Book – Law: The Way of the Ancestors

Authors: Marcia Langton & Aaron CornPublisher: Thames & Hudson Australia[1]Reviewer: Stephen Keim

Law: the Way of the Ancestors (“Law”), published in 2023, is the sixth volume in the First Knowledges series. The preceding volumes have addressed the topics of Songlines, Design, Country, Astronomy, and Plants. Three further volumes have followed it: Innovation, Medicine and Seasons.

The First Knowledges series is edited by Margo Neale, Senior Indigenous Curator and Principal Advisor to the Director at the Australian Museum. Neale, in an introduction to Law, describes the books in the series as showing how traditional knowledge, beliefs, systems and practices inform contemporary life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and, indeed, for all people who have the will and knowledge to take them on, to listen and to learn. Neale adds that this kind of respectful engagement could be the path to true belonging in Australia.

Neale is of Aboriginal and Irish descent, from the Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections.

Each book in the series is co-authored. Neale explains that co-authorship offers a broader range of perspectives and knowledge from different cultural backgrounds, lived experience and research. Neale refers to the expertise of knowledge holders from Aboriginal and Western disciplines and the power that comes from such collaborations.

The idea of different backgrounds and experience is developed in the first chapter of Law which follows Neale’s introduction.

First, Marcia Langton, and, then, Aaron Corn, writing separately in this chapter, set out aspects of their life journey towards an understanding of Indigenous knowledge.

Marcia Langton has a Yiman and Bidjara heritage. Her distinguished career as a writer and academic has resulted in her appointments as a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Associate Provost at Melbourne University.

Langton states that, as a child living in south-west Queensland in a native camp on the edge of town, she did not realise that the special rules for Aboriginal life such as not walking in front of adults or speaking while adults were speaking were laws. She was, however, fascinated by the rituals of adults in her life such as when they were treating sickness or worrying about spirits.

In contrast, Langton’s experience of teachings in school about “savages” who had no idea about law, property and property law were so alien to her experience of the people she knew that she experienced such teachings as an elaborate lie.

Langton, then thirty years old, listened to Eddie Mabo speaking at a conference in Townsville in August 1981. Mabo was the first person that Langton met who clearly articulated that Indigenous Laws existed.

Langton credits the great anthropologist, WEH Stanner, with recognition of the importance of the rules that underlie ceremony and describes her excitement at witnessing a makarrata ceremony at the Yuendumu Sports Carnival similar to that described by Stanner in the 1930s. Langton’s fascination with and desire to write about the laws that govern the intricacies of Aboriginal life led to her writing her doctoral thesis on the subject.

Langton concludes her explanation of her personal perspective by stating that both her personal experiences in everyday life and in public contexts, and her academic training and work, have provided her with some skills for describing the resonating presence of Aboriginal laws in Australian society despite the grand failure of that society to recognise them. Langton hopes that she has done justice to the ways of the ancestors.  

Aaron Corn is Professor and Inaugural Director of the Indigenous Knowledge Institute and convenor of the PH D in Indigenous Knowledge course at Melbourne University. Corn grew up on the Gold Coast of Queensland in the 1970s and 80s. Despite an absence of meaningful exposure to Indigenous perspectives, Corn was fascinated by the topic of Indigenous history from the age of 7 triggered in part by the location of the Jebribillum Bora Park on his daily journey to primary school.

Corn was musically talented and he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in music at the Queensland Conservatorium, including an Honours year. Corn’s Master’s research, in the 1990s, was into musical instruments held by the Queensland Museum. These included instruments from around the world as well as many Indigenous instruments from across Australia. Working with the curators of the instruments including Indigenous curators, Corn learned much from them although his dominant realisation was how little his previous years of education had taught him about Indigenous culture.

Having completed his Master’s Degree, Corn started Ph D studies at Melbourne University. He was interested in the music of Yothu Yindi. He was particularly interested in the way the music of that band blended Indigenous traditional song styles with Western popular music band styles. As he dug deeper, Corn realised that Yothu Yindi’s work drew on Indigenous lived experience, traditional knowledge and beliefs and Indigenous political aspirations at that period drawing on the desire to conclude a treaty recognising Indigenous sovereignty in accord with the 1988 Barunga Statement which had been presented to the Australian Parliament as part of the Bicentenary celebrations of that year. Corn’s PH D studies were focused on understanding this emerging Indigenous music and the influences that were driving it.

As a result, Corn came to know and collaborate with Mandawuy Yunupingu on a series of projects combining music and culture. Corn has, since, collaborated with and learned from a number of other Indigenous leaders including Yolngu elder, Joe Neparna Gumbula and Warlpiri leader, Steven Wantarri Jumpijinpa Pawu.

Corn has worked at Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne Universities as well as the Australian National University. Corn was and remains Inaugural Director of the Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne.

The chapter titles in Law, apart from Personal Perspectives, are: First Law, Everything is Related; Respect and Responsibility; Family Business; Gendered Business; Wisdom and Leadership; and The Gift of Law.     

Of these, a fundamental message concerning Indigenous Law is conveyed by the phrase, “Everything is Related”. Not only does Indigenous Law cover all aspects of human activity (which, at some level of generality, is true of all legal systems) but Indigenous knowledge is integrated such that music, dance and visual art all are influenced by law and, in their turn, reflect and evidence Indigenous law.

As part of illustrating this, Langton and Corn refer to the Michael Nelson Jagamara painting, Possum and Wallaby Dreaming. Possum and Wallaby Dreamingis reproduced as a mural located in the front of Parliament House in Canberra. Langton and Corn explain the composition of the painting and the meaning contained in the symbols used as part of the work. They also explain the way in which the painting, taken as a whole, represents a form of community decision making in which the community members as a whole have a part to play, albeit, with the community elders playing leadership roles.

Possum and Wallaby Dreaming is not, however, just somebody’s idea of how a community might make decisions. It is a means of visually representing the law as it provides for decision making of Jagamara’s community, the Warlpiri People. Just as Indigenous art seeks to represent aspects of the law of the community, Indigenous knowledge and law is reflected in traditional dance and song. Indeed, the long years of work and study required to become accepted as a leader includes the gaining of knowledge of the community’s dance and song ceremonies and the principles they express and embody. Neither is it coincidental that song and dance and painting reflect country and myths and relationship with country. All of these are part of the law and all are connected and learning about one’s place in the universe and the community is assisted by the ceremonial events which go on around you and in which you learn to take part.       

 Langton and Corn illustrate many of their general points about the nature of Aboriginal law by reference to specific knowledge drawn from the traditions of the Warlpiri people or the Yolngu people. I suspect that this is partially because both authors’ lifelong studies have given them more detailed knowledge of the traditions of those two groups. I also suspect that the traditions of the Warlpiri and Yolngu peoples have survived the two hundred years of dispersion and dispossession in a more intact state than the traditions of many other groups.  

Langton and Corn convey the way in which the lives of an Aboriginal Australian are affected by the traditional laws in a great deal of ways. Despite the detail, the rules and the underlying logic of the rules are conveyed in an accessible manner. There is a great deal of complexity about how one is born into sub-groupings of the whole group that are dependent upon but different to the sub-group to which one’s parents and grandparents, respectively, belong. One’s sub-group will determine many aspects of one’s life not the least the sub-grouping of the person to whom one may marry and the sorts of bush foods which one may be prohibited from eating.

To the uninformed eye, such rules appear arbitrary and without purpose. Langton and Corn point out, however, that the rules serve the purpose of ensuring ethical decision making, particularly, among the elders of the group. While different elders may come from different sub-groups, each person involved in making decisions has loyalties not only to members of his or her own sub-group but, also, through their parents and siblings and grandparents share sympathies with the interest of the members of many other sub-groups. In this way, the apparently arbitrary rules have an underlying logic which seeks to ensure that communal decision making will seek consensus and work to advance the interests of everyone in the group and not to prefer sectional or factional interests.

While this is an important example, Law provides many other examples of the way in which traditional laws work to ensure the well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. For the same reason, Law is not a mere list of rules about behaviour. It manages to explain why those rules exist and the way in which they operate for the welfare of everyone to whom they apply.

Law is a relatively slim volume of slightly less than 200 pages. It comes with an informative and useful set of end notes and a comprehensive index. It is a thoroughly rewarding read.

In the concluding two pages, Langton and Corn set out a set of rules to follow as a means of embracing Indigenous law. The rules provide a guide to living a good and

useful life. The authors conclude with the following words: “Indigenous law – the way of the ancestors – is a gift to all Australians and the entire world. Instead of looking to our colonial past, Australia’s origin story can be found here, in its own deep history.” This reflects Neale’s thesis that traditional knowledge, beliefs, systems and practices not only inform contemporary life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples but, also, can do so for people who have the will and knowledge to take them on, to listen and to learn.

[1] Law is published in conjunction with the National Museum of Australia and its publication was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.