00:00.00 Alan But welcome out there in the rock art podcast and archeology podcast land get ready for a rip roaring fun. We'll have an an hour to discuss a bit of Australian Rock art which we've never done with several. Ah, remarkable people who have been doing tremendous research in Australia working directly with native people and have recently published a book on their work and we will see how this goes this is the first time we've done so many multiple people. All at once but it's going to be remarkable so who's going to start the show here and talk about your research. 00:46.61 john bradley Go on Leon you. 00:48.23 Alan Is it is it is it John Liam or Amanda. 00:48.64 Liam Brady Um, sure I will um. 00:54.80 Amanda Kearney Um, but that. 00:54.52 Liam Brady Ah, look I'm happy to start it off sure I will I'll introduce myself and write someone I'm an archeologist here at flinders university I'm originally from Canada but I came out this is Liam. 00:57.44 Alan Please please. So who's speaking. 01:10.68 Liam Brady Yes, that's right. 01:10.87 Alan Liam speaking is that right? Okay, so so Liam you you are part of a extensive collaboration working with native australians on rock art correct. 01:25.55 Liam Brady That's right? Yes so I started working and with indigenous australian communities in 2001 for my Phd and started working in the torres strait islands which is just off the tip of Cape York Peninsula in between Cape York and Papua New Guinea and I started working out there with with islander communities recording rock art for my ph d bouncing around in boats and camping on tropical islands was that was a great way to to explore the country for my first time and then. After that I yeah moved out to the University Of Western Australia where I began some rock art recording projects in the pilbara region which is the iron ore capital of Australia and recording some amazing engraving sites out there and then in 2010 John and Amanda in the yanua community. 02:02.25 Amanda Kearney Killing. 02:11.27 Liam Brady Invited me to to begin working with them to to record rock art sites to make an inventory so that the and that the sea rangers The aboriginal ranger group can manage these sites into the future and record all the ah that information and have it available for for future generations. So I feel quite um. 02:26.60 Alan So so tell her tell our audience specifically how remarkable and different Australian rock art is from probably rock art in the rest of the world. 02:38.40 Liam Brady Um, well I think australian rock art is very distinctive because there are over 100000 known sites. Um, across the continent and there's more and more being discovered every year you know you go into western Australia into um into the dampier area murajuga which is um on the world heritage list now. 02:55.42 Alan Stripe. 02:57.24 Liam Brady That site alone has over a million engravings in 1 small area so dropout is extraordinary here so many different styles. It goes back? Um, yeah, over Twenty Thousand years lots of chronologies and it's it's a field in itself. There's um, you know, maybe 12 03:10.79 Alan So so it's a very rich but so it's a very very rich record very diverse record, but the the real specialty is the native people who crafted that are still with you are they yeah still actively engaged in protecting. 03:13.11 Liam Brady Of the 15 key rock art researchers. 03:30.19 Alan And creating such records. 03:34.29 Liam Brady Certainly yeah, there's um, there are records of people creating rock art still in Western Arnhem Land I saw rock art being created in 2001 2002 in Torres Strait and so there's a lot of information that indigenous people hold about there about their rock art and the stories that it tells. Ah, so you know we're really quite fortunate to be able to work with indigenous communities recording that knowledge and learning about these these sites these images and you know they are very complex things. It's not just a case of here's a painting of a jugong but there's a whole layered story associated with that one particular motif. 04:08.48 Alan So so you have a book that just came out and this book is different unique distinctive because of what characteristics please. 04:09.59 Liam Brady And this is what we get into in the book. 04:24.69 Liam Brady Um, ah John do you want to take that one. 04:28.20 john bradley Ah, okay, this book is based basically on well we could say 43 years of work I first went into the gulf country where yannua people live which ah who the book is written with yannua families jannu communities. I went there forty three years ago began traveling through yanua country was seeing rock art now I'm an anthropologist um and a linguist I'd begun to learn yanua as the language in that area and I was really interested. 04:46.92 Amanda Kearney Um. 05:03.76 john bradley As to how people were talking about rock art because they were not talking about rock art as something that was created by their ancestors as human ancestors they were talking about rock art in a very very different way. Jannua actually doesn't even have a word that means art. There's were you've actually got ah, there's words for marking There's words for making a design but rock artt actually is all about the actions of ancestral beings in yanua country at least. So you don't get anywhere very quickly if you start talking about rock art as being created by human human beings. So what this book tries to do what amanddain Liam and I have tried to do in this book with yanua families is to explore beyond the notion of rock art. And in fact, we say that this in the end is not a book about rock art. This is a book about a deep ontological and epistemological reckoning of what all these designs in the rock shoulders over yanua country on the islands because it's all on island country. How they're being interpreted on a day-to-day basis within the last 40 odd years given my time experience and knowledge of the language so that you know in the end you're not asking questions I could listen to old people just talk about it and gradually build up. 06:30.11 john bradley An idea of what was going on then I met Amanda then I met Liam and together. We decided there was a research um project here that perhaps was different than anything else in the world that had ever been done. 06:42.31 Alan So John this is this is directly from the indigenous perspective as to the creators of the art and also what it means and how it functions I would presume is that correct. 06:58.12 john bradley That's exactly right? So we're relying very much on the voices of the yanua people that we worked with um so really, we're writing a commentary to that Liam of course can set it set it within the bigger parameters of rock art. Within the world within Australia Amanda and my my job as anthropologists is then saying okay, that's very well but where does this idea of rock art. That's not really rock art then sit within that ontological and epistemological premise. That we are dealing with. 07:33.52 Alan Got you Amanda tell us a little bit about your interaction. 07:37.85 Amanda Kearney Well, yeah, as John mentioned so I'm an anthropologist as well and John was actually my ph d supervisor and he was the person who introduced me to yanua country and working with yannua families up in the gulf of carpentaria. And over the course of time you know you John liam and I had sort of been up in this region working together and it's this whole research sort of program. We've done working with yanua has really been ah for me led by. 08:10.27 Alan Are. 08:10.78 Amanda Kearney Ah, deep interest in indigenous knowledges and how indigenous people bring their world into sort of actualities. So You know rock art is one part of that world but my work in general has been sort of exploring a whole range of aspects of of yannu life And. I was very lucky in the beginning to to be introduced to a group of senior women in the community and and what's always been nice with our research projects is that we have this balance of men and women working together and we work with men and women and also ah different generational groups within the context of the annual community because. Everybody has a positionality and everybody has ah a kind of relationship to the thing we call rock art but which is really an expression of ancestors and old people in Yanua Country. So really. From from my perspective. What's been so enriching as an anthropologist with this project is that the very conversation of rock art originated out from how yanua understand these presences in their land and sea Country. So It's about being led by yanua into a conversation about country and about rock art and the the benefit of this project and really what has made it so Unique. All along is the time depth of the insights and the oral traditions and the recordings that we have. 09:35.10 Amanda Kearney Partly because of John's very long-term presence there I arrive in in the context about twenty four years ago which is at a time where life is different in the community things are changing. That's the dynamic nature of any community. Ah, they're always in a state of um sort of change and growth and creative reinvention and so turning up for this project in around 2010 I think it was. We started our first journeys up there as a research team working with families and. And seeing what is the story for rock art in this present moment but knowing that that story has has a ah ah, deep time it has its own big long story going way back to the beginning when John was there but also to the very beginning when you have the dreaming and the ancestral beings that. Created it so this project has ah has a relationship to time that I think is really unique in that we aren't attempting to say um you know rock art is some sort of tradition that is no longer because rock art. The thing we call rock art is always in country and always will be. As long as there are yannua people in a relationship to it so it has this particularity around time. Yeah. 10:46.39 Alan And and and a and and and a and Amanda I think you have a real special voice or a special perspective to share with those in the states here the United States in that you have a living and vital. Ah. 10:59.46 Amanda Kearney Are. 11:05.21 Alan Almost a sentient tradition that um can be shared with others and provide an indigenous voice to this ah resource we call Rock Card am I correct. 11:08.10 Amanda Kearney Um. 11:18.40 Amanda Kearney Absolutely absolutely and I mean this is what drew me to anthropology in the very beginning was the fact that it is ah it is a discipline discipline and a practice like archaeology so populated by people who have a voice and who have a story and a position. And a relationship to speak of So Really I think you're absolutely right in that what has made this project so much richer and and rewarding as archaeologists and anthropologists is that the whole way Along. We've had yanua people there telling us what we should do what we shouldn't do where we can go. What we can record and what is the meaning of what we are Recording. So I think all of us feel an acute. You know a profound debt of gratitude to yanua families for teaching us about the complexity of rock art that it is more than paintings on a surface. It is so much more. And that that's that's I think we felt compelled to tell that story through the book and and to open up. Yeah yeah, it really is it really is that. 12:15.93 Alan That's the that's a key takeaway isn't it Amanda yes, yeah, let let me let me but me but let me jump back to John John it sounds like you've been been involved in this for many decades and have a long history of association. How did you get involved with. With yeah you ah rock art and and why is this ah project have such a a long genealogy. 12:42.10 john bradley Well I first arrived into that community which is well yanua country is a thousand kilometers southeast of darwin the capital city of the northern territory I first arrived in there as actually a primary school teacher. Um. Teaching in that community where I got to know the parents of course of all the yeah children that I was teaching at the time ah bit by bit as I got to know families. They would invite me out onto country I was also the first white man that ever went into that community that wanted to learn the language. 13:15.80 Alan Wow. 13:17.31 john bradley So I was a bit of an oddity in some regards. Um, and as I began to learn language like any language learning you begin to see another way of thinking about what's in front of you and you know in the years I was a teacher there I was taken out on the country. I was always fascinated with this other view that was being presented to me constantly being presented to me and I began to document even then what was happening and taking photographs and trying to make my own record albeit perhaps at the time somewhat clumsy. But it was that record that really when I showed liam back in when he was working at Monash went wow what can we do with this so then of course I you know I did my doctorate and did my doctorate in anthropology in yanua country looking at sea country and marine turtle and jugong in particular. Ah, since then I've written the grammar and the dictionary of that language. It is unfortunately a language now that only has 3 or 4 speakers left. Um, it's an incredibly unique language in that it has distinct dialects for men and women and I just have to say I was just. And I still am fascinated by the whole process of what an engagement with a language other than english that belongs to Australia. It doesn't come from anywhere else. It belongs on that country. It knows how to speak to that country. It knows how to speak to the things that are in that country. 14:55.56 john bradley That it actually begins to reveal completely different ways of how we might think and how we might order this thing that in the west we might ah might just call the environment or an ecology or this thing called rock art and. From my perspective what we end up with is really understanding with the rock art embedded in country a geography of animacy where you cannot move without understanding that even things in the west that we don't think are animated are actually animate and as Amanda rightly said. You know there were rules about how you respond to this animated landscape. There are rules about sometimes how you enter it and I suppose what's really unique in this book is that there are some things there that perhaps twenty years ago would never have been allowed in that book. But. As people old people die younger people are seeing old people die knowledge might disappear as well. You've got a younger generation of people who are saying well maybe we've got to change the rules a bit and there are 2 men in particular. Who were acknowledged in that book and that's Graham friday and Leonard Norman to yannua senior men who in consultation with families allowed us to actually publish images of of rock art in yanua country that as I said twenty years ago 16:29.89 john bradley Would never have been allowed to be published and as Amanda rightly said all things change communities change the way the community see things change. 16:37.15 Alan Yeah, John yeah, let's ah, let's stop it right there and pick it up in the next segment. Thanks ah John and Amanda Liam pick it up. Yeah, and we'll ah pick pick it up in the seconds next section. 16:46.28 Amanda Kearney Thanks! Alan. 16:47.64 john bradley Thank you all. 16:48.80 Liam Brady No problem. 16:53.16 Alan See in the flip flop gang. 16:53.16 Liam Brady Okay.