L'esprit de l'ancre

"Bayini is a great spiritual woman she started to talk, to dance, to sing. She made everything around, all that comes from history. The vision and the dream she was seeing is the Anchor". Murrmurrnga Burarrwanga, his grandmother Gaymala Yunupingu, and their family established at Bawaka, Port Bradshaw, in North Australia, tell a story related to a precolonial (at least several centuries ago) experience of trade between their people, the Yolngu from Arnhem Land, and "fishermen from South-East Asia: the Macassans who used to collect trepang in exchange for rice, tobacco, pipes, knifes and canoes". Body language, paintings, songs and dances accompanied by the didjeridu give us an insight into their system of knowledge based on a very complex network of spiritual connections between people and the environment.