YOU’VE GOT SKY-PE

 

THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

 

YOU’VE GOT SKY-PE … Maureen Clifford © The #ScribblyBarkPoet 

 

Shooting stars –

message stick

to Yolgnu family

 

Ancestor returned

Lights dance and blaze

lighting the night sky

in celebration. 

 

One of the great things that you see when you live outside the bright lights of the city is the night sky.  It is always amazing to see just how brilliant the stars are and note the satellites moving across that great expanse of sky and if you are lucky, you might see a falling star with its trail of light streaming behind it as it plummets through the universe to its demise.

 

I find it fascinating to think that this is the very same sky that arches over our cities and towns. Nothing about it changes — only our view of it does, but because of the amount of artificial light that we have created it detracts from the beauty of the night sky that you see in the bush, causing us to actually miss out on ones of nature’s most glorious spectacles. In our quest to conquer the dark, we have dimmed the wonder.

 

The Yolngu people are indigenous people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Yolngu means “person” in the Yolngu languages.  They believe that when they die, they are taken by a mystical canoe, to the spirit-island in the sky, where their campfires can be seen burning along the edge of the great river of the Milky Way. The canoe is sent back to earth as a shooting star, letting their family know that they have arrived safely with their ancestors.

 

The Australian aborigine never had a written language as such – symbols indicated different meanings and word of mouth along with a ‘message stick’ or ‘talking stick’ were the communication tools.  The one who carried the message stick was traditionally granted safe passage through other tribes lands, a form of diplomatic immunity long before such terms existed. Elders who received the messenger were bound by custom to guarantee their safe journey onward.

Messages were inscribed on the stick either by painting, carving,  or burning  and were primarily "prompts" so that the message would be conveyed consistently to each different nation's elders. Notification of ceremonies, invitations, warnings, meetings, events and happenings were all transported this way.   Communication travelled not by wires or satellites, but by trust, responsibility and respect.  and Telstra never got a look-in J.