "meeting room" and adjacent craft
and kitchen areas will accommodate the wide range of suggested activities with
convenient access to external areas .... a covered deck links the main complex to
the "Safe House," providing additional shaded activity space and access to
children's play area. (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc.1992, 17)
The architectural plan for the Women's Centre was seen as introducing an improvement in the
community in that it was better adapted to the local climate than the existing buildings and could
thus serve as a model for future improvements in the housing situation in Warmun.
The architectural form of the Women's Centre is largely determined by attention to
environmental considerations. Warmun community like many others has numerous
examples of poor climatic and functional design. A significant public building of
this type is an opportunity to introduce elements of appropriate design that may
have repercussions for other aspects of the built-environment, and particularly
housing, at W armun. The proposed structure is generally of light framing so as to
avoid thermal build-up. High-set louvres together with large banks of louvre
windows at floor level will enhance natural convective cooling. A raised floor
serves to provide separation from the ground dust zone (W armun Women's and
Children's Centre 1992, 17).
The Safe House part on the eastern side of the deck consists of a room equipped with mattresses
for refuge seekers and their children and for the caregivers. A small kitchen, a utility room
including a laundry, a shower, and a toilet are located adjacent to the Safe House.
In 1997-98 the staff in the Women's Centre consisted of a co-ordinator, two 'inside
workers' responsible for building maintenance, an 'outside worker' for the garden area, one or two
office workers - a position which was often vacant - and the safe house counsellor. The Home and
Community Care (HACC) committee workers, usually two women, also worked in the Centre,
using the kitchen for cooking, and delivered meals to pensioners in the HACC "gator", a small,
open vehicle, parked on the Women's Centre grounds. They also used the Women's Centre's
washing machine to do laundry for pensioners.

82

WERRA WERRA TAAM VEHICLES: WOMEN RE-GAINING MOBILITY
The vehicles owned by the Centre and for the exclusive use of women are an integral part
of the Centre and are vitally important for women's continued contact with the land, for accessing
services in towns and for participating in regional and national women's meetings. I will therefore
start with women's stories about how they use and manage their vehicles. The 'toyota', a troupe
carrier (Fig. 16), is used for all kinds of errands around the community and for trips out on the
land.
Betty Carrington and I were sitting on the school grounds, after Betty had finished her
work tending to the lawns around the school buildings, and I asked her to tell me about the
Women's Centre vehicles. She said that they use the

troupe carrier for collecting things . . .maybe we get things like ochre and many
good thing that for carving on it and painting on it and all that, might be boab nut
and for them coolamon tree or clap sticks. . . .(Fig. 17) that white gum tree. .
.Good for . . .bush medicine, eucalypt tree and strong wood for clapping ... Some
time we go out with the woman, the woman place. And we fill it up [with gasoline]
with our own pocket money when we want to go out. (Betty Carrington)
Is it that white tree that has this white stem? (Anna-Stina)
Yeah plenty, you can see it there at the top of the hill, white everywhere. Another
tree, they call im, .. . yawullin. Yawullin, you make boomerang and clap stick and
fighting stick and all. (Betty Carrington)
When they only had the troupe carrier, the women were limited as to where they could travel.

We couldn't go anywhere, only that troupe carrier. Yeah we had that vehicle for a
long time. (Betty Carrington)
In 1997 the Centre acquired a nine-passenger mini-bus which makes it possible for
women to make longer trips to other communities, towns and cities. Betty said:

We use it la main road, bitumen, for town.

83

Women's mobility and independence has greatly increased through the possibility of
traveling longer distances for individual needs and as a group. During my time in the community
the women used the bus, for instance, to go for breast screening in Kununurra, and to go to
Wyndham for dance performances. The Women's Centre Vehicle Committee was particularly
important for the management of the bus .

. .. the vehicle committee. . . we got to be on it. See what happen, who is paying for
it, who's not paying. . . (Betty Carrington)
The committee had made a set of rules which users had to adhere to. Like Betty, Yvonne
Martin is a member of this committee:

If anybody want to use the bus they have to have meeting with the members, five of
us: me, Sylvia Thomas, Mabel Juli, Betty Carrington and Rosemary Daylight. So if

they want to use the vehicle they go to do shopping they have to come and talk,
aks 59 us and we agree. Like they have to pay 15 0 to hire the bus and if they wanna
go to long distant drive to Broome or Derby or Darwin, it's 600. . .when it has a
flat tire or ... they pay it from their own pocket money. (Yvonne Martin, b)

Betty told me about two trips she went on with the Women's Centre bus. One trip was to
Broome and the other one to Darwin:

We all put in $20 each from here and $20 each coming back. . . .we went to
Darwin with it. We go to art gallery wanted some woman from here. The gallery
had to pay 600. They hired the bus for all the woman . . .a good trip. One day from
Darwin to here, long travel. (Betty Carrington)
Betty is referring to a trip to Darwin organized by Kelarriny, the new community Arts
Centre, to attend the 1998 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Art Awards ceremony. As a
tribute to Warmun artist Rover Thomas, who had died earlier that year, Warmun women
participated in his Gurrir Gurrir corroboree (The Kimberley Echo 1998, Sept 24, 3).
There are also rules regarding passenger behaviour, such as 'no drunk women in the bus,'

59

Linguistic characteristic often heard in Warmun.

84

which are strictly enforced and respected:

We not allowed to take drunken woman on the bus . . . .If they get drunk la town,
we leave them there . .. (Betty Carrington)
In the bus mainly it should be no eating, no drinking drinks, only water, no
smoking, . . . We have turn taking it for service . . .(Yvonne Martin, b)
Even though the vehicles are to be used by women only, there are exceptions. The
following conversation is referring to an incident, where a man had asked me for a ride. After
somebody had convinced me that I could drive him in the Women's Centre car, I asked Yvonne to
clarify this:

We had a bit of a discussion here this morning. It was an old man who wanted to
come and have a ride in the toyota, and I said, well, can he go, can I drive him to
Balangarri . . .. cause I have heard that men can't go. (Author)
Only those on pension, those one what we give them meals on wheels, they are
allowed to be in this troupe carrier ... No younger men. (Yvonne Martin, b)
MANAGEMENT: THE IMPORTANCE OF INDEPENDENCE

The Women's Centre is part of Warmun community and as such included in the
administrative unit ofWarmun Community Inc., but, as mentioned in Chapter Three, it was set
out already during the early planning stages that the women of the community should have total
control over it. The strong desire for organizational independence on the part of the Warmun
women has actually created problems for the Centre in its attempts to obtain external funding for
recurrent, or operational, costs. This independence also means that representatives of outside
agencies, governmental or otherwise, who want to contact the women in the community have to
go through the protocol of approaching the general meeting of the Women's Centre to obtain
permission for arranging any activity at the Centre. I was present at a meeting held by a group of

85

nurses who had announced through the clinic that they would be coming, but had not used the
proper protocol. They were allowed into the Centre but did not have an audience.
Decisions for the Centre are made at the general meeting, which is open to all women in
Warmun. Originally meetings were held weekly, but since 1998 only twice a month. Decisionmaking is by consensus. For these meetings the senior women are usually picked up from their
camps with the troupe carrier or with the bus by Centre staff or by other younger women.
In order for the Centre to function, there are a few women employed through the CDEP
program to take care of coordination, inside and outside cleaning, computer work, and meetings.
To compensate for the non-existent recurrent/operational cost budget, the women fundraise
through cooking, through the sale of art and crafts donated by the growing number of women
artists in the community, through the sale of used clothing, and by producing cards on the
computer. As the Centre usually did not have a secretary or an office worker

"the office60 does it for us mainly, all the business, the office runs for us " (Theresa
Morellini, a).
However, since a computer was acquired in April 1998, bookkeeping, correspondence,
report writing and the development of different projects for funding are gradually being taken
over by the women at the Centre.

We actually got the computer this year .. . it would probably have been April this
year. ... Well, we're still/earning to use the computer. At the moment we've got
our business management. That's what I was working [on} with Helen this
morning. ... They write their own minutes of meetings, and I've been typing them
up in my spare time but hopefully the women will take that over as they learn how
to use the computer better, because it's all in this computer. . .. With all the
different accounts we have, we ask the office when they receive our money to give
us a receipt, and then we put it into our computer so we can keep a check on and
understand how much money we spend, and how much money we make, and what
we spend it on, and what our expenditures are so that the women are starting to
understand the whole financial position of the Woman's Centre and of how they
spend money. (Theresa Morellini, a)

°Council administration office

6

86

The Centre had also been part of the policy and procedures project for the whole community:

The other big thing that's happened this year: the Council has had a team brought
in from Darwin . . . under the support and financial assistance ofArgyle Mine to do
policy making and developing procedures in the community and to develop a
community manual. The Woman's Centre was part of that, and they worked with
the women and had meetings with the women and they added further stuff on to
what you had already started to do last year in the manual. (Theresa Morellini, a)
ACTIVITIES IN THE CENTRE
The Warmun Women's Centre is a very busy place. When I was there from August to
October 1997 while doing my internship, and again from August to November 1998, while doing
my thesis research I observed a high level of activity. Description of these activities from those
time periods will be seen through my eyes and through the words of the women I talked to. It is a
composite story of what I experienced in the Centre through my volunteer tasks, my observations,
and my participation in events in, and related to, the Centre and of what women told me about
their experiences.
When I did my internship with the Werra Werra Taam I was trying to describe the Centre
in the form of an organisational chart, a part of my business administration education. When I
looked at it after my return to Canada, I realized I had not approached my task in an appropriate
manner. First of all I had not asked the women how they saw their organization. What form
would it have taken if they had painted it, for instance? Definitely not the hierarchical chart with
square boxes that I presented to them when we discussed the Centre and the possibilities for
business projects as a source of funding for the Centre. Secondly, as I spent more time at the
Centre, I realized that even if my chart included all the people employed or volunteering there it
would neither depict all the activities of the Centre nor the ongoing contacts made between the
87

Centre and different parts of the community as well as between the Centre and people, agencies,
and institutions outside of Warmun. Once I started thinking about this and tried to imagine a
picture of what I had learned, it looked more like a flower, perhaps a water lily, with the Women's
Centre, its facilities and vehicles, with its women working, visiting, meeting in the Centre of the
flower and the council, the clinic, the church, the Arts Centre, the CDEP, the school, the
Pensioners' Unit etc. forming layers of petals. But maybe I am again imposing my own way of
seeing on Warmun women.
Because my visits were one year apart and because of my continued contact with the
community, this chapter also includes some changes in the function of the Centre. I saw women
using it in many different ways, individually and collectively, constantly interacting with each
other, with other parts of the community and with individuals and groups from outside the
community. From my observations of how the premises, the equipment, and the vehicles were
used by Warmun women I have organized their activities into different categories according to
whom they benefit: the women themselves, the community at large, and people and organizations
outside of the community. I also include the administrative and operational tasks that are
necessary for keeping the Centre going. The refuge, or the Safe House, which occupies a separate
space within the Centre complex, will be dealt with separately. Am I again imposing my own
worldview on Warmun women by separating the individual from the collective? I do not know
the Kija language. Would some linguistic knowledge ofthe Kija use of"I", "we" etc have
informed me?

How Warmun women use the Centre
The Women's Centre in Warmun is a women-only space. No man dares to go through the
gate, for if he does he risks becoming ill because of the sacred Women's Law objects located at
88

the Centre. The function and the benefit of the Centre can be seen to work in several ways for
Warmun women and for the community at large. First, the Centre was available to women to
serve their interests as individuals and as a group. As an individual, a woman could use it for her
own personal care and for that ofher family. By 1998 the housing situation in Warmun was in a
critical state. Many of the houses were old and often overcrowded. They sometimes had to
accommodate up to twenty-four members of an extended family (Warmun Community 1998).
This put stress on facilities such as plumbing, and the ensuing breakdowns were hard for the
community to keep up with. Therefore, the access to a shower and a coin laundry machine in the
Women's Centre was a valuable addition to available community services. Sewing machines were
also available for individual use. Very few houses have telephones in Warmun, so the Centre
served as a place to receive long distance telephone calls or to make calls to contact medical and
other services in regional or state centres. Through the Women's Centre women also have access
to recreational activities, such as television and videos, and the Centre's vehicles are accessible
for private use.
The social aspect of the Centre is very important. It is a place to drop in, to have a mug of
tea and to sit down and talk to other women. It is a place to be when your own house is too noisy
or as a place to use to avoid violent situations. The Woman's Centre is a place that is open to
every woman:

When they come in here they can just go straight in here and do what they want to
do. (Helen Pinday)
That's where we're sitting around now, that's how we wanted it to be, a lovely
breezeway, where they enjoy the breeze and maybe sometime a barbecue and
things like that . . . And the women from elsewhere come and share their ideas . ..
For showing videos and whatever and they use it for sewing. (Shirley Bray, a)
Cerise Ogden is a young mother who often came to the Centre with her two children, twoyear old Samantha and two-month old Vaughn:
89

Yeah, because it's better here than sitting down at home by yourself, and when I
come here I got people to talk to. (Cerise Ogden)
Women also use the Centre as a collective to hold Women's Law meetings, have parties,
attend workshops and conduct business meetings for the running of the Centre. One of the needs
stressed by the 1992 survey report was to keep ' culture' 61 and to transfer it to future generations
of women. The Centre was a place where such activities could be organized. A bush trip for high
school girls, which I participated in, serves as an illustration of the role the Centre played in such
a transmission.
On August 21, 1998, a Women's Centre general meeting was addressed by a group from
the community school consisting of a language teacher, the principal, a high-school teacher, and a
coordinator of Aboriginal studies. The coordinator asked what the women wanted from the school
regarding language and culture. Several suggestions were made, such as taking girls during
school time to the women's Law Place and to the cross-cultural Centre. It was stated that the
knowledge ofKija culture taught to kartiya, white people, at the centre, should also be available
for children in the community. This refers to the fact that the Daiwul Gidja cross-cultural Centre,
which was set up with the financial support of the Argyle Diamond Mine, catered mostly to nonAboriginal visitors. Concerns were also expressed that the older girls did not get language
training, which was only provided for the lower grades. This was explained by the lack of teacher
resources. The meeting decided to organize a bush trip for highschool girls with women's
traditional activities on the land. The school had earlier arranged for men taking boys out on
'country,' but this had not been done for girls. This meeting was followed up by another meeting
at the Centre, when Elders Queenie McKenzie, Betty Carrington, Winnie Budbaria, Madigan

61

In 'culture' is included traditional knowledge about the land, plants, animals, kinship relations,
language, rituals, and all the traditional aspects of life.

90

Thomas, Ivy Bindai, and Mabel Juli were asked to make decisions about the suitable time and
location for the outing and to give advice on the trip.
On September 14, I joined Ivy Binday, Shirley Bray, Rosemary Daylight, four little boys,
two teachers, Marika and Denise, and about ten high school girls setting out for an excursion to
Bow River, an Aboriginal outstation. This location had been chosen because it was not effected
by the Green Stations' prohibition against Aborigines' access to land, which was in force at that
time. The prohibition was a result of an incident in August 1998, on Lissadell station involving
damage to cattle which was not solved at the time 62 and resulted in all Aboriginal people being
denied access to the stations. At the tum-off to Bow River a car rally team informed us that this
area would be cut offuntil dark 63 . Therefore, it was decided to go to the Crocodile Hole outstation
instead. (Fig 18a). There we found a pool of water, one of the few left during the dry season,
when the rivers dry out leaving only isolated smaller bodies of water in some parts of the river
beds. Fishing had been chosen for the girls' bush experience, because it is traditionally done by
women. Branches and bark were taken from a special tree and smashed against a rock at the
water's edge. A white, soapy liquid was released into the water, and then all the branches were
thrown into the water (Fig 18b). Shirley had taken the lead, and while we were waiting for the
plant chemical to have its anesthetic effect on the fish, she instructed the girls to make a hole in
the sand and start a fire. The teachers put on a billycan64 of water for tea and another can for
potatoes and pumpkin. In the meantime Shirley was mixing flour, baking powder, salt, and water.

62

"Alleged cattle duffers plead not guilty", The Kimberley Echo, October 15, 1998.
According to The Kimberley Echo, September 17, p 17, 1998, the Sony Playstation RallyRound Australia had cancelled the part of the race which was to be held at Bow River: "A number
of the creek crossing proved too sandy for the two wheel drive vehicles participating in the rally.
Apparently several air conditioners also blew, being unable to cope with the 38 degree
temperatures."
64
Billycan is a large can with a handle used for cooking over a campfire.
91

63

Some of the girls joined her in making flat round cakes, "damper," approximately the length of a
hand in diameter, which were baked on the coals (Fig 18c). She then gathered the girls together to
talk about skin names. 'Skin' is the English word for the kinship term that refers to one out of
eight categories, or subsections into which a Kija person is born (Kimberley Language Resource
Centre n.d.; Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1996a, 11). This is a "highly intricate,
extremely complex system of relationships, which entails strict obligation and behaviour rules
among its members" (Butters and O'Donoghue 1995, 12). The skin is determined by the
combination of your parents' skins. "Your skin ... determines who you can marry. Each skin has
a 'straight skin' of the opposite sex and you are only allowed to marry your 'straight skin"'
(Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1996a, 12). Shirley asked the girls: "What's your skin?"
Then she told them what skin their boyfriends could be by going through all the boys in the high
school, and telling them what their skin names were. Shirley also talked about whom they could
not talk to, that is, the avoidance rules that have to be adhered to, for instance between brother
and sister. We did not catch any fish that day and we were back in Warmun before 4 o'clock
(Kjellstrom 1998, September 14).

Benefit of Women's Centre to community at lar2e
Meals-on wheels
The Women's Centre was also used for work, which served the community as a whole.
One service offered until 1999 was the Home and Community Care (HAC C) which is part of a
government program serving pensioners who live in their own camps. Although Warmun has an
old age care home, the Pensioners' Unit, many elderly people remain in their own camps. They
received a cooked meal delivered to them and could access the HACC laundry service that used
the Women's Centre washing machine. The cooking started early because of the hot weather,
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.---------------------------usually around 7 a.m (Fig. 19). There were two regular HACC workers, but often other women
who happened to be in the Centre helped to distribute the food. The coordinator for HACC in
1998, Yvonne Martin, who appears in the following quotations, described her working day:

I come in the morning to do cooking for the old people about till 11 ... and take
the lunches out, and I write some sheets up to see how much the old pensioners
should pay, and . .. there's only two of us, ... , some of the girls, like Maryanne,
she helps to take it around and my daughter, Melissa . .. when she's here. And then
if no one is, then I take it around with the little gator to the people that we give
lunches to.
The number of pensioners using the service varies according to Yvonne:

We usually had 19 before, but we are back to 15 .. . some of them that can't make
the fires or can't stand near the fire and make their own, cook their own tucker, 65
mainly those ones that can't do those things.
This service also included younger people with special needs:

Doctor Ward. . . give us prescription for them who really need lunch from us.
The menu includes a good variety of foods :

today we're cooking corned beef with veggies. Yesterday we had mince and rice . ..
and Monday we had. . .sausages and noodle soup.
HACC gives this food service four days a week:

Only from Monday till Thursday, but if Thursday they get pension we just left that
Thursday off because they tell us they get their own money to buy their own food
so sometime we don't give them on Thursday pension week, but sometime we do
give them.
The rest of the week, as Yvonne said:

Well they get their ownfamily in the house that cooks for them then. We leave it up
to the families then.
The cost of the lunches/dinners is taken out of the pensions received:

We're charging them ... 3 dollars for 5 days or 4 days and we just add them and
the days and takes it out of their pension money, every pension week.

65

'Tucker' is Australian English colloquial for 'food.'

93

The HACC committee used to buy the supplies from the local community owned store but in
1998 they had it delivered from a company in Kununurra:

when we used to buy it here we used to buy it sort of every second week .... we used
to buy it here but it makes it more easy when we order it from different company
that we can last it for two weeks or four weeks.. . . "
Yvonne said about how she got involved in the program:

Sylvia Thomas was coordinator for HACC. She used to coordinate for HACC
before and I used to be helping her . .. I enjoy the cooking and things .. . when
they ask us for to . . .leave our place and go to another place for workshop . . .I just
like to stay in a place and cook.
The Centre was also the place where meetings were held when the HACC program aid
worker arrived from Broome to discuss different issues with the women employed in the
program. At a meeting I attended in 1998 the 'gator', an open small vehicle for local driving to
deliver the lunches/dinners, was brought up (Fig 19). It needed a roof to protect the women and
the food from heat and dust and the aid worker was to talk to the CDEP office about it. The aid
worker asked for a list of supplies needed, such as food, cutlery, and pots, and informed the
HACC committee that there was money available for these needs. She also asked about the local
store prices and questioned whether the pensioners could get a rebate.

Fundraising activities
In their efforts to raise money for recurrent costs for the Centre Warmun women have
worked on projects that serve as fundraisers and, at the same time, benefit different parts of the
community. Considering that Warmun is located two hours' drive by from Kununurra, the closest
commercial centre used by people in Warmun, the Centre can provide important services. One
such activity was to provide CDEP workers with 'smoko,' that is sandwiches for their morning
break. Helen Pinday presented the new project at a collective meeting. Two days later we were all
94

into sandwich production around the tables on the deck. This arrangement also resulted in the
Women's Centre receiving two bread machines from the CDEP office.
Another income creating project that the women have started is a cooking program for
pension day. The days pensions were paid out were usually also gambling days. All other
activities seemed to stop at these occasions and people gathered in certain camps to participate in
or watch card gambling. Theresa Morelllini described the women's cooking project by saying:

they cook usually every pension day and they sell it around the community, and
they make about . .. 3 or 400 dollars cooking meals and taking around and selling
them to the people in the community ... they have made a fair bit of money on that.
(Theresa Morellini, b)
Making Christmas cards using the scanner with the new computer was a project that one of the
younger women had taken on to organize. She was asking women artists to donate their designs
for cards. This project started in 1998 and by Christmas there were several different designs for
sale as part of the fundraising effort (Fig. 20). Sewing projects such as making curtains for the
single men's quarters and also for the pensioners unit, skirts for dancing, and computer covers for
the administration office have created income but it also contributes to the continuation of the
tradition of W arrnun women working together.
Use of Centre by outsiders
The Centre also serves as a point of contact for all kinds of agencies and organizations local, regional, state, and federal - both those who want to reach women and children in Warmun
to offer and organize service and those who want to seek the services of Warmun women. These
services could be both cross-cultural and intra-cultural. Examples of cross-cultural activities were
when Warmun women were called upon to dance and sing and share their culture with visiting
groups at the nearby Mirrilingki Spirituality Centre. On one occasion that I attended, the Argyle
Diamond Mine arranged a barbecue at the mining site as a farewell party for an employee. At this
95

event Warmun women performed their Barramundi corroboree, a dance performed as a tribute to
Tayiwul, the women's sacred site that had been destroyed by the mine.
An example of intra-cultural sharing was when Warmun women were invited to

contribute to an upcoming Aboriginal Women's Health Workers conference. The conference was
directed at nurses' assistants and aid workers and was held at Mirrilingki Spirituality Centre. The
women's collective meeting agreed that Warmun women would be responsible for two sessions at
the health conference, one about family violence and Warmun women's experience with the Safe
House, and the other about bush medicine and other forms of traditional healing.
I was invited to join Shirley Purdie, Shirley Bray, Amy Trust and Ivy Binday on a trip to
prepare for the session on bush medicine. We drove south to Norton Bore and Violet Valley
outstations located about one hour's drive from Warmun. Shirley Purdie made stops on the way
to point out healing trees and plants. This is her country and she has special knowledge of where
to find different kinds of healing herbs and trees. The following is Shirley Bray's story about the
actual workshop, and about how the women had taken the health workers out on the land to show
them bush 'tucker' and bush medicine.

It was all different groups from different communities and towns that came here to
have their meetings here about health, the Kimberley health thing, and so they got
me and Shirley and my other sister Eileen to show them bush medicine and bush
tucker, so we took them out and we showed them different types of medicine that's
to cure boils and sores and scabies and even if you have those warts, those things
that build up on your body. So we showed them different types of medicine to use .
. . even with ringworms. We showed them a medicine that could cure that. We've
got some of that and use it on myself and it did the work for me, so that is the right
type of medicine, I think. I'm sure of that because it worked. So we went on to
show them bush honey, also that is good medicine for cold sick and stuff and even
the boab nut. We cracked open the nut and we get the white inside . .. it's good for
cold sick and for diarrhoea and treat our kids and also bush yams that's good for
you ... We took them out to Norton Bore and we boiled up a few of these medicine
and so them had a drink of that lemon grass, and we put some of the medicine on
few of those people who had them sores and then I cooked some of those yams and
gave it to the health mob, the young people. They said it was beautiful and then we
talked about it and then we finally came home. (Shirley Bray, b)

96

~

-

After the conference the coordinator of the conference relaxed in the Women's Centre and told us
that the workshop participants had really appreciated the input of the Warmun women. Shirley
Bray also commented that the trip had been very successfuL-

They enjoyed it very much. And they said they enjoyed every moment of it, because
of what we showed them about bush tucker and bush medicine and stuff like that.
(Shirley Bray, b)
Margaret Stewart gives evidence of Warmun women's generous sharing of their
knowledge about the use of herbs and other healing practices to Aboriginal and nonAboriginal women alike. Similarly to myself and other non-Aboriginal women I have
talked to, she experienced the healing touch by Warmun women as a group:
When I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with my daughter, the Law women laid
hands on me, prayed over, wiped me with the sweat from under their arms, and lit
a small fire from lawuny leaves and wood to allow the smoke to come over me.
This was done to impart strength and peace, to welcome the baby before birth, and
to keep the mother and baby well. The women prayed to Ngapuny (God). When
asked what they were saying in the prayers, Peggy Patrick replied, "We pray to
make the baby come quick, straight and no muckin' around." Most certainly the
prayers were answered, with only a two-hour labour to endure. (Stewart 1999, 45)
When I came back to W armun in September 1998, I asked Theresa to fill me in on what
had happened in the Center since I left it eleven months before. She told me that there had been
some personnel changes. It had been, and still was, a very busy time for Warmun women: the
further development ofDaiwul Gidja Cultural Centre, the opening of the new Arts Centre, now
under the new direction of the community, as well as the community policy and procedures
process. All this had taken and was still taking a lot of the women's time in the form of meetings.
This had affected projects like the cooking program, according to Theresa:

Other than having the women's meetings because of the processes that are going
on in the community. It is enough for them, and they've had enough by the time
they are finished there. (Theresa Morellini, a)
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The need for the Centre to be a place of relaxation rather than a work place seemed to have
increased.
The Centre is also used for planning Warmun women's involvement in festivals and other
gatherings outside of the community. Warmun women won a $1000 price for best women's
dancing by performing the Barramundi Dreaming corroboree during the NAIDOC 66 week in
Broome, July 5- 12, 1998. They had also participated in a Women's Law meeting in Kununurra
and danced at the opening of the Fitzroy Crossing Women's Centre.
My field notes from my last weeks in Warmun in October 1998 recorded how I saw
construction going on at the 'old Women's Centre,' the building where the women had started to
talk about getting a Centre a decade or more ago . This building is now included in an extension
plan for the Centre. It had been used as a single men's quarter, but the women did not feel
comfortable with it as the next-door neighbour to the Women's Centre, and the location of the
men's quarters had to be moved. The building was now being prepared to be used as a hair
dressing saloon and as a laundromat - a planned community service and at the same time an
income creating activity for the Women's Centre. This building is included in a new architectural
plan for the Centre (Fig. 21) but is to be located outside of the enclosed area, to allow men to use
it. According to this new architectural plan the shelter and the garden area are to be extended.

66

"NAIDOC Week is the highlight of the year for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people and their supporters. In all capital cities and many regional communities, it is the focus for
a week of activities organized by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to increase
awareness and understanding of their rich and diverse heritage. Originally, NAIDOC stood for
National Aborigines and Islander Day Observance Committee. Over the years, the acronym has
also come to stand for National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Celebration" (ATSIC 2000).
NAIDOC formed in 1957 to focus attention on the Aboriginal communities (The Kimberley Echo,
Oct. 1, 1998) and (http://www.atsic.gov.au/default_ns.asp).
98

I left on November 4, 1998, and since then there have been some changes. The meals-on
wheels service has moved to the Pensioners Unit, and the Center is used mostly for relaxation as a
communal, women-only gathering place as well as a safe house. My observations in the Warmun
Women's Centre indicated that Warmun women have accomplished what they set out to achieve:
a safe place, a meeting place, a drop-in place, a place for organizing events, and a potential work
place. Its uses have changed as the community has changed and as the needs of the women have
changed but it is still a central place for Warmun women.

THE SAFE HOUSE
Violence in ~:en e relations in

i~:in

societies

Violence in Aboriginal society should be seen in a historical context. It is important to
realize the role of colonization in the changes in Kija society regarding violence against women.
According to Eileen Cummings, an Aboriginal woman and Policy Officer of Women's Affairs in
Northern Territory, most Aboriginal women, and especially the older women "are adamant that
the sort of violence levelled at women today has no counterpart in traditional practices" and she
points out that violence in traditional society was not between individuals but was punishment by
the community and carried out under Aboriginal Law (Cummings 1995, 1). Before invasion,
violence against women, if not non-existent, was rare in Aboriginal communities as it was in
North America where "the traditional respect accorded to Native women made it unthinkable in
Aboriginal cultures to practise violence against them" (Anderson 2000, 94). In Australia,
according to the Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), during
40,000 years ofthe tradition of family life,
they had established their own laws, customs and ceremonial rights which
everyone knew and respected. The family unit was unique in that each member
had an equally important role to play . . . our children were brought up in a
99

..---------------------

- ---- -

protected environment where child abuse and neglect were non-existent . . . .
Although some violence did exist at this time, any one person who caused harm or
dishonour to another was usually dealt with by the Elders or other members of the
community according to customary law. Nothing to the extent of today's family
violence existed. (SNAICC 1992, 2)
This mirrors descriptions of other gender balanced societies such as that of the Iroquois
where men did not rape women because their "religious, legal, social, and economic concept of
women made such behaviour unthinkable" (Wagner 1999, 63). Regarding violence against
women in the Kimberley, Phyllis Kaberry wrote:
I, personally, have seen too many women attack their husbands with a tomahawk
or even their own boomerangs, to feel that they are invariably the victims of illtreatment. A man may perhaps try to beat his wife if she has not brought in
sufficient food, but I never saw a wife stand by in submission to receive
punishment for her culpable conduct. In the quarrel she might even strike the first
blow, and if she were clearly in danger of being seriously hurt, then one of the
bystanders might intervene, in fact, always did within my experience. Such
disputes owing to the separation of the sexes during the greater part of the day
generally took place in the camp, and since the country was comparatively fertile,
a number of people would be living together, and, therefore, she was not without
protection .. .. Ultimately, the man's superior physical strength tells in such a
struggle, but then most probably she will pack up her goods and chattels and move
to the camp of a relative, perhaps even her sister-in-law, till the loss of an
economic partner, someone to fetch firewood and water, and carry his burdens,
brings the man to his senses, and he attempts a reconciliation .... If we are to speak
of authority at all, it must be defined not only in terms of his privileges on the one
hand, but also by hers on the other - in short, by those reciprocal rights and duties
that are recognized to be inherent in marriage. (Kaberry 1939, 142)
From the end of the eighteenth century colonization brought changes to Aboriginal
women as British attitudes and laws were introduced into Australia. With the implementation of
British law women and children became the possessions of a man, who had a right to beat them
and could expect the support ofthe Law (SNAICC 1992, 1). Since the invasion, white men have
used Aboriginal women and girls as slaves in their homes and camps. They have
abused Aboriginal women verbally and physically. They have been responsible for
'gin sprees' or 'gin busting' excursions- the object being to rape, maim or kill as
many black women as possible. (Daylight and Johnstone 1986, 66)
Through the colonization process kin groups were dispersed, adults and children were
100

separated in government and mission stations and children were removed from their families.
This disrupted the traditional transfer of sexual knowledge through stories, ceremonies and songs
and "left many Aboriginal women ignorant ofbasic facts about sex matters and without control
over this aspect of their lives. They are consequently particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation
and victimisation" (Daylight and Johnstone 1992, 63).
I have not intended to attempt to explain the acts of violence by Aboriginal men against
women in Warmun in particular or in Aboriginal communities in general as part of this thesis.
The impact of colonial history on Aboriginal people, and the violence inherited from white
society together with the continued racism in Australian society must, however, be seen as
integral parts of Aboriginal experience. As stated by Eleanor Leacock, "it is crass ethnocentrism,
if not outright racism, to assume that the grim brutality of Europeans toward the Australians they
were literally seeking to exterminate was without profound effect. A common response to defeat
is to turn hostility inward" (Leacock 1981, 143). This was expressed by the Safe House counselor,
Theresa Morellini, as we were standing in front of a tree in the schoolyard in Warmun when she
told me: "If you are writing about the Safe House and about domestic violence you have to
include things like this tree. This is where people were chained and beaten. It is part of people's
history here and that is why it cannot be cut down" (Kjellstrom 1997).

Women's Camps
The fact that Warmun women, through the Werra Werra Taam, have established a special
'camp'- taam in Kija means 'camp, place'- a Women's Centre where women can take refuge in
violent or otherwise disturbing situations raises the question of the degree to which this is a
continuation, a revitalization or an innovation in postcolonial times of a cultural tradition. Diane

101

Bell describes the institution ofjilimi, or the women's camp, as it functioned in the early 1980s
among Central Desert Aboriginal women:
... the structure and organization of the jilimi was the affair of senior women ....
the women who slept in the jilimi . .. are the single girls who are reluctant or too
young to go to their promised husbands; women who are seeking a safe
environment while visiting Warrabri without their spouses or who, following a
dispute, have temporarily vacated the swag of their spouse; women who are ill or
in need of emotional support and those who are not yet through the final stages of
mourning. Accompanying all these women are their dependent children and
charges. During the day married women from nearby camps come into the jilimi to
socialize but at night they return to their husband's camp .. . . Forming the
permanent core of the jilimi are those widows who have chosen not to remarry and
other women who, although 'married', are not domiciled with their husbands . ..
The .... jilimi embody much that is dear to women: [it] provides visible proof in
the wider society of women's separateness and independence. It is from the jilimi
that women's ritual activity is initiated and controlled, and it is in the jilimi that
women achieve a separation from men in their daily activities. A refuge, a focus of
women's daily activities, an area taboo to men, a power base, an expression of
women's solidarity, the home of the ritually important and respected women, the
jilimi is all this and more .... It was a safe place I could enter freely, where I could
seek company or merely sit and contemplate. (Bell1993a, 16)
There is no indication in Phyllis Kaberry's early ethnography from the Kimberley (1939)
of a special women's camp even though there are many indications of spaces that are women's
spaces. However, Sandy Toussaint mentions in her follow-up study of Phyllis Kaberry's
ethnography in the Fitzroy Crossing area south of Warmun that women there take refuge in a
'women's camp':
Nola, like many other elderly, and not so elderly, women, became a resident of the
'women's camp' at Junjuwa. Here she gained protection from drunks, including
drunken kin. She also received emotional and social support for her predicament.
Such support and protection occurred because the 'women's camp', where
widowed and single women who did not want to 'know' another man after a
relationship break-up resided, was a place recognized by Junjuwa residents as 'just
for women'. While most often 'drunken people' kept away, this was not always
the case and, on some occasions, men who had been drinking would try to invade
the area. The women, or one of the community councillors (usually a man), would
sometimes call the police, rather than a kinsperson, to remove the intruders when
this happened. (Toussaint 1995, 291)

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Thus the women's camp at Fitzroy Crossing seems to be functioning in a way similar to
thejilimi of the Central Desert. It seems that, as in the case of the Central Desert, the women's

only camp in the Kimberley could be
an elaboration of a traditional form. In the past the separation allowed each to
demonstrate independence without compromising the essentially complementary
nature of male and female activities in the maintenance of their society. Today the
separation of the sexes and women's independence are no longer mutually
reinforcing values. There is an increasingly felt need, on the part of women, to
assert their sexual solidarity. (Bell 1993a, 84)
Diane Bell also says that
in their rapidly crumbling world, women have clung tenaciously to certain key
values and to institutions such as the separation of the sexes in the jilimi. In so
doing women have found continued meaning for their self-image as independent
and autonomous members oftheir society. (Bell 1993a, 94)
Women's shelters in Abori2inal communities
In telling their stories about how they worked to create the Women's Centre and Safe
House Warmun women stressed the problem with 'grog', i.e. the fact that "alcohol abuse is the
contributing factor ofviolence in their communities" (Cummings 1995, 1). Despite the fact that
Warmun is declared a 'dry' community, alcohol and drugs enter the community in different ways.
Women have often been publicly outspoken and active in trying to remedy this . Veronica Ryan's
account includes an incident where Queenie, Dottie and Madigan, as elected members of the
Community Council "decided to take action against those who brought alcohol into the settlement
and those who were guilty of disruptive behaviour. Such was their desire to restore order that they
took it upon themselves to administer corporal punishment to those who faltered in their
responsibility." This approach was later changed into using less physical means of dealing with
the problem of alcohol (Ryan 1991 , 222). Another example of the women's way of trying to deal
with the 'grog' was when the Boss for Women's Law, Peggy Patrick, addressed the men at a
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community meeting following the women's return from Women's Law. One teacher recalled what
happened when Peggy said;
'I want you all to look at me,' and the men wouldn't, and she said: 'You can look at
me. I want you to look at me. ' And some of the white teachers were scared. They
didn't want to look up and three times at least she said: 'Look at me.' And then she
said: 'I want you men to know this,' she said, 'You're not to go near the girls when
you're drunk.' And she said that about three times. 'I don't want you to come to our
houses when you're drunk. You are not to bother the young girls. She was very
strong about it. (Teacher, b)

I witnessed yet another example ofWarmun women's decisiveness when it comes to take
action to protect their community. I was sitting on the Women's Centre veranda watching people
gather under the community bough shed across the road. I commented to Shirley Purdie: "It's a
big meeting you have there" who answered as she hurried out through the gate: "Y a, big meeting
for grog." I was later told that Shirley had called this special community meeting, the biggest
meeting I witnessed during my stay in Warmun (Kjellstrom 1998, August 31).

The Warmun Safe House in an Australian context
In order to place the Warmun Safe House in the wider context ofhow contemporary
society deals with violence against Aboriginal women on a national and regional level, I will refer
to the Women's Business Report of the Aboriginal Women's Task Force (Daylight and Johnstone
1986). This was the first time the Australian Government specifically asked for Aboriginal
women's views. The Task Force, which was working with a mandate from the Department of the
Prime Minister and Cabinet's Office of the Status of Women consisted of a team of thirteen
Aboriginal women, who during a twelve months period consulted with Aboriginal women in 206
communities across Australia. Among these communities were Warmun (Turkey Creek) and its
neighbouring towns ofKununurra and Halls Creek (xi, xii). The scope of the task force was "to
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inquire into the involvement of Aboriginal women in land rights, culture, health, housing,
education, employment, legal aid, child welfare, [t]o seek to have Aboriginal women identify
their critical needs in those areas [and t]o make recommendations to the Commonwealth on what
action may be taken" (Ibid. v). The report deals mainly with the social and cultural conditions of
Aboriginal women and covers women's refuges only briefly. It states, however, that incidents of
rape and incest are problems in Aboriginal communities (Ibid. 63). It also reports an increase in
domestic violence to which increased alcohol abuse is directly related but not the only cause
(68).
A second national publication, the handbook, Through Black Ey es, was the result of the
1989 Secretariat ofthe National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) conference on
domestic violence and a response to "seemingly increasing incidents of family and child sexual
abuse" (SNAICC 1992, vi). It states that family violence was widespread in Aboriginal
communities and that it had to be seen as a community problem (vi).
The seriousness of family violence in Aboriginal communities has been stated for the
Kimberley region of Western Australia at meetings and in reports :
Aboriginal people living in rural areas or regional centres are "more than twice as
likely as ' city' Aborigines and about 63 times more likely than 'country' non
Aborigines to be victims of reported domestic violence"(Northern Health
Authority, 1995). Research has highlighted "higher victimization rates of
Aboriginal women, particularly in rural areas" (Northern Health Authority, 1995 p
21, 66). The difficulty for Aboriginal women in rural areas to access safety and
support services has also been well documented (National Committee on Violence
against Women, 1992 & Women' s Legal Services Inc., 1995). (Hedland College
1997, 4)
In an effort to deal with the situation for Aboriginal women in so-called remote areas the
Western Australia Health Department created the Community based Domestic Violence Services
Initiatives Project. One purpose of the project was to collect ideas from Aboriginal communities
that have not benefited from mainstream services and because of this had tried to solve the
105

problem of violence against women on their own. A second aim was to acquire a list of projects
that could improve the situation for the community. The suggested project would then be funded
by the Western Australian government with amounts of$5,000 to $10,000 for each ofthe
communities participating in the survey (Hedland College 1997, 2). The report from this project,
There is no excuse for family violence, found four response models to domestic violence used in
Aboriginal communities: action groups, education programs, safe houses and a combination of
safe houses and women centres (7). By 1997 safe houses existed in Halls Creek, Wyndham,
Warmun, Mulan, Fitzroy Crossing and Derby. The report described the combined Women's
Centre and Safe House in Warmun as an ideal model, which could be copied by other
communities.
In Warmun community a multifunctional center "Women's Place" has been built

which has no stable means of operational funding, income or subsidy, it is run by a
group of community women and a Catholic Church nun. The council also supports
the Centre, it is also limited with the amount of funding that the Women's Centre
receive from the council. The Women's Centre at Warmun is an (sic) community
based service that would be an ideal model to be developed in the Kimberley
remote communities if adequate resources and funding were available. (Hedland
College 1997, 15)
The report indicates that Warmun women put in a lot of time and effort into the Hedland

College project. They held meetings, wrote reports, and made a budget. In January 1998 the
researchers advised the community, however, that the funding for the initiative to improve the
domestic violence situation agreed upon by the Western Australian Health Department was no
longer available. As of the end of August of 1998, none of the communities had received any
money despite written complaints to the state government.

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Manaeement and fundine
The Safe House Committee which is responsible for the management of the refuge
consisted in November of 1998 of Peggy Patrick, Mary Thomas, Eileen Bray, Shirley Bray. and
Betty Carrington. As mentioned in Chapter Three, a counsellor, Theresa Morellini, has been
employed for the Safe House since its opening in 1996. Her duties also include being a drug and
alcohol counsellor for the whole community. Betty Carrington told me about her work with the
committee. She has a key to the Safe House and she and other members of the committee take a
refuge seeking woman to the Safe House and stay with her to look after her. It is usually younger
women who need protection against violence. 67 Shirley Bray, another committee member said:
We got some old people that help, maybe that camp overnight here ... Aunty Betty
and old Mabel, but me I've bin in here a couple of times with the daughter-in-law.
(Shirley Bray, a)

When I asked Helen Pinday about the safety procedures for the shelter, she said that
if blokes coming they'll get real sick. Well, they understand anyway, so when old
woman told them that they got the stuff here they knew about it see so we don't get
blokes in here now, . . .cause they know Woman's Law is more stronger ... that's the
thing that keep them out. (Helen Pinday)

Other safety measures are sometimes still needed because alcohol consumption affects
the judgement of the men, but also, as Helen said:
Sometime you get some woman from town, and then some of them don't know
about this thing, but all the men here in Warmun they know they can't come in here
when we got this thing here. Ifthere's a woman in town want to come in here and
the town bloke follow her ... but all these men here in Warmun they know and they
get respect. (Helen Pinday)

When I asked: "So do you often get women from town too?" she replied:
Not all the time . .. few we get .. . when they do all woman grab that bloke if they
do ever jump in. If the bloke get in here and that thing is there them old woman

67

From 1997 to 1998 the counsellor had seen a trend of increasingly younger women using the
Safe House.
107

they go and have a talk with him and tell him "You must not go in here, " 'cause
they get real sick for that. (Helen Pinday)
While the Safe House has been successful, it still has problems with funding. The Safe
House consellor said:

We have no funding for the Safe House. We've got exactly $300 something in the
bank, which the women have raised themselves. We are seeking funds . We've got
about three or four people helping us to find funds because we don't fit into the
normal categories of woman's refuge that are in the town situation, because we
are not used every day, so we're mainly used on the week-ends.
Last year the community would give the women, because most . . . of the women
were Elders and because of their pension were not allowed to get full pay or
women who were on pensions, so they were given a food voucher for working in
the Women's Centre, but this year they haven't had the money to do that so the
women have volunteered this year and it makes it so much harder for them to come
and work and look after the people, because of this. (Theresa Morellini, c)
As mentioned above the Safe House has also been used as a refuge by women from other
communities, but the financial situation impedes the ability of the Safe House to respond to these
requests. My field notes from August 22, 1998, illustrate the situation: "A woman from Halls
Creek is seeking refuge here. Problem: to find someone to stay with her. The staff is all
volunteers, so nobody is on paid duty continuously. And this weekend most of the community is
in Wyndham for the festival." A few days later there was another request by somebody from
outside the community to use the Safe House. "A woman presently in the Kununurra safe house
wants to come here. Problem: Safe House has no budget, run by a volunteer committee and a
volunteer roaster, no money for food and supplies. . . . Problem with Kununurra safe house is that
it is not Aboriginal, but can be used by every woman. And obviously Aboriginal women do not
feel comfortable there" (Kjellstrom 1998, August 26).
Although the Safe House was working well for the community and was even seen as a
model for other communities the premises were still temporary, because ofthe lack of space both
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for refuge seekers and for counselling needs. On July 30, 1997, Homeswest had informed the

Werra Werra Taam that they would allow $80,000, as originally allocated, for an extension of the
Safe House. Based on this information a proposed development plan including drawings for an
extended Safe House within the Centre and an increased outside/garden area for the Women's
Centre, was finalized on November 9, 1997. The Homeswest funding was, however, conditional
on securing recurrent funding for the operation of the Safe House. Several applications for such
funding have been made, but none had been approved as of June of 2000 (Pers. comm). One
reason for this is the independent status of the Women's Centre, as it is not tied to any regional,
state or federal agency. Another, mentioned by the counsellor and quoted above is that it is not a
full-time operation, since it is usually only used during weekends, and therefore does not fit into
the requirements of funding organizations.

Effects of the Warmun Safe House
During its first year of operation the Safe House gave shelter and protection to women and
children at more than one hundred occasions. Besides being used by Warmun women, also
women from Glen Hill outstation, Frog Hollow community, and from the towns of Halls Creek,
Kununurra, and Port Hedland had sought and been given refuge in the Warmun Safe House.
Possible reasons for this could have been a feeling of increased safety ofbeing away from one's
own community but also feeling more comfortable in an all-Aboriginal refuge. Inter-racial
shelters are available in towns like Kununurra. But as an Australian Broadcast Corporation
broadcast stated on September 25, 1998, 7:45a.m.: Aboriginal women are more likely to
experience domestic violence, but shelters are not currently culturally appropriate (Kjellstrom
1998, September 25).

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One of the non-Aboriginal teachers answered my question about the effect of the Safe
House by recollecting what teachers' assistants and clinic personnel had told her:
I remember there was a lot of talk about it from the teachers' assistants ... and

they said, that if there was any problem in the home, they could actually go there
and talk to someone and feel safe. I've also heard from various nurses over the
years that actually the violence has lessened quite dramatically. [A nurse}
mentioned that recently. She said that it has really lessened their load. Yes I spoke
with her in connection with Theresa as well and the admirable job she was doing.
(Teacher, a)

The Safe House, or in Kija, Ngalim Purru Taam, (Warmun Community 1998, 10), has
provided benefits on multiple levels. First, there is the evident benefit to the individual woman in
need of a refuge.

They feel safe here. When stay Ia camp that they killem. Too drunk. (Queenie
McKenzie, a)
The Safe House is used by Warmun women in cases of violence or anticipated violence,
but also during other disturbances in the camp.

Sometime maybe older people, old lady, when maybe younger making humbug,
takim old lady, takim Ia Safe House and let them have a good rest there, sleep
overnight, if they do not get much sleep Ia camp. (Betty Carrington)
Besides assisting the individual woman the Safe House also benefits the whole
community. As stated in the 1992 survey report, a violent home situation affects not only the
immediate and extended family but "through the intricate net of traditional kinship relations the
whole community." The Warmun Women and Children's Committee Survey Report foresaw this
function of the Safe House: "Apart from the direct threat of physical injury there is the added
complication of family members from all sides being embroiled and the unsettling effects that can
persist for days or weeks afterwards" (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc.1992, 16).
Theresa Morellini, the former teacher and pastoral worker in Warmun, has been the Safe House
counsellor from the start. She worked with the women both in the shelter and in the community,
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provided drug and alcohol counseling for men and women, arranged workshops, and assisted in
giving women and men access to treatment programs in other locations.
Cerise Ogden made the following observations about the benefits of the Safe House:

Well, now and then when I come there is some people using the Safe House, and
like you see them take time off from getting into fights and things with their
husbands and like it's good, because they gotta think about what they're doing and
what they gotta do if it happens again, and it gives the children a bit of a relief,
because it's pretty hard for them to see their parents having a fight, and like in the
future it's going to affect them, and they'll be doing the same most probably when
they're growing up, because they seen it with their parents and most likely being
doing exactly the same instead giving them a clean environment with no violence
whatever .... it gives a woman a bit of relief because they know they got somewhere
to go to, to give their husband a chance to cool down .. .. Well, I reckon they should
have one in every place, no matter how small or how big. (Cerise Ogden)
The counsellor commented on the effects the shelter had had during the time it had been
open, from December 1996 to November 1998:

I think it has made a big difference for women. I also think it has sort of made the
men think too, because they really don't like their women leaving them and I think
it's using the Safe House and the women leaving the men have made the men think
twice, because this year the cases have been cut by about half at least the actual
use, the women needing to come to safety. (Theresa Morellini)
One of the non-Aboriginal teachers confirms this:

Regarding violence within the community a nurse remarked to me a few weeks ago
that there has been an incredible drop in the number of girls coming attending the
clinic for reasons of violence because of the counselling they are receiving from
Sr. Theresa who is the community counsellor. Violence is much less. She also
remarked to me that their workload has lessened dramatically because of the work
of Theresa. (Teacher, b)
Since I had heard that men sometimes ask for their partners to be taken to the shelter,
when they feel they might be going out of control, I asked Ethel McLennan about this. She said:

That's what I've heard [at] different times. "Take the women up there and let them
stay up there, it's better for them until I cool down, settle down. " It seems to be an
accepted thing now . . . Well the difference is that we are not hiding women away
in places now. It's out in the open, that's where women can go to, it's a safe place,
it's been designated by the community for women and families and children to go
to when they need to. We are no longer hiding women. (Ethel McLennan, a)
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The effects can also be seen outside the community in the form of the attention the refuge
receives. As mentioned earlier, the Hedland College Social Research Centre's report stated that
"[t]he Women's Centre at Warmun is an (sic) community based service that could be an ideal
model to be developed in the Kimberley remote communities if adequate resources and funding
were available" (Hedland College 1997, 15). The Centre also receives visitors from Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal groups working with family violence. One such occasion was when Warmun
women, involved in the Safe House operation, were called upon to participate in a workshop with
Aboriginal health workers, in 1998, and give their stories about their shelter. During my stay in
Warmun there was also a non-Aboriginal group from the Katherine Family Services, Northern
Territory, who were visiting the Centre, while participating in a Reconciliation workshop 68 at the
Mirrilingki Spirituality Centre. The Safe House counsellor, gave the group a tour of the Women's
Centre and I note, in my field notes, that she shared the following information:
Violence in the community had been cut by half; men have been challenged, know
that they are accountable to the rest of the women as well. May have 3/month,
before 5 in a weekend. Now most is 2. In 96 had strategy meeting with
community. In that meeting men said that they didn't know about domestic
violence, did not know they were doing anything wrong: 'We want education.' Had
workshop - define 'domestic violence.' Now a man and woman come from
Kimberley Drug and Alcohol Service once a month to do workshops . They will
train the wardens to handle alcoholics and want them to train women working in
the Safe House as well. (Kjellstrom 1998, September 20).
These are only two examples of the interest shown from other communities for the
Warmun Women's Centre. Mable Juli ' s statement ofthe pride women feel about their Centre
includes other examples:

We the first mob getting a woman Centre. Not every place, and everybody even
start copying we. They bin come up and look. Ah, we better do that. And Halls
Creek mob will do, nah . . . Come for meeting here . . . They come from Fitzroy,
and Kununurra .. . They got safe house and Wyndham, Wyndham mob got'em
nothing . . . Only Kununurra and Halls Creek. They bin copying la this place,
68

The workshop was facilitated by Fr. Frank Brennan, a prominent social justice advocate.

112

when we made this ... they didn't have that ... they never think about it. (Mabel

Juli)

Despite the financial difficulties the Safe House is having it has been able to function in
such a way that it is recognized as invaluable in stemming the tide of domestic violence. In the
words of Ethel McLennon (a)

the Women's Centre and the Safe House is held in high regard by other communities.
In Chapter Five I will analyze the data I gathered in Warmun regarding women's actions, their
type of organization, and the ideological base for their actions. I will then compare what I found
with the same categories of women's agency for Swedish women.

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CHAPTER FIVE: RESEARCH QUESTIONS REVISITED- AUTHORITY AS WOMEN
WOMEN'S AGENCY IN W ARMUN
The original questions that I had posed for my thesis research were: Was there a relation
between what I saw as balanced gender relations in the traditional Kija society and the successful
creation of the Women's Centre in Warmun? Would asking Warmun women to tell their stories
about how they established the Centre provide information about not only what actions were
taken but also about what made these actions possible? When reviewing the data gathered in
W armun I used the following three questions regarding women's power to get at my underlying
question of what has empowered Warmun women to start the project and follow it through. How
did Warmun women react to a situation that they saw as detrimental to their needs and interests?
How did they organize to take action? From where did they get the authority to act? The answers
fit into three categories: women's collective action, their type of organizing, and ideological bases
for agency.

Collective action
When Warmun women started working for a Women's Centre they did so out of the need
to solve problems they encountered within their community, such as a high rate of family
violence, lack of the kind of economic independence that was traditional in their culture, and the
need for a space where they could come together as women for cultural/spiritual and social
activities. The women's recognition of their own needs started a process in which they first
organized themselves into a society called the Warmun Women's and Children's Centre, to work
for the welfare of women and children. This society then acquired a building - the 'old Centre' where women gathered and discussed their needs . The concerns expressed by women were
eventually recognized by one of the younger women, the community administrator, who engaged
114

the women in a survey about women' s needs in the community. The women's organization
submitted funding applications which were approved by state and federal government agencies
and by one corporation. The report from the survey which included architectural drawings and
funding information was taken to Warmun Council for approval for a Women's Centre. At these
Council meetings many women stood up and talked about why they wanted a centre. This

"talking, talking, talking" continued through a period of resistance from younger men to the idea
of having a safe house in the community. Therefore the women first had to accept a modified
women's centre without a safe house. However, as the need for safety for women persisted and
grew, the women re-submitted their requests to Council, encouraged by non-Aboriginal women
who were giving shelter to refuge-seeking women. They finally opened a shelter in the existing
premises of the women's center. They continued to be proactive in seeking funding, and began to
establish activities in the centre, such as the meals program for pensioners. Through their
collective effort to acquire and maintain the Women's Centre and Safe House Warmun women
have translated their experiences of violence, lack of their own space, and unemployment into
collective political action. This shows that Warmun women, like Aboriginal women in Central
Australia, are "social actors in their own right" (Bell 1993a, 229).

Type of oreanizine
When Warmun women met and discussed their needs, spoke up in Council, or sent in their
applications for funding, they did this as a collective, as women . Their collective action was
facilitated by the fact that they were already organized as women through their culturally
determined traditional separation from men, a separation, which is based in Women's Law.
Aboriginal Law is still honoured in Warmun despite a century of colonization which has brought
dramatic changes to traditional Kija life. By applying this Law, Warmun women showed that they
115

took it for granted that they could make requests as women, and that they were entitled to a
separate space for women's activities.
As mentioned in Chapter Two, Women's Law is separate and secret with respect to men
who have their own Men's Law. Women's Law pertains to aspects of women' s lives that men
know nothing about and therefore have no power over. The fact that Women's Law has certain
non-overlapping areas of authority with Men's Law means that it cannot be challenged or
threatened. Women's knowledge and power comes from, and is expressed in, stories and songs
that are specific for women and cannot be heard by men. Certain body paintings, dances, and
ritual objects connected to these songs are taboo to men. To the separation ofknowledge and
rituals is added spatial separation. Certain areas are not to be visited or even seen by men. One
such area was Billingani, the women' s sacred secret Law place located outside Warmun. The
same applies to the men's secret Law place. The Women's Centre in the community has now been
added to the number of sites inaccessible to men and has thus assisted in reinforcing the women's
power base. The introduction of non-Aboriginal policies and institutions, of doing things the

kartiya, or the white people's way, threatened women's traditional power base by giving higher
value to men's work and by ignoring women's rights to compensation for the loss of their sacred
site in the Argyle Diamond Mine case.
Women's Law also provides Warmun women with female leadership. Older and middle
aged women who have acquired ritual knowledge make up a group of Senior Law women. These
women have certain responsibilities and are turned to for organizing and conducting events
involving 'culture'. One ofthe Senior Law Women is the 'Boss for Law,' or ritual leader. She is
the one who ultimately makes the decisions for Law meetings and corroborees, that is, singing,
dancing, and other rituals. This female leadership is strong and constitutes a balance to the male
leadership in the community. The bond between women is reinforced both by regular and special
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Law meetings on their own sacred dance ground, as well as during their participation in regional
or national gatherings with other Aboriginal women. I believe that frequent dance performances
by the women's group at other occasions, such as special events for kartiya people, also
strengthen the collectivity among Warmun women.
Phyllis Kaberry pointed out other reasons for the strong bond among Kija women that
existed in the past. She said that they were "flung together in so many of their pursuits .. .
[which] . . . created the conditions for a strong sense of shared identity among women ... "
(Toussaint 1995, 152). This continues in Warmun to this day as trips out on the land to gather
plants, sugar bag (wild honey), wood, and ochre 69 are always done by several women and
children together. Activities in the Women's Centre can be seen as a continuation of this bonding.
The support given to women using the Safe House is another example of the strength Warmun
women give each other. This feeling of comfort and strength in togetherness as women was
expressed by Peggy Patrick during a camp-out on the Crocodile Hole settlement dancing ground.
We were four non-Aboriginal women and three Aboriginal women sitting together, singing,
dancing, and talking under the night sky. Peggy reminisced about how Warmun women used to
do this coming together all the time and she commented on how nice it was to be together, "just
us women" (Kjellstrom 1998, October 8).

69

Warmun artists are distinguished by their use of natural pigments only. Most other Australian
Aboriginal artists are using acrylic paints. Red, yellow, and white ochre is collected in the areas
surrounding Warmun. White ochre is often dug out from creek beds. Ochre is also used for body
paintings for corroborees as well as for women in "sorry camp" when moving to a new camp to
grieve a relative. In Ringer Soak Aboriginal community in Jaru country in the Great Sandy Desert
southeast of Halls Creek I joined some women and children collecting white ochre from a creek
bed for the widow of a man who had died recently. Face and upper body was in that case painted
white (Kjellstrom 1998, October 24).
117

e

~:i

bases for women's power

Protection, identity and independence
The reason and basis for Warmun women's organizing separately from men, as women, is
based in the Women's Law given to them in the Dreaming and recreated through ritual. The
power of Women's Law was particularly well demonstrated in the case of the setting up of the
Warmun Safe House. Only when the secret objects used for Women's Law ceremonies were
moved into the Women's Centre were the premises considered to be strong enough to protect
women so that it could be used as a shelter. 70 Thus, the spiritual power inherent in the Women's
Law objects made it possible for Warmun women to convince Council to allow them to open the
Safe House to refuge-seeking women and children.
Warmun women traditionally and still identify themselves through Women's Law.
Women's Law gives them rules for living and explains their roles as women. The Law sets them
and their culture and their behaviour as women and members of their society apart from men and
men's culture. This is not to say that Warmun women have not been affected by the intrusion of
white European male dominated culture, but their own culture with their Women's Law still gives
them their Aboriginal identity. One aspect of Aboriginal women's identity is autonomy and
independence, both for the individual woman and for women as a group. Diane Bell's statement
about Aboriginal women in the Central Desert of Australia, "women's self-perceptions of

70

Also in Canada is Native women's spiritual power used to protect women in a women's shelter.
The following is from the Calgary Herald, May 25, 2000, B2,: "Elder's Shield Protects Shelter"
by Joe Bachmier: "The Calgary Native Women's Shelter will forever come under the protection
of a sacred aboriginal shield, thanks to a 11 0-year-old native elder. During a traditional ceremony
held Wednesday at the shelter, elder Margaret Bad Boy of the Siksika Nation oversaw "the
transfer" of a sacred shield. 'The shield doesn't physically exist. It exists in spiritual and abstract
form,' said Linda Many Guns, a director at the shelter. 'From this day on, everyone who enters the
shelter will be protected."' (Bachmier 2000)
118

autonomy and independence are neither fantasy nor nostalgic longings for a bygone era" (Bell
1993a, 230) holds true for Warmun women as well. According to Phyllis Kaberry (1939), girls
were raised to become very independent and, sixty years later, I was told the same thing about
girls in Warmun. Diane Bell provides the following example of independence when she describes
a four-year-old girl:
As she trotted along beside us, one of the women asked, 'Who's boss for you?'
'No-one,' quipped the child, 'I'm boss for meself.' Her statement was greeted with
general approval and mirth. The notion of being boss for oneself, of being in
control of one's own life, so directly expressed by the child, does not diminish as
women age, but rather is a central motif in the rich tapestry of desert women's
lives. (Bell1992, 7)
The need W armun women feel to keep their independence as a group is also demonstrated
by the fact that the women ofWarmun have persisted in their resolve to maintain control of their
Centre. The Centre has continued to be an autonomous unit outside of government and nongovernment agencies despite the financial difficulties this imposes on them.

SWEDISH WOMEN'S AGENCY
Not until women have been deprived of their sense
of agency and their possibilities to act as a group can
they be treated at discretion, and their work,
sexuality, love, and care can be freely exploited.
Maud Eduards 71
Considering that my interest in Warmun women's strength originated in my own feeling
of powerlessness in my roles as a woman, my experience ofWarmun women's collective actions

71

Maud Eduards. 1994. "Women's Agency and Collective Action." Women's Studies
International Forum, Vol. 17 (22/3): 183. Maud Eduards is a professor of Political Science at the
Stockholm University in Sweden and the Chair of the Board of the Swedish Secretariat for
Gender Studies.
119

and ideological background would be incomplete without reconnecting with and
attempting to analyze the situation for women in my own Swedish culture. I will do this by
exploring how these same factors which I had identified as important in developing Warmun
women's strength have been discussed in Swedish feminist discourse. In order to understand how
women's status in Sweden has developed and affected me, I have chosen to include an historical
perspective on the relation between feminist theory and the development of women's place in my
own society. I have therefore included ideas oftwo of the most influential Swedish feminist
writers in the 1930s, Alva Myrdal and Elin Wagner, and the way they have or have not had an
effect on social and economic policy and on women's identity formation. They were both
concerned with the improvement of women's situation in the rapidly changing Swedish society of
the 1930s, but their feminist theory frameworks were very different. Alva Myrdal (1902-1986)
thought that it was necessary for women to change to make themselves fit into the emerging
industrial society that the Social-Democratic Party was in the process of creating and Alva
Myrdal was one of the most influential philosophers for this new society. By contrast, Elin
Wagner (1882- 1949) argued that
women's experience, culture, history, and interests should decide how this changing society was
to develop. Her book Viickarklocka ("Alarm Clock"), now hailed as "one of the most penetrating
critiques of Western civilization in Sweden during the 201h century" (Lindholm 1992, 120, my
translation), but did not get much attention when it appeared in 1941 .
Even though equality in the area of women's work has been the main focus in Sweden
since the 1930s other areas have become prevalent in the Nordic feminist debate in the late 1990s,
such as political action, organizing, and identity (J6nasd6ttir and Fehr 1998, 3). These categories
of women's agency coincide with those I examined in the establishment ofWarmun's Women's

120

Centre, and I will compare how I see these categories appearing within Warmun women's culture
and that of my own Swedish culture.

Do Swedish women act collectively?
The process of establishing the Warmun Women's Centre included actions taken by
Warmun women as a group, as women, within the political system of their community, that is,
Warmun Council. The women's survey report clearly expressed that Warmun women felt that in a
situation where "the nurturing, cultural maintenance and community building role of women is
marginalised and under-resourced" (Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. 1992, 2) it was
"only their collective action that would ensure their safety" (16). Swedish feminists have stated
this idea in a similar way. Maud Eduards stresses that "collective action by women, and by
women alone, can change the sexual power relation and improve women's basic condition ...
[and] ... that agency . . . must be exercised, developed and tested in collective action" (Eduards
1992, 96). Patriarchal power is seen, however, as an obstacle to women's collective action in
Sweden: " ... women are hindered in implementing personal experiences - by male oppression
and conflicts of interest between women and men - into collective action as women" (Karlsson
1998, 47). Maud Eduards (1994, 183) states that "women are acted upon in various ways- as
women but are denied the right to re-act - as women" and that patriarchy puts restrictions on
women's political participation as women. Therefore, collective action is not taken by women, as

women , within the political system in Sweden. There is no women's party. Women's organizing is
done outside of the political system in different ways. A nation-wide organization of women's
shelters and a Northern women's business network are examples of this type of organizing and are
seen as a protest against the dominant political system and a demand for a "democratic practice of
their own" (Gustafsson 1997a, 182).
121

Type of political oreanizine
Warmun women have a participation rate in Council that is higher than Swedish women's
representation in parliament, but they also organize separately as women and this seems to
override the introduced European-style political system. Whereas Warmun women are thus
clearly organized separately as women as to issues and space within their own society and also
have strengthened this organization against the influence of the Western patriarchal system, the
main model for women's political organizing in Nordic countries has been integration into
political parties dominated by men. This model persists despite the fact that, as in many other
parts of the world, 72 attempts have been made by Nordic women in Denmark, Iceland, Norway
and Sweden to organize politically as women into women's parties (Sigurbjamard6ttir 1998, 69,
85). Only in Iceland have women managed to become a political force through the Icelandic
Women's Alliance, a women's only list or slate (Kristmundsd6ttir 1997; Sigurbjamard6ttir 1998;
Styrkarsd6ttir 1999).
In Sweden there is an interesting example of how even the threat of women to organize
politically, as women, has had a dramatic effect. The Support Stockings, a small, secret group
threatened to form a women's party, unless the existing political parties ensured changes for
women in representation and policies. In the following election "the representation of women in
all political forums reached record levels" (Stark 1997, 240). Women won 42% ofthe seats in
parliament, 48% in county councils and 41% in municipal councils (240). The Support Stockings,
according to their plan, never became a political party (228) and the subsequent years have seen a
decline in interests in women's issues within the political parties. These two examples show the

72

For instance in the United States, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Japan,
and Australia.
122

potential of women organizing separately but also the problem inherent in the existing system of
integration. As a result, with the exception of the Icelandic Women's Alliance, separate political
organizing as women is not happening in the Nordic countries.

Do Swedish women have an ideoloeical power base?
Identity
The ideology underlying Warmun women's organizing is based on Women's Law, which
has been laid down for women in the Ngarankami, the Dreaming, and is continually recreated by
ritual. This Law is accepted and respected by men and women in Aboriginal society. It provides
women with a female identity that gives them an openly acknowledged legitimized authority as

women. One aspect of the Law is its intimate spiritual relationship to 'country', that is to the land
where a person is born, or with which one has a relationship of responsibility because of one or
both of one's parents. A Warmun woman's identity is therefore intimately connected to the very
place where her spirit originates in the land. This is rarely the case for contemporary Nordic or
other European women. In Sweden, women's connection to land has decreased, especially during
the last century through the change in the country's economic structure. Sweden's economy was in
1900 predominantly based on agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing with 70% of the
population working within these sectors. This figure dropped to 24% in 1940, 14% in 1960,3.1%
in 1992 and to 3% in 1999 (Kalnins, SCB, 2000, pers. comm.; Scobbie 1995, 3). This
development has necessarily distanced women from contact and identification with the land. The
loss of land base has to some extent been compensated by the keeping of summer cottages, by

123

engaging in ecological concerns, and by a love ofnature in general. This cannot, however,
balance the loss of the connection to specific areas that extends back for thousands of years 73 .
If women's identity and power does not have a spiritual connection to land, as it has in
Warmun and other indigenous cultures, including the Sami people in the Nordic countries, what
do Nordic feminists say about how Nordic women identify themselves? The first serious
discussion on this issue, after the 1940's debate in Sweden between Alva Myrdal and Elin
Wagner, appeared in 1973. Berit As, a Norwegian psychologist and political activist, then
introduced the concept of a special 'women's culture,' into feminist theory (Rosenbeck 1998, 350).
Berit As stated that an awareness of cultural identity did not exist for Nordic women, and
she wanted to make women's culture visible. She defined women's culture as "a collective set of
values, interpretations and causalities which affect women, but which are difficult for men to
understand, or [are] invisible" (As 1975, 87, note 6). These values are transmitted from one
generation to the next and shared by most women (42,145).
As an example of the negative aspect of women's culture Berit As mentions that "unpaid
production is a special form of production in which women are kept mainly through punishment
by shame or guilt ... " (146). The way in which this production is kept outside ofthe reward
system of money, power, prestige, and social rights, indicates its difference from the dominant
male culture. Another aspect of female culture discussed by Berit As is the "role to support ... [the]
... family ... [but] ... when she needs help she receives punishment" (147).
The same tendency to allow men to control access to jobs and resources and to disregard
women's input was beginning to show in Warmun as a non-Aboriginal, kartiya, management

73

Nevertheless, in the 1930s, Elin Wagner stressed the importance of Swedish women's
connection to land, and to their female heritage. This has not been part of Swedish feminist
discourse since that time.

124

style was introduced through the contacts with the governing bodies in the larger society. This
was one of the aspects in their emerging community that Warmun women reacted against. That
Berit As' focus is on negative, oppressive elements in Western female culture I see as indicative
of the situation of women in the Western European patriarchal society. Whereas Warmun women
could stand up in Council to speak for their share in the community's resources and were heard as
women, Nordic women have had to manipulate within the system in an implicit way, such as
using Berit As' theory of the 'five power techniques' (my translation). These techniques,
developed in the 1970s, were based on observations of men's behaviour towards women. Berit As
wanted to help women to deal with men's psychological put-downs : making invisible, ridiculing,
withholding information, double punishment ('damned if you do, and damned ifyou don't'), and
imposing guilt (As n.d). These techniques are still seen as necessary to be recognized by women
and are distributed in pamphlet form through women's shelters in Sweden (Berit As, pers. comm.,
June 1999; As n.d).
MAKING A CONNECTION: WOMEN'S INTERESTS AND WOMEN'S BUSINESS
I consider it important to move beyond the negative aspects of identity formation within
the Swedish female culture and to address the apparent lack of an ideological base for women. In
Warmun, women act because of the strength derived from Women's Law, which serves their
interests as women. Some feminist theories in contemporary Swedish discourse resemble the Kija
way of thinking about women. One such example is Anna J6nasd6ttir's introduction ofher
interest theory into the feminist discourse. She argues that we need to analyze, make strategies,
and formulate demands in terms of women's specific interests, specific with respect to men's, to
develop a gender based relational interest theory. Her statement that "women should be able to act
on the strength of being women and not mainly despite being women" amply illustrates the

125

difference between the traditional Kija way of seeing women and the situation of women in
contemporary Swedish society (Jonasdottir 1994, 169). Anna J6nasd6ttir defines Sweden as a
patriarchal society with only formal equality and a historically specific sociosexual power
structure which disempowers women. She argues that women may have a certain influence but no
authority, that is, no openly acknowledged, legitimized power ' as women.' Thus women are not
represented on their own terms. Agreeing with Carole Pateman, she argues that women should
have authority as women, as a sex, in the democratic political process and that we have to create a
new basic analytical level for Western European based society. She suggests this level to be that
ofthe sociosexual, sexually related human being (164-76). In comparison, the sociosexual power
structure in Kija culture empowers women and by being women Warmun women already have
'citizenship.' They are full members in their society through Women's Law.

WHAT ABOUT EQUALITY?
Equality? To make that a goal is to fall into the trap
of using male terms of reference. If strengthening
women's terms of reference is the goal, the question
of equality does not arise. 74
During my stay in the Warmun community, I never heard Warmun women use the term
equality or its equivalents. This is in line with how Lilla Watson, an Australian Aboriginal scholar
and activist, sees this concept: "Equality? To make that a goal is to fall into the trap of using male
terms of reference. If strengthening women's terms of reference is the goal, the question of
equality does not arise" (Weeks 1994, 95). Diane Bell discusses how one should evaluate

74

Lilla Watson in Conversations with Lilla Watson, in "Developing women's services along
indigenous lines," in Wendy Weeks in collaboration with women in women's services, Women
working together: Lessons from feminist women's services. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire,
1994), 95 .

126

Aboriginal women's power base in Central Australia and the fact that men are excluded. She
states: "I have avoided speaking of sexual equality or inequality because I believe these concepts
distort our understanding of male-female relations in desert society" (Bell 1992, 231 ).
Nevertheless, in connection with the establishment of the Women's Centre in Warmun,
issues of fairness were discussed by the women. I consider this to be an attempt to correct a
situation where a traditionally balanced gender system was being influenced by the larger
Australian society based in a Western European, patriarchal ideology and legal system.
Remembering Ethel McLennon's statement "Weve got to have a balance here," I conclude that
Kija women as a group, as women, expected to get their fair share of the society's resources.
They did not tolerate a system which gave jobs to men rather than to women, which did not
remunerate women's work within the new monetary system, and which did not recognize
women's rights as a group to compensation for destroyed resources, such as sacred sites. Warmun
women reacted and acted relatively quickly- approximately only ten years after the establishment
of the community- when they realized that the larger society's influence was threatening their
traditional balanced gender system. They were taking their rights as women as self-evident, based
as they were in their creation stories, their songs, and women's sacred objects. From this I find
that Warmun women have 'authority as women' and that in certain areas of their lives they are
still independent of men as they were in traditional Kija society as indicated by Phyllis Kaberry
(Toussaint 1995, 152).
By contrast, in Swedish society it is generally assumed that the ideal of equality is
eventually going to give women what they want and need. Since Swedish women started their
fight for equality, the country's entrance into the European Union has, however, added one more
bureaucratic level which may prevent actual equality. The highest court for gender equality is
now under EU jurisdiction and includes both law making and law enforcement (J6nasd6ttir 1997,
127

17). Even though the Committee ofMinisters in the Council of Europe has in their 4th European
Ministerial Conference on Equality Between Women and Men in 1997 resolved to work for
increased gender equality (Council ofEurope 1997) there are problems inherent in the EU
membership for Swedish women becauseEuropean institutions are much more male dominated
than the corresponding Swedish ones. Karin Lundstrom shows how the laws take men as a norm
against which women's equality is measured and how this will always benefit men (Lundstrom
1997). She discusses the possibilities of equality for women in the European Union legal system,
and states that to attain real equality we need radically new ways of thinking (J6nasd6ttir 1997,
17).
Equality is for many Swedes a notion that cannot be doubted or discussed. There are,
however, attempts to problematize this concept. The Swedish MP Ulla Hoffman says that the idea
of 'equality' makes the actual distribution of power between men and women invisible and that it
will not accomplish structural change (Hoffman 1999, 6). Furthermore, in her interest theory
Anna J6nasd6ttir does not consider equality to be an important concept because it is based on
maleness as a norm. According to this theory one should instead be looking at the interests of
women as being based in women's own value systems. It seems to me that Anna J6nasd6ttir's
position approaches Elin Wagner's feminist theory of allowing women's own interests and values
to form the basis of feminist thought and society's priorities. Carole Pateman also states the need
for new ways of thinking, when she criticizes the present concept of democracy. This concept
excludes women on the basis of their participation in the labour market and refuses to include
their unpaid work, even though it is a precondition for the function of the market economy
(Pateman 1997, 218). Therefore, I consider the notion of equality problematical and suggest that
it should be seen as one of the means towards achieving a more balanced society rather than the
ultimate goal.
128

REFLECTIONS
It was incredibly strengthening for me as a woman.
They had presence, they were there, they were really
home in themselves and they had incredible
strength. 75

The Swedish social scientist Yvonne Hirdman poses the question of how we can
communicate the insight that the world of Western European women, where the discourse and the
values are those of a male world, is not normal or natural but actually rather grotesque (Hirdman
1992, 7). I argue that women from a patriarchal social and political system who have been
fortunate enough to know strong women who function within a different gender system with
different discourses and values have a responsibility to share their insights. Diane Bell and many
other women have done this convincingly. The Australian non-Aboriginal artist Felicity Harbigan
says about her experience with Aboriginal women from the Central Desert: "There was
something that happened in meeting Nganyinytja and the women that she works with at her desert
college. It was incredibly strengthening for me as a woman. They had presence, they were there,
they were really home in themselves and they had incredible strength. One had a feeling that
nothing could really hurt them" (Women of the Earth 1998). Or as Lisa Gellie said about the
Warmun women she worked with and had experienced healing from:

These women are very spiritual and they have incredible strength and power . .. It's
probably been one of the most profound things in my life . .. They are very powerful
people. (Lisa Gellie)
From my own meetings with women in Warmun I know that it is indeed very inspiring to
be in the presence of women with their kind of strength and to realize how well grounded their
identity is. Such an experience is certainly life-transforming.

75

Felicity Harbigan in Women of the Earth, videorecording, 1998, Salila O'Connor and Fiona
Whitmore, producers, regarding Aboriginal Women in Central Australia.

129

I have attempted in this thesis to communicate the kind of insight Yvonne Hirdman refers
to by describing certain aspects ofKija female culture coming as it is from a non-patriarchal
worldview and by reflecting upon the differences in women's agency and its ideological sources
from those of my own Western European culture. What are my insights? When comparing Kija
women's gender system with that of my own culture I found that some important characteristics
ofKija culture seem to be absent in Swedish culture. First, the ideology ofWarmun women's
power has a spiritual base that gives women authority as women. This is constantly re-created and
re-enforced by ritual and has an extremely close spiritual connection to land. Secondly, certain
areas ofKija women's culture are secret and not available to men. Women's knowledge and
spaces are therefore uncontested. Finally, Kija women are raised to be individually independent
but live within a strong female collectivity with separate organizing and a respected female
leadership. Therefore, men cannot easily use the divide-and-conquer technique so prevalent in my
society. I saw how these characteristics ofKija culture assisted women in their struggle against
social problems introduced by colonization in the form of alcohol abuse and violence against
women. In Swedish women asking for legitimacy, for openly acknowledged authority, and in
their criticism of a system in which maleness is the norm, I see them striving for something that
Kija women already have, that is real as opposed to formal citizenship in their culture. A
comparison of women's agency in the two societies illustrates the difference between acting from
women's own power base and striving to fit into a system based on norms created by and for men,
a group into which women can never entirely fit.
I believe that highlighting areas and sources of power from this kind of Aboriginal female
culture can inspire and assist Swedish women who live in a time of increased violence against
women (Bunch 2000; Eduards 1997, 120; Kvinnofrid 2000; Marklund 1999; Expressen 1999;
Svensson 2000), economic inequality affecting women and children (Drougge 2000; Eriksson
130

2000; Eurenius 1998; Lundback; Mallik 1998; Vallgren 2000), and a higher degree of misogyny
(Khaldi 1999; Olsson 2000) than I have experienced in my lifetime. By asking questions such as:
Do Swedish women have their own uncontested power base and if not can they create or recreate
it? I see a potential for creating ideas about spaces of power for women.
These questions take me a step further into reflecting on my learning from Warmun
women. Even though there is an unbroken tradition of Women's Law in Warmun there is also an
element of cultural revival through the efforts of the women who were and are the carriers of
tradition. This opens for me the question of cultural revival or of whether inspiration could be
gained from delving deep into women's history in Sweden. Have there not been elements of
gender egalitarianism in Sweden and, if so, would a revitalization be possible? Among Aboriginal
women in Australia and North America this type of reasoning is not considered to be undue
romanticizing of the past but a legitimate part of women's rights to retrieve their own culture and
their own history.
The case study of the Warmun Women's Centre opens up still further questions: Can
Swedish women who, according to Gudrun Dahl, a social anthropologist at Stockholm
University, live in an individualistic society (Hedensjo 2000, 13) truly embrace female
collectivity? Can they appreciate women's knowledge in the form of women's history and the
wisdom and caring of women Elders?
My experience ofWarmun women has brought me back to my own women's culture. This
way of reaching deep into one's own history, traditions, and spirituality, has been repeatedly
suggested by Aboriginal people to non-Aboriginal researchers dealing with the 'Other.' I am
grateful for this advice and I suggest that Swedish women's studies, which has had an emphasis
on materiality, be opened up more to the dimensions of identity and spirituality, to women's
history and to women's knowledge past and present. And with Elisabeth Elgan I am asking why
131

the latest Swedish Royal Commission on Women's Power did not include philosophical,
historical, or anthropological perspectives (Elgan 1998, 64).

132

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142

Appendix 1
LIST OF INTERVIEWS IN WARMUN, East Kimberley, Western Australia
September 7- October 29, 1998
Name

Date

Eileen Bray

September

28

Theresa Morellini's kitchen

Shirley Bray, a

September

7

Women's Centre, group interview

II

22

Women's Centre verandah

Betty Carrington

September

30

School grounds in front of office

Lisa Gellie

October

12

Daiwul Cultural Centre office

Mabel Juli

September

7

Women's Centre, group interview

EthelMcLennon, a

October

,b

,b
Queenie McKenzie, a
,b
Yvonne Martin, a
,b

Location

9

Outside of Theresa Morellini's house

II

10

In Ethel's home

September

7

Women's Centre, group interview

October

29

Pensioner's Unit, Dining area

September

23

Women's Centre verandah

October

Theresa Morellini, a
'b
'c

September

Women's Centre verandah
3

II

18

October

19

,d

Women's Centre Office
Theresa's kitchen

22

Helen Pinday

October

12

Women's Centre verandah

Cerise Ogden

October

19

Women's Centre verandah

Madigan Thomas

September

7

Women's Centre, group interview

Polly Widaljil

October

16

School grounds, back of primary school

Teacher, a

October

4

Cathedral Gorge, Purnululu

5

Theresa Morellini's kitchen

,b

Also present at the group interview on September 7 were Betty Carrington, Shirley Purdie, Maudie Rendy, and Violet
Winnie.
Other contacts in Warmun: Winnie Budbaria, Peggy Patrick, and Dottie Whatbee.

143

Appendix 2

CHRONOLOGY- WERRA WERRA TAAM
1991

May

Warmun Women's and Children's Centre Inc. seeks assistance and advice
regarding need for women's projects.

July 22

As an answer to that need Northern Building Consultants (WA) projects
starts with Ethel McLennan and Judy Taylor.

August

Based on findings of this project applications are made to Arts, Sport, the
Environment, Tourism and Territories: Community Cultural, Recreational
and Sporting Facilities Program 1991-92, Homeswest, Warmun Council
for Argyle Diamond Mine's Good Neighbour Fund, Lotteries Commission
and ATSIC

December

NBC(WA) presents architectural drawings with "Worra Worra Taam:
Report on Proposed Women's Centre at Warmun Community" based on
survey.

1992

March

A final NBC(WA) Survey Report is presented as "Services for Women
and Children at Warmun Community and Outstations" by Ethel McLennan
and Judy Taylor.

1993

December

A revised plan for a Women's Centre - not including a Safe House - is
accepted.

1994

March 25

Formal agreement for construction of a Women's Centre with Franmore
Constructions Pty Ltd.

September 14 Completion of construction of the Women's Centre.
1995

April18

Final inspection of the Women's Centre.

May

Sewing grant from Lotteries Commission.
Home and Community Care (HACC) cooking and laundry for pensioner is
moved into the Centre.

1996

August

Strong Women's, Strong Babies workshop in the Centre.

September 24 Werra Werra Taam Meeting discussing the establishment of a Safe House,
presenting safety procedures.
144

October

Werra Werra Taam asks Sr. Theresa Morellini to be the counselor for the
Safe House. A Safe House Committee is formed. Women's Law objects are
moved to the Centre.

December 17 Safe House starts operation.
1997

1998

February

Werra Werra Taam starts issuing "Jarrak Warmun," the
Community newspaper.

May

Contact made with East Kimberley Business Enterprise Centre regarding
business plan for the Centre. Suggestion is made that a business profile be
done.

May6

Family Violence Workshop at Centre with Floyd Chumside and Tracy
Kitaura.

July 30

Homeswest approves $80,000 grant for the construction of Safe House,
conditional to operational cost funding secured from other sources.

Oct/Nov

Acquistion of mini -bus.

November

Proposed development plan.

April

Computer purchased for Centre.

July

NAIDOC week in Broome. Warmun women win prize for dancing.

August

Warmun women participate in Women's Law in Kununurra.
W armun women dance in Fitzroy Crossing for opening of Women's
Centre.
Workshop on domestic violence in Centre.

September

W armun women instructing sessions on traditional healing methods and on
their experience with the Safe House for Aboriginal Health workers
workshop at Mirrilingki.

October

Two bread making machines acquired through CDEP.

December

Printing of Christmas cards from women's art.

145

Eileen Bray*

Shirley Bray

Betty Carrington

Lisa Gellie

I

Queenie McKenzie

Winnie Budbaria**

Mabel Juli*

Yvonne Martin and
Samantha

* Photo: Theresa Morellini© (Stewart 1999)
** Photo: Robyn Gordon-Brown©
Fig. 1 a. Warmun women

146

Theresa Morellini

Madigan Thomas

Cerise Ogden

Peggy Patrick

Shirley Purdie

Maudie Rendy

Dottie Whatbee

Polly Widaldjil

Fig. 1 b. Women in Warmun

147

Fig. 2. Aerial view ofWannun

KIMBERLEY REGION OF
WESTERN AUSTRALIA

KILOMETRES

Fig. 3

GREAT S)\T SIINDY DESERT

Source: Kimberley Language Resource Centre, Moo/a Bulla: In the Shadow of the Mountain
(Broome: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 1996), 222-3 .
148

Fig. 4 Kimberley language groups

Source: David R. Horton, Aboriginal Australia
(Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders Studies, 1996)

Kimberley Region

Fig. 5 Kimberley stations

Source: Ngalangangpum School, Warmun
149

Fig. 6. Dottie Whatbee, Maudie Rendy, grandchildren,
and Theresa Morellini visiting Bedford Downs Station.

Fig. 9 Christening ceremony for baby Jacinta performed by
Maudie Rendy and mother, Vanessa Clifton
150

Fig. 7a. Winnie Budbaria, Betty Carrington, and Theresa Morellini at
Mistake Creek massacre memorial

Fig. 7b. The boab tree at Mistake Creek

Fig. 7c. Memorial commemorating the massacre
K.ija women and children

Fig. 7. Mistake Creek Memorial Site
151

"This painting is about the
Barramundi Dreaming at Cattle
Creek. Three women trying to catch
the barramundi and turned into three
hills that can be seen at Cattle
Creek."

a.

Madigan Thomas © 1997

"The painting is the story about three
water holes near Spearwa[te]r
Station (Yvonne Martin Family
country). In these three water holes
the Barramundi fish laid its eggs in
the Dreamtime."

Yvonne Martin ©1997

"Daiwul Dreaming: 'Barramundi
where that pelican bin taken that
piece from Dunham River."'

c.

Shirley Purdie © 1998

Fig. 8 a- c
Barramundi Dreaming paintings

152

Artist: Madigan

~

Fig. 10. Symbol ofthe Werra Werra Taam

r

.

...--

·- .
··....

... /

Arb

-

......

\

.....

' ··

Warmun

~nt e

.1

'··

;·./

Fig. 11 . Warmun Community with five camps and the Women's Centre. Sketch by the author
from aerial photo in Warmun Administration Office.
153

\

Fig. 12a. Above, Western elevation
Below, Northern elevation

Fig. 12b. Site plan

I

.-• ·.t...

r
I

I

,.:--:'·:.-:;·.
\:0
... ..

j ··

i

.

~ ~~

\

~
J@j

. . ··..

..

.

·.

Fig. 12c. Plan

SONG GROUND

Source: Wannun Women's & Children's Centre Inc.,
Services for Women and Children at Warmun Community and
Outstations, (Wannun: Wannun Women's & Children's
Centre, 1992), 18, 19.
Architects: Northern Building Consultants, W.A.

Fig. 12. Architectural drawings ofWarmun Women's Centre and Safe House

154

Fig. 13. Council meeting in Wannun under the bough shed.

If -- - ~ i . ·- .

,

:

t:

~

•

I
~

I

j .,_,..-----'IL-..11

.......

I

-+
I•

.

.'•
L. .- - - - - - - - - - -·(

Source: Wannun Women's Centre. Architects: Northern Building Consultants (WA)

Fig. 14. Revised drawing, Women's Centre, Wannun
Note: Meeting room used as Safe House from Dec. 1996

155

Warmun Women's Centre and Safe House and Women's Centre bus.

Fig. 15 c.

Party at Women's Centre

Fig. 15. Wannun Women's Centre and Safe House

156

a. Taking the Women's Centre Toyota out on the land.

b. Shirley Purdie digging an ant mound for
sugarbag with her digging stick.

c. Polly Widaljil chopping a gum tree for sugarbag.

d. Polly Widaldjil with bush yams

Fig. 16. Bush trip with the troupe carrier
157

Fig. 17a Clapsticks made by Shirley Purdie
(Author's collection)

Fig. 17b. Coolamon made by
Betty Carrington
(Author's collection)

Fig. 17d.
Shirley Bray carving claps ticks
at Women's Centre.

Fig. 17c.

Coolamon, bottom of Fig. 17b.

.

Fig. 17. Clap sticks and coolamon made and used by women

158

.

Fig. 18 a. Crocodile Hole

Fig. 18b. Traditional fishing

Fig. 18. Crocodile Hole school trip

159

Fig. 19a. Food preparation at the Women's Centre

Fig. 19b Yvonne Martin cooking for HACC

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Fig. 19. Meals-on-wheels

Fig 19c. Delivery ofHACC food with the gator

160

Charlene Cann ©

Betty Carrington ©

Mabel Juli ©
Fig. 20. Christmas card designs for Werra Werra Taam 1998

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Fig. 21. Planned extension of Warmun Women's Centre and Safe House
162