10
Nawurapu Wunungmurra
Dhalwangu people
NT b.1952
Mungurru (Ocean water) Dhalwangu clan
memorial poles
2008
Wood with natural pigments
323 x 19cm (diam.); 282 x 12cm (diam.); 331 x 14cm
(diam.); 275 x 14cm (diam.); 286 x 19cm (diam.)
Acc. 2008.259–263
Purchased 2008. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Yingapungapu
(funerary sand sculpture)
Arnhem Land mortuary ceremonies are held to ensure
that the cycle of death and life continues unimpeded.
These rituals include the yingapungapu, a shallow
stylised canoe form sculpted from sandy soil, which
is central to final performances. An ephemeral
yingapungapu installation was created by Yirrkala
artists especially for the exhibition.
1
With its origins in wangarr (ancestral times),
yingapungapu remain an element of a religious
view of death and life still relevant in contemporary
Yolngu society. It is both a canoe-shaped space and
the feminine form which ushers new life into being.
It cradles the remains of the deceased, holding
contamination at bay, while the soul returns to
the reservoir from which it will identify its next
set of parents.
From the perspective of Djambawa Marawili’s
Madarrpa clan, the foundations of yingapungapu may
be found in an ancient narrative of ancestral hunters
who followed a dugong to the sea of Yathikpa in their
canoe. The dugong’s food — swaying ribbons of sunlit
seagrass — manifested into flames, which boiled the
water at this sacred site and capsized their canoe. The
hunters’ harpoon transformed into dhakandjali, the
hollow log coffin that floats on the seas of Yathikpa and
beyond in Blue Mud Bay, in eastern Arnhem Land, a
body of water connecting the Mangalili and Dhalwangu
clans. Its course is still recounted when tracing
complex ancestral connections between saltwater
peoples. These events, which initiated the first death
and mortuary rituals, are sung at Yirritja ceremonies
and the ‘deep’ names of Yathikpa are intoned by
Djerrakay (ritual specialists).
