The name is absent

196

12.52

(iii) Possessions

(a) ^lGuruvjari'

Nancy Munn, an anthropologist working in Walbiri country,
recorded the following conversation:

A Walbiri man once remarked to me that the white fellow
had no guruwar і. Others expressing the contrast
between their own way of life and that of the white
Australian referred to possession of guruwari as a
critical difference. One said: 'the whitefellow owns
books and pencils, little things, but the possessions
of the Walbiri are large important things: guruwari and
country' (Munn, in Reay, ed., 1964:86).

Munn explained that the term 'guruwari' was used for ancestral
designs, replete with symbolism, and for the power and the strength
with which the ancestors of Aborigines had inseminated the soil.

Obviously, if such importance is placed on guruwari and land,
to be stripped of them is to be stripped of a most powerful source
of identity. Because of white intrusion, it is not possible for
Aboriginal group identity to be a static 'given'. The rape of
Aboriginal tribal lands means that if a group is to survive as a
group, new components of identity must be built, quite consciously.
The world of guruwari and land is no longer the world 'tout court'.
It is a world that must be worked on with new guruwari incorporated
into the Law.

The sacred objects of the Mob, their 'guruwari', their special
possessions have been carried with them and continue to form a
stable link between present and past. Tlie notion of possession
of sacred sites, for themselves and others, continues to be of
paramount importance.

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