Author: Francisca Seabra
“When I wasn’t writing my own stories, I was being read to and, most importantly, told stories about family and Country” – Jeanine Leane
Jeanine Leane was born in 1961 in Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia. She is a Wiradjuri writer, teacher, and academic who has won two Discovery Indigenous Awards through the Australian Research Council, amongst others. Leane has a unique focus on Indigenous history and memory, as well as the connection between land and language.
The Wiradjuri community is one of the largest indigenous groups in Australia who lived as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, moving according to seasonal changes. This community was gravely impacted during the 19th century by displacement by a colonial system of sedentarization and forced assimilation, that led amongst other things to violent conflicts with colonial authorities, health issues such as small pox and psychological trauma.
Art of Expression
Leane’s writing style is characterized by strategic uses of syntax and structure that lead to unconscious reactions in the readers, which back up her experience and message.
Her poems are structured with free verse and rhyme, meaning she does not comply with a strict meter or rhyme system. This provides her with flexibility to adopt the rest of her writing characteristics, escaping from colonial literary conventions.
Her use of line breaks and pauses are predominantly meant to make an emphasis on words or ideas as well as to mimic oral storytelling traditions (i.e. breath breaks and tone changes) while using the visual layout on paper as a backup. For this same reason and to reinforce memory and meaning, she makes use of a circular structure and repetitions in her poems, continuously going back to the same topics.
She uses fragmented syntax, such as incomplete sentences or abrupt transitions, to reflect on what her indigenous community has gone through. The feeling of loss and of fragmentation of ideas is a reflection of the discontinuity that Indigenous communities’ history and identity went through with colonization.
And now, our main focus of this drop-in, she adopts a dual-language structure by including Wiradjuri words in the poems. Unconsciously, readers will have to stop at these words, giving them more time to process what they have read and as a way to force them to engage with the language. But what is the reason for this need of engagement?
Language as identity
One of the ways this artist has to assert the continuity of indigenous presence in her poems is through language.
The mindset of the Wiradjuri people is highly based in the concept of appreciation of the land as an entity with its own voice in contrast with the colonial view of land as something to be owned, named and controlled. In the poem “Nurambang yali”, Leane uses language as a way to personify the land, symbolizing that Wiradjuri is a way to engage with the essence of indigenous identity and knowledge by making the Country speak to its people reclaiming their identity, denying external control and resisting colonialism.
(…)
Listened for the sounds of her words that say
“Balandha – dhuraay Bumal-ayi-nya Wumbay
abuny (yaboing)” – History does not have the
first claim. Nor the last word.
Nghindhi yarra dhalanbul ngiyanhi gin.gu
“You can speak us now!”
This restoration of identity is further dealt with in the poem “Yanha-mam-birra” where she explores the healing process that language brings to Indigenous peoples that have suffered colonial oppression.
(…)
The space of my emptiness is a chasm so deep, so wide
I’ll fall to endless nothing without your words to cross it.
(…)
For too long my mouth paid lip-service to English
been a slave to grammar prisoner to punctuation
handmaiden to pronunciations servant of prim proper
and poise.
Life sentence lifted my tongue can liberate my heart
with these words from you
I am Wiradjuri … Badhu Wiradjuri
I am proud … Badhu Dyiramadilinya
I am here … Badhu Nginha
The artist yearns for Wiradjuri words as a form of nourishment to the soul and body, symbolizing the spiritual void left by the loss of language due to colonization. Language is the pathway to identity restoration, it is a reason to be proud.
This tradition of highlighting and recognising the importance of language comes from a background of oral heritage. In the poem “The Gatherers”, Leane illustrates how women play a central role in teaching younger generations about land, cultural practices, and stories. The continuity of Indigenous culture and identity is kept by the custodians of tradition (women) who, despite the efforts of colonialism, do not let it be forgotten.
(…)
like the yinaagirbang 1before us we look for small things –
listen for silences – weave our own basket of
gatherings to keep safe for our galin-gabangbur – gather
and gather again – restore – regenerate – remember.
Drawing by: Francisca Seabra
Conclusion
As a part of United Rising’s intersectionality campaign, storytelling is aimed at empowering Indigenous communities, promoting inclusive environmental justice, and highlighting the connections between climate change and social injustices. As we have seen, in the Wiradjuri community, storytelling is an innate practice that passes on from generation to generation.
Jeanine Leane lets us in on her community’s culture and on the importance they give to their own language and land. She uses her poems to reject colonialism and highlight the role of grandmothers and women in general. We highly recommend reading the complete poems to further understand these topics, as well as reading other poems and see her thought provoking magic for yourself. The Wiradjuri language is another whole world on its own, while reading her poems, try to look for the translation of the native words, you will find some of them have several meanings or unique meanings you would not find in other languages.
- Yinaagirbang: women (https://wiradjuri.wcclp.com.au/letters/w/words)
Galin-gabangbur: children (https://cdn2.penguin.com.au/content/resources/The_Yield_audio_supplement.pdf)
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