Songlines on Screen: Bulunu Milkarri (ATOM Study Guide)

This ATOM study guide has been designed to assist you with classroom preparation in relation to the viewing of the short film Bulunu Milkarri. This film is one of eight films that have been made to record, celebrate and share precious historic and cultural information from Indigenous groups in remote western, northern and central Australia.

Bulunu Milkarri synopsis
Bulunu Milkarri is a film about one woman's journey to learn an endangered songline from remote Arnhem Land that explores the cycles of death, life, rain, tears, and the replenishment and abundance of land, sea and spirit, and the quest to ensure this ancient songline is practiced for generations to come.

This songline is not being sufficiently being passed on to younger women; only a small handful of elderly women hold this knowledge. The film follows director Sylvia Nulpinditj on the quest for her and her sisters to learn to sing Bulunu Milkarri and to creatively portray the concepts of this deep and rich bed of interlinking cycles of death, life and everything in between.

Bulunu Milkarri is a women's songline of the Djambarrpuyngu Clan nation of north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The Bulunu Milkarri songline connects a number of different Djambarrpuyngu clan groups under the one law, as well as connecting their ancestral homelands off the coast of north-east Arnhem Land.

This Bulunu Milkarri law is owned by the Djambarrpuyngu Clan nation and is sung by Djambarrpuyngu Yothu Yindi women. The Bulunu songline belongs to the Djambarrpuyngu clan of the Yolngu Nation of north-east Arnhem Land.

Bulunu are the south-east cloud formations that bring the rains that replenish the land and provide the time of abundance in food from the land and the sea.

Milkarri are the women’s crying songs that are used in funerals to sing the spirits back to their ancestral homelands.

The Bulunu Milkarri reminds people that as well as appreciation for bulunu replenishing the land, it is also about replenishing the spirit within and remembering loved ones past. The custodians of the Bulunu Milkarri songline are the leaders of the Djambarrpuyngu Clan nation and are based in the communities of  Galiwinku, Ramingining, Milingimbi, Gapuwiyak, Yirrkala and homelands such as Ban'thula on Elcho Island, where the main film shoot took place.

Curriculum links
This film provides opportunities for learning activities in Year 7–10 English and Media Arts.