The Yawuru people of the west Kimberley have a philosophy of “mabu liyan”. Literally translated as “good/strong spirit”, it is a way of living well, with all the things that give meaning to their lives – country, people, community and culture.
Yawuru woman Nini Mills, who is the chief executive of the Nyamba Buru Yawuru (NBY), Yawuru’s development and investment company, explains it better: “‘Mabu’ means good in Yawuru language, and ‘liyan’ is a Yawuru word used throughout the west Kimberley and it can be described in many ways. For Yawuru people, it’s your spirit, your intuition, your moral compass.
“Our broader vision is to create mabu liyan for always, and we want Yawuru people to have strong spirit and a strong sense of well being.
“The stronger your connection to all of those facets, the stronger your spirit will be. And when your spirit is empowered, it enables you to move forward in the modern society that we live in today, being grounded in your cultural identity and values.”
This week, Yawuru took over the pastoral operations at Roebuck Plains Station on Gumaranganyjal, near Broome.
It’s been a long story.
In 2006, Yawuru were granted native title over more than 530,000 hectares of their traditional country, including the land and waters in and around Rubibi (the town of Broome).
In 2014, the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation (ILSC) – the federal organisation set up to assist traditional owners acquire and manage rights and interests in land, saltwater and freshwater country – bought Roebuck Plains station and then managed both of them until Yawuru were ready to take over the reins themselves, which officially happened this week. Yawuru now have the station, while the two organisations will work together to transfer operations of the export depot in the future.
The station is located on rich marine floodplains 30km east of Broome, with the capacity to support 20,000 head of cattle. The business will support training and employment opportunities for young people on country.
Mills says taking over the station means a new era for Yawuru participation in the cattle and pastoral industries in the Kimberley, which were built on “the back of our old people’s blood, sweat and tears”.
“For us to now be in the position to take control of the station is a tribute to their legacy and their sacrifice,” she says. “I think of the resilience that must have taken for them to hold that vision, under their predicament, at that point in time. It’s phenomenal.”
The Yawuru worldview means balancing those interests with important cultural and environmental values, such as teaching the young people and taking care of important natural and cultural sites, Mills says.
“Our approach is factoring in broader and sustainable opportunities for Yawuru people. So, yes, we’ll be looking for people to work on the cattle station itself but we have an Indigenous Protected Area, and fundamental to protecting that is to ensure that we have Yawuru people in positions there.
“Our old people have set a vision that we’re committed to, so this new opportunity for us is to ensure that it’s not just a job, the contribution is much more meaningful.”
Dianne Appleby’s father, Thomas Edgar, was an important figure in the history of Roebuck Plains station, where he was known as the “windmill man” because of his cultural knowledge of the water of the plains and the surrounding hinterland.
“[My father] was a man of great learning, learning it from a country that was rich, and he gave that learning to others. So many of them – my grandfathers, my uncles and aunties and my grandmothers – all did the same thing,” Appleby says.
“My mother said when you teach, you teach with mabu liyan, you teach with good liyan, good feeling. How you expect people to learn if you are bitter? That’s what she tells me. Very wise words, my mother: how do you expect people to respect you if you’re going to be bitter?”
As part of the transfer of management of the station, NBY will buy 15,000 head of cattle from the ILSC.
The return of the station makes Appleby think back to when the first Europeans arrived, and the way they treated Yawuru elders in their quest for grazing land.
“By the 1800s Aboriginal women and men of Yawuru descent as well as the other neighbouring groups came to work on Roebuck plains,” Appleby says. “We still had our senior elders with us telling us of these stories that are so significant, so strong. They never forgot the dreaming of these areas.
“They said: we need this country because the country is part of us. We’ve tilled this soil, we’ve worked on the soil, we’ve slept on this soil, the Earth that has so much meaning to us. But we built those fences as well, with our bare hands.
“The care for this country has always been in our heart, to remain true to those things.”
She was asked to speak with the current cohort of young Yawuru people in the traineeship program on the station.
“Going there and sitting and feeling and smelling the country gives me a sense of pride in what my old people did, of sharing everything to us and giving back to us.
Photograph: Michael Jalaru Torres
“Because my mother said, don’t ever hold back, give it back so that we can continue the good stories, the good fight, the pride that we want to give back to our children.
“This news of Gumaranganyjal, which is the country and the station, now back into Yawuru possession, that is the most wonderful thing.”
