We are the original inhabitants of this land, called Australia by the white men.
We have been here since the beginning of time, since the Dreamtime,
when everything we know was created.
My people know how to sing each and every place of this sacred country,
while we contemplate Yhi, the Sun God.
Each song is a living map which describes a specific path, the course of a river, a mountain or forest.
If you brought together all these songs, which are passed down from generation to generation,
and which come from dreams, we would compose the map of Australia.
At twilight, the humming of the didgeridoo, our religious instrument,
reminds us who we are and what we are doing here.
It is the beat of our tradition, which keeps us united and attached to the land.
I am old Yakar Garimala, an Australian Aborigine, as foreigners call us,
and I am going to tell you what our world is like.
My country is enormous. It is an island that could be a continent.
It is the most beautiful country in the world.
We have deserts, jungles, savannah, plateaux and mountains with deep canyons carved by furious torrents.
The sea is all around, along our coast there are bays and inlets, and sacred cliffs like this one of bikerton ailan.
This is where I live.
We elders have the important task of initiating the young into our customs,
explaining our history to them, and teaching them to respect the traditional laws.
Our people, our culture, are the oldest in the world.
We were already here thousands of years ago.
We were around at the same time as what the white men call Homo Sapiens.
In these caves and caverns we can feel the influence of the spirits of our ancestors.
If you sleep here, you can see them in your dreams and receive their messages.
They come and fill you with their strength, and when you wake you feel very good.
These are sacred places for us.
In the past, people lived in caves and natural shelters like these.
Across all our territory you can find paintings made by our forefathers, and which speak of the "Dreamtime",
the creation, and how they lived 50,000 years ago.
In the Kakadu National Park lies Ubirrok,
where the Rainbow Serpent stopped after creating the world
and was painted on a rock so that people could see her.
Over time our forefathers left on the rocks a complete collection of images
which depict their way of life and their beliefs.
They painted the animals they hunted or fished so the spirits would help them capture them.
In this way we know to what extent these animals are the same ones as those we eat today:
barramundi fish, long-necked tortoises, kangaroos, crocodiles, wallabies.
We know that they knew what many of the animals they drew were like inside.
Their skeletons and some of their entrails.
The paintings in some of the most inaccessible places were made by the "mimis",
the lesser spirits which are the cause of everything that happens to us, good or bad.
According to the legend, with their long, thin bodies they glided to the very top of the cave,
took pieces of rock, brought them down to the ground, painted them and then put them back on the ceiling.
On these ancient rocks they also drew figures of the men of that time,
warriors and hunters, who used the same spears and harpoons as we do now.
We share our land with all types of animals,
some of them as dangerous as the sea crocodile,
a sacred animal for us, even though it is capable of devouring a man in an instant.
The kangaroo is the most characteristic animal of my country.
I know over fifty different types, some of them over two metres high.
They are beautiful and unique.
They carry their children in pouches which the mothers have on their stomachs.
The forests and swamps are full of multi-coloured birds, like the yellow-crested cockatoos.
There are also dangerous poisonous snakes,
and others like the olive python that kill their prey by strangling them.
We have always respected all the beings of creation.
Each tribe, each person, has one or more animals which are their totems,
because they are in their dreams, and they can't hunt them or eat them.
When we get together to dance around the fire, we sing the dreams of the animals, the stories of how they were created.
and how man developed special techniques to hunt them and obtain food.
Those that dance and sing paint their faces and bodies with kaolin,
to look like the spirits which, according to our beliefs, are of a grey colour.
The dances are performed in order to worship or give thanks to nature.
Traditionally, they are to ask the spirits for a particular prey,
or to forgive us for having hunted an animal without their permission.
The atmosphere is almost always festive.
The participants cheer the steps of those dancing in the centre,
and there is a kind of competition among them.
Each one specialises in imitating a specific animal, which is normally their totemic animal.
Apart from the didgeridoo, the musicians also beat the yidacas,
each group has its own rhythm which identifies them.
It is a symbol of union among them.
Only the high dignitaries can beat the yidacas.
They are the ones who change the beats of the different songs and direct the dances.
The dance of the women is slower and more measured.
They are normally in a state of trance, possessed by the spirits of the forest which protect them.
Their movements imitate their work of gathering and collecting.
Do you like our dances?
Do you like our music and songs?
The sound of the didgeridoo frightens me
You shouldn't be afraid of the didgeridoo.
It's our sacred instrument. With its sound, the great god Baiame created the stars in the Dreamtime.
The men who know how to play it are very important in our culture.
With the didgeridoo they communicate our wishes to the spirits.
And they call on them to come to our aid when tragedy befalls us.
This sacred instrument brings us closer to the world of our ancestors.
It awakens the Rainbow Serpent without making it angry, and allows us to speak with the god of creation
It is difficult to play, because you have to blow constantly, using the technique of circular breathing.
You expel the air using the cheeks and tongue, at the same time inhaling through the nose.
Good musicians can keep the sound going without stopping for ten minutes.
Yakar- how do you make a didgeridoo?
The didgeridoo is not made by man, like other musical instruments.
We simply look for them, clean them and decorate them.
The didgeridoos are made by the ants.
Our land, here in northern Australia, is the kingdom of the ants.
There are hundreds of thousands of termite hills of many different forms.
In some areas, experts have calculated there could by up to 20 million termites per hectare.
The termite hills are like living beings.
Inside them, thousands of termites are busy digging intricate tunnels which protect them from their enemies
and ensure that the temperature always remains the same and the atmosphere very humid.
They build their termite hills from soil and clay mixed with their own saliva and excrement.
With this material they make small balls the size of a grain of rice,
which they pile up to create mounds which can be up to six metres high.
The termites also invade the trees, especially the eucalyptuses.
They hollow them out from the inside, but never kill them.
To collect the didgeridoos, the men go into the forest and observe the eucalyptuses.
From the hollow sound, they know that the termites have completed their work.
When they find a trunk of the right length and thickness,
they cut the piece that the will be the didgeridoo.
Then, in a comfortable place to work, they prepare the hollow trunk
First they clean it and remove the bark.
Normally, it is the musicians themselves that prepare these instruments.
With a metal bar, which has been heated in the fire,
they burn the pieces of wood and excrement that the termites have left, and empty it
And the didgeridoo is ready.
Later, each musician will get an artist to decorate it with designs that are normally related to the Dreamtime or totemic animals.
We have always lived in this region called Arnhem Land.
Our people were nomads, always moving from one place to another,
carrying their few belongings with them.
That is why we know the forest so well.
In the forest, we know how to get everything we need.
The men have always hunted and fished, while our women are expert gatherers.
They know where to find edible fruits and roots, and how to get honey,
which is one of our favourite foods.
When a special celebration is coming up, the women go into the forest in search of the prized nectar.
Here, the termites again play an important role.
In the high branches of the trees, the bees take advantage of the holes made by the termites to construct their honeycombs.
No matter how thick the trees are, the women do not take long in pulling them down. Inside, they are hollow, like enormous termite hills.
Once they have pulled it down, depending on how wet the clay inside the base of the trunk is,
they will know in which part of the tree they will find the honey.
Patiently, taking turns with the axe, the women make cuts in the trunk, until they find the honeycomb.
The bees go mad, flying angrily around the women who are destroying their home.
But these honey bees are tiny and inoffensive, incapable of doing any harm.
The honey is inside capsules of wax, which means large pieces can be collected without spilling it.
Later, they clean it, and separate it from the wax.
Gathering has always been very important for us:
fruits, berries, medicinal herbs, roots and tubers,
have long formed the basis of our diet.
The women have always worked in the forest, carrying out these tasks.
No one knows nature like they do.
Depending on how flexible the lianas and the stems of the plants are,
they know whether or not the roots are big enough, and tasty enough to be cooked.
They collect yams, which grow wild in the humid areas.
Their work is very dangerous.
They disturb the vegetation, and you have to be carefully how you treat nature,
because before long she will get angry and attack you in one way or another.
They often come across the king brown, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world
its bite is always fatal.
Hunting and war have always been men's work,
and they have always made their own weapons.
Without a doubt, the boomerang is the best known of these.
They are pieces of wood carved with a slight curve, which makes them more accurate when they are thrown.
The heavier they are, the more effective they will be in bringing down prey.
Our most expert hunters are capable of hitting an animal from over 160 metres.
Normally, they hunt small animals, though the most sought-after prey,
which brings the hunter the greatest prestige, is the red kangaroo, the biggest of all.
Despite what most people think, a real boomerang does not come back.
The tourist and souvenir industry has invented devices decorated with designs from our culture,
which they sell as if they were authentic boomerangs.
These do come back, after describing spectacular curves in the air,
but for us they have no value, they are no good to hunt with or anything.
The efficiency of the boomerang comes exclusively from its weight and the curvature, which makes it easier to handle.
But the boomerang is not our only weapon.
In the jungle, we cut flexible rods of bougainvillea, with which we make spears and harpoons for fishing.
In fact, the spear is our best weapon.
We used them in our fight against the white men who invaded our country and drove us off the land that belonged to us.
Once outside the forest, we make a fire and heat the flexible rods to harden them.
Then, we remove the bark and cut them to the right size for each man.
We have had to defend our country since the white man set foot in it.
According to them, our land was called Terra Australis Incognita, until in 1605 the first European arrived,
the Spaniard Fernández de Quirós, who called it Australia del Espíritu Santo.
Then, 170 years later, the pirate James Cook renamed in New South Wales and raised the English flag.
The English used this island to send us their prisoners.
80 years after the first ones arrived, there were 170,000 convicts in Australia
but the worst came in the middle of the nineteenth century, when they discovered gold in our territory.
It was then that we really began to get in their way.
The aborigines, as they started to call us, were captured, confined to distant regions,
and finally infected with many diseases, such as the flu, which devastated our population.
During all this time we bravely fought the invaders with our spears,
but the white man had gunpowder and rifles, and in the end they defeated us.
Today our spears claim other victims.
When the tide goes out, we fish for the dangerous sting rays that hide in the sand
ready to plunge their enormous stings into anyone who dares disturb them.
It takes practice to find them hidden in the sand and not stand on them.
Their stings are very painful, but our fishermen are almost never caught by surprise.
They launch their harpoons into them from a distance.
When they have caught them, they hold the tail with their mouth and pull out the poisonous sting.
After pulling off the skin and gutting them, we pound and knead the flesh with our hands, and eat it raw.
It's a real delicacy.
Now you're young, you must learn everything about our culture.
I know now you go to the white man's schools, but our identity must survive, otherwise you will be nobody.
Now, our people live in reservations, we are no longer nomads,
but they can't take away our laws and our beliefs.
That must be the most important thing in our lives.
In 1931, Arnhem Land, in Northern Australia, was declared an aborigine reservation,
and in the 1967 constitution we aborigines were given equal rights with the white men.
Now, we live in pre-fabricated houses which are entirely foreign to our way of life.
Traditional customs are breaking down.
The young go off to study far away from their parents, and then don't want to return.
And many aborigines fall victim to alcohol.
From 1967, the lands began to be our property.
The white man promised to respect our sacred places, but of course...there's a trick.
The administration of Aborigine lands is controlled by the whites, who obtain the profits from mining.
In return, they pay us a kind of pension...and that, that's the worst thing.
It's the most efficient way of wiping out our culture.
My people don't realise, but I am old, I know that if a man does not have to work,
if he does not grow crops, or hunt or do something, he very quickly destroys himself.
Our coasts are full of animals, which traditionally provided us with food.
One thing we find particularly exquisite is turtle eggs.
When we see the tracks of a giant turtle on the beach, we follow them and discover where it has laid its eggs.
We carefully probe the ground with rods, to find out where we need to dig, and then take the eggs.
A giant tortoise can lay hundreds of eggs.
We never take them all, we always leave half of them so they will hatch, and there will be more eggs in the future.
With our harpoons we also fish turtles and manatees, pursuing them on motor boats.
When we have speared an animal, we throw a buoy into the water, with a long rope tied to harpoon.
The animal tries to escape, but the buoy stops it from swimming freely.
Very quickly it grows tired, and then we approach to capture it.
This requires patience, you mustn't try to go too fast, you have to pull in the ropes little by little so the prey does not escape.
If the animal is very heavy, like the turtles, we usually secure it with another harpoon before dragging it into the boat.
We catch turtles of up to 200 kilos, very difficult to pull out of the water.
Whenever they catch a giant turtle, the fishermen arrange a feast, right there on the beach, to which all their relatives are invited.
First, they prepare a big fire on which they put stones so they will become red hot.
These stones are what will be used to roast the turtle meat.
After cutting off its head, they begin to take out the entrails and the enormous intestine.
This work is normally done by the oldest one in the group.
With his experience, he knows by touch which parts should be removed and which left.
When the fire dies down and the stones are hot, they start cooking.
They stand the shell vertically on the ground, hold it in place with sand and start to fill it with the hot stones,
with the carefully-cleaned entrails and intestine, and with aromatic herbs.
When it is full, they place it on the embers of the fire.
The stones roast the meat from inside
with just the heat from the fire it would be impossible to roast so much meat.
Half an hour later, the banquet is ready to be carved up.
That is, of course after breaking through the powerful shell, which is not always an easy task.
Pieces are cut off and selected to be shared out.
Everyone must get the same amount of meat, if not there will be problems between the different families of the fishermen.
Normally, they choose a man who everyone trusts to share the meat our fairly, but no one will eat anything,
except the little bits of meat that have stuck to the shell, until it has all been shared out.
The juice that remains at the bottom is our turtle soup.
While the meat is still being carved.
Then, the main course, and everyone eats as much as possible.
My people have always felt the need to express themselves through painting, now and since the beginning of time.
Our sacred rocks are covered with these painting which tell of the "Dreamtime".
There, we can see representations of the creator god Baiame in all his forms,
and what the world of our ancestors was like, thousands of years ago.
Our art, now called aborigine art by the white man's tourist industry,
is born from the dreams of each artist and the intense colours we see in our land.
Each painter tries to express in his work certain dreams which belong to him, or to his Moiety, or mystic society,
but he will have to ask for permission if he wants to paint someone else's dream.
Through dreams, we can enter the other, parallel world, in which, since the creation, gods, spirits and men have lived together.
The actions carried out in that world are what change and order the world of the living.
That is why every painting contains an internal message which can only be seen by those who have the wisdom to understand it.
Today, commercial paints like water colours and oils are used, on frames and canvases,
though some people continue to produce work with natural pigments, on tree bark.
The women have always been in charge of collecting the elements necessary to make the different colours.
Clays, carbons, kaolin, plants and roots, properly mixed, are the components they use to obtain all the colours of the rainbow.
Some colours can be obtained without needing to mix them, such as ochre and yellow,
which are made by cooking the roots of a bush that grows among the eucalyptuses.
In body painting and ritual decoration the same ideas are expressed as those of the pictures.
Through painting, the past and the present come together, and men have contact with the world beyond.
Dots, circles, crosses and spirals symbolise places or paths in the dream.
They are a kind of religious map.
Almost always, the artist makes reference to especially important moments in our history.
They also depict fantasies related to fabulous beings.
But the being itself is not painted, but rather the image this being transmits to the artist across time and movement.
Other paintings represent totemic animals:
fish, crocodiles, turtles, duckbill platypuses, kangaroos, snakes
these paintings are inspired by the drawings our ancestors left on the sacred rocks.
Man is also represented in our paintings, though at times with the body of an animal.
They are the men who at the beginning of time lived with the spirits and the gods of creation.
Now, our art is exported all around the world.
Foreigners have realised its importance and pay a great deal of money for our paintings,
which are put on display in the major art galleries in cities like London, New York or Paris.
Near the city of Darwin, my people call to the spirit of the king of the crocodiles with piercing cries.
It is a dance of invocation.
It is performed whenever someone has to travel to an area where the powerful sea crocodiles live.
They ask for its permission and protection, but the great spirit is always asleep, and so they have to cry out to wake him,
so that he knows that people have gathered together to dance in his honour.
Each time, they interpret the dream or vision of the person who has convened the ceremony,
who will not be able to participate in the dances, but will simply watch to see if the story is represented properly.
They act out situations, describe places and imitate the protagonists, either people or animals.
One of the dreams that is often represented is that of the two wives of the supreme god Baiame.
One day, the god asked his wives to accompany him to a pool.
When they were there, Baiame told them to wait while he went off to look for honey.
Before leaving, he warned them that they could drink water but not bathe in the pool.
But it was very hot, and the women decided to ignore their husband's orders.
So, they went into the water.
Suddenly the threatening figure of two enormous crocodiles emerged, the guardians of the pool
They attacked them and ate them.
As they knew they were the wives of the great god, they decided to flee.
They swam as fast as they could, dragging behind them the waters of the river
When Baiame returned and saw the river without water, he knew that something had happened.
He went down into the river bed and chased after the crocodiles.
When he found them, he killed them with a boomerang.
Then, he cut open their stomachs and pulled out his wives.
He lay them on the ground and covered them with ants.
With the tickling of the ants, the two women came back to life.
This is our world, an ancient world which is now coming to an end.
Our beliefs, born from this land which now does not belong to us, clash with those of the white men who rule over us.
But I, old Yakar Garimala, like the other old men, will continue to tell our history to the young.
Perhaps in time they will realise where their truth lies, and again awaken the Rainbow Serpent.