1. And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. 2. And it happened that as they moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
— Genesis 11:1–9

EP: So let’s describe for non-Indigenous people the linguistic terrain of your countries at the moment settlers came to Australia.
LY: Which country should we start with?
EP: What about Tjindi?
CL: Ok, well Tjindi speaks Marriamu. Traveling north, you cross a large creek and the country remains Marriamu, but as you come to Nganthiwudi (Cape Scott) the country switches to speaking Mentha.
LY: Yeah, Mentha speaking.
CL: Then cross over Tjunganana, Tjungameru, creek, and the land shifts to speaking Emmi. Keep going and you hit Banagaiya now. What does Banagaiya speak, Emmi?
LY: It speaks Emmi. In that story about the Sea Serpent Dreaming, Mom says it’s Emmi.
EP: Yeah, she marked the place as Emmi. Over there, where the Sea Serpent Dreaming lies down, it’s Emmi. The story connects Banagaiya to Tjindi through the Mudcrab Dreaming and Runggurungurra and Bwudjut through the Dog Dreaming.
LY: Yeah, the Wadjigiyn speaking Dog, or Dingo, Dreaming and the Emmi Sea Serpent, and…
CL: Don’t forget that Blue Tongue Dreaming from Mulukmuluk country and those two birds dreamings.
SY: The two black and white hawks.
LY: Ok, anyway we’re at Banagula now, which speaks Emmi or Wadjigiyn. When you cross mouth of the Daly River the country speaks Wadjigiyn and Kiyuk. Although no one has heard Kiyuk spoken in a very long time.
EP: Maybe we should suggest to readers the difference between the languages in a simplistic way by listing the ways we say cousin as we cross these territories, meaning how we saw mother’s brother’s kid or father’s sister’s kid.
AL: Don’t forget, white people don’t understand what we mean by cousin—like they also describe all their mother’s sisters and father’s brother as their cousins.
EP: True.
AL: And Indigenous groups in Arnhem Land have a different kinship system from us because they use a skin system. But white people think all Aboriginal people have the same law. Aboriginal peoples’ laws are somewhat the same and somewhat different. Sometimes they are significantly different.
EP: True. But from our perspective, how do we say “cousin” in these different languages?
CL: Well from Tjindi Marriamu you say “munggen” for a female cousin and “nira” for a male cousin. Cross over to Mentha and Emmi and you say “meinggen” for a female cousin and “pannin” for a male cousin.
AL: Is cousin in Mentha different or same as Emmi?
EP, SY, LY: Same.
SY: Some terms are the same and some are different, mostly just the words {as opposed to grammar} but for the most part Mentha and Emmi are the same.
CL: Ok, for Batjemalh now.
SY: “atu” for a male cousin.
EP: “arritu”…
SY: …or “atu” you can shorten “arritu” to “atu.”
CL: For a female cousin you say “nunga.”
EP: Cool. Was this a problem?
AL: What do you mean, mom?
EP: The countries we are talking about are not very far from each other. Like if we were healthy people we could easily walk from Mabalug to Banagaiya if the tide was out.
SY: “Karrabing” [“tide out”].
EP: Yeah if the tide was out we could cross the creeks. So these distances weren’t really far for the people who lived before settlers came.
LY, GL, SY: Mmmh.
EP: So, in the beginning, there were many languages. Did all of these languages present a problem to them?
GL: No, it didn’t, because they knew all these languages. Like my mom’s mom knew the whole lot of the languages we’ve been discussing.
LY: Plus, don’t forget, she also spoke a little Larrakia because she went through that Larrakia ceremony, and Marrithiel.
EP: Do you think that she just understood all these languages, or something more… like I was thinking about how those old women taught us to say to Burn-the-Rubber, “nira” (Maranunggu/cousin) but to say to Daboi’s brothers “pannin” (Emmi/cousin) and to Mortimah, “arritu” (Batjemalh/cousin). Why?
LY: Respect. Burn-the-Rubber is Maranunggu, Daboi’s brothers are Emmi, and Mortimah is Wadjigiyn. When you shift terms you are showing respect for that person.
AL: What do white people say, when in Spain…
EP: …Rome…
AL: Yeah, when in Rome, speak that language. Or in Beswick, you speak their pigeon English, or whatever white people call what we are speaking. They also speak but differently.
EP, SY: “Malabat” (Karrabing creole/“mebela”/us)!
EP: Sigh, that old lady {remembering an old woman from Beswick}.
CL: Yeah, but here we think that when you speak to that person in this way, you connect or articulate, you and him—when you speak their language to them the other person comes inside you and you go inside of them. You are thinking of/with/through that other person.
EP: Like that old woman now. When me I say “malabat” instead of “mebela,” I can’t help but think about that day we went hunting, where did we go? Nikmangain? Brekbena? Anyways we came back to find her at the cooking area cooking all the flour we had just bought which was supposed to last the entire week into fry bread. Finished up the entire lot flour.
GL: All the flour was gone! {laughing} Memories create embodied relations… We can say the same about marriage.
AL: And arranged marriages, all the old people arranged marriages.
CL: Yeah and through arranged marriages they joined up two countries through two people.
AL: And about ceremony… And about people sitting around a fire and swapping stories…
CL: One group tells their side of a story, like the various ways the Sea Serpent story is told depending on where you live. And all the stories are similar but different and so you need to tell what the Dreaming did from your country’s perspective and you begin to see how it connects to what happens in another country—or how it’s different—such as whom he fought or didn’t fight. So Marriamu, Emmi, and Mentha and Wadjigiyn with the Dog Dreaming are connected by the story that crosses their countries.
LY: As so with marriage, ceremony, sweating in a place—by doing this you join the places that these activities cross over, but you also keep your own people and places strong. That is why people were strong before white people came. They respected the other person because they were connected inside and outside.
EP: What about today?
AL: Ok, like today it depends how you come at it. Like from white peoples point of view or another. So white people came and they denigrated and tried to suppress Indigenous languages and cultures and force everyone to speak and think English. I am thinking about the schools and the Stolen Generation. So they tried to shut down Indigenous languages and some died out. And that’s where the problem started. The problem was that white people tried to make everyone one thing. Like we said about the difference between our way of doing kinship and the Arnhem Land way. Well they have their own way and we have to respect them, but their way is different to our way.
EP: Yeah and the land rights legislation was based on the Arnhem Land but white people said everyone has to conform to their way—and I might as well say that anthropologists backed up the settler law’s position.
SY: You mob! {laughing}
EP: You can put the blame on your mothers and grandmothers for making me an anthropologist, sister! They forced me to become one because they needed one [by law] for the land claim they were struggling with. “Come on Beth, you know—we need anthropologist according to the law.”
LY: True. Land claims operate the same way white language policy works: make everything one kind of thing and isolate people no matter that all come from the same coastline. It’s what I was saying before, sister, we have many different ways, but white people make them all one thing with no connections across groups or lands.
AL: And yet we all come from one coastline, have one ceremony, or we join into another group’s ceremony.
CL: Those kinds of practices connect people and country. They make them one thing without cancelling people’s independence and difference from each other.
EP: Yeah, I think white people just can’t wrap their heads around the idea that people, places, things can be connected and independent. They think either that things are a group and so a homogeneous thing or are separate and a homogeneous thing. People are inside or outside homogeneous things. They are the same or they are different. But being the same and different, being connected and independent: they can’t understand this or don’t want to.
LY: Why sister?
EP: Good question.
JM: We might as well say, “because they are settlers.”
Everyone: {laughing.} True. They want power.
EP: They get power by making their one way everyone’s way.
AL: They dig a ditch right around a person and group; they put a fence around them. But making everyone the same no one can respect each other.
EP: True. Ok maybe its time to end by why Karrabing is important, or what it does.
LY: Karrabing are going the old way.
SY: They are going the real way.
LY: When people affiliate across categories they make a stronger force. They can keep and hold their lands and selves.