Not just a bark

Through the course of the 20th century, generations of Yolŋu faced the encroachment of globalisation. One arena in which this occurred was the visual arts, particularly with the establishment of the Yirrkala mission in 1935. Visual art – paintings, crafts and artefacts made with distinctive aesthetic knowledge and sometimes modified to meet perceived foreign tastes – was produced commercially: organised through the Methodist Overseas Mission and marketed to charitable and commercial enterprises in the urban centres, particularly to those of of south-eastern Australia. Into this setting arrived anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt in 1946, basing themselves at Yirrkala to document and record aspects of Yolŋu life that encompassed the painting, ceremonial and public performances and songs of Yolŋu philosophy. The Berndts had been educated by, and were funded through, Australia’s first department of anthropology, founded at the University of Sydney in 1925. Thanks to money provided through the Australian National Research Council, grants were awarded to students to undertake ethnographic fieldwork and collect physical examples of daily life – another arena in which the global interconnections and soft diplomacy of post-war Australia reached the shores of the Yolŋu world. In the Berndts’ case, their grant was directed to investigating labour conditions, diet, education, and the occupational training provided by the missions, though ultimately they were more interested in people’s religion and art