Renewing Women's Business (ATOM Study Guide)

Renewing Women's Business gives us one community's views and understanding of the established customary laws of women and how these customs are passed on as part of young girls' initiation into adult knowledge. We are taken on this journey with Lily Gin.gina, the last initiated female of the Wardaman people of the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory, Australia.

This project concentrates on an Aboriginal woman, Lily Gin.gina. At the age of seventy-four she is the last senior female elder in her country with full traditional knowledge. She typifies a person who has moved from traditional Aboriginal life in her own country, to her involvement in the colonial pastoral occupation of it, then moving into town and finally returning to her homelands where she can educate her granddaughters.

The film identifies Aboriginal (Wardaman) cultural traditions for young girls. Today the girls who have grown up in the township of Katherine have lost the knowledge of the ancestors' traditions. Now Lily helps the girls at puberty to restore and understand these processes of initiation into womanhood. This film embraces the richness and depth of Wardaman women's culture connected with the rock art of Wardaman country. Lily's friendship with Julie, an ethnographic archaeologist who previously recorded the Wardaman Dreaming stories demonstrates that all young Australians want to understand Aboriginal cultural ways.

Popular belief is that rock paintings and engravings are men's activities and relate to male ceremonial practices. Women also use these images for teaching young girls the women's law. In the past, women's business was secret and never discussed in mixed company. Through the media of television, DVD and film, the Wardaman people find that they want to share their traditions.

As well as Lily and other senior women, Bill Harney, the senior male elder and Chairman of the Council of Wardaman Elders gave his sanction to this project. A man can know about women's business but cannot be present at ceremonies, he said.

The Wardaman Aboriginal Corporation was formed in 1996 and it owns the land of the Native Title Claim at Innesvale (Menngen) Station.