Mick England

The Jingubardabiya pandanus mat spirit at Wangarr Ajuwana can be interpreted as a myth of creation, providing spiritual coherence to the dynamic changes in the relationships between clans and their ownership over the different country. In England Banggala’s story about Jin-gubardabiya, the pandanus mat spirit at Wangarr A-juwana, is an example of an inheritance myth. He sometimes painted this spirit being carried by the An-nguliny clan ancestors, as instructed by the creation ancestor Jijapurn. The wangarra yerrcha ‘group of ghost spirits’ followed Jijapurn’s orders and placed Jin-gubardabiya inside the monsoon vine thicket at Wangarr A-juwana. – Margaret Carew in “Gun-ngaypa Rrawa ‘My Country’: Intercultural alliances in language research” in her Doctor of Philosophy thesis at Monash University in 2016.