AustraliaQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect. For five weeks a team of scientists and explorers will examine the ancient culture of the Aborigines and attempt to determine how it affects their modern existence.

The rites of passage

Frank Ansell, a traditional Arrernte owner of the country around Alice Springs, talks to members of the Quest team at an ancient rock art site

I remember the front tire catching the edge of the asphalt, the moment of panic as I catapulted over my handlebars onto the Stuart Highway. I heard screeching car brakes as my hands and knees skidded across the sun-baked pavement. I'll forget other days but not today. The pain of ripping my hands and knees open is branded in my memory like a hot iron.

We were on our way to a ceremonial site with Frank Ansell. Frank's a hefty, fair-skinned, chain-smoking kind of guy who favors cowboy hats and country music. He's also an initiated Arrernte Aboriginal and, through his father's line, a kind of spiritual caretaker for the country around Alice Springs.

At Kuyunba, the "place of the uninitiated young men," Frank picked up a pebble, scraped into a piece of ochre stone and marked our cheeks with two red stripes. "The ochre makes you recognizable to the Ancestors and protects you," he explained.

As we approached a massive rock slab we could make out the painted images of emu tracks, wallaby footprints, and endless geometric spirals and slashes, which remain a mystery -- to us. But to young Aboriginal boys who want to become men, they contain important information.

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Kuyunba has long been a place of initiation for young Arrernte men who, at the age of 14 or so, are put through painful rituals in which they gain important spiritual knowledge. The elders paint them with red ochre, which symbolizes the blood offering that's part of these secretive rites.

Art is a Western idea. For Aboriginal Peoples the images carved into rocks and painted on rocks, bodies, or right on the ground for the past 30,000 years are religious expressions. They map out the actions of Dreamtime Ancestors as they moved over the blank slate of the earth and brought it to life. In the Kuyunba initiation rites, the Ancestors come to life through these paintings.

Take a stroll down the Todd Mall, in downtown Alice Springs, and you'll see that Aboriginal art galleries are everywhere. Cheesy tourist shops advertise didgeridoos, boomerangs, and "authentic" Aboriginal art. The local drug store sells Aboriginal paintings right next to underarm deodorant.

Aboriginal people first started painting and selling canvasses in 1971 in the remote backwater community of Papunya, 200 miles west of Alice Springs. In just a few years, Aboriginal art exploded on the international scene. Last year a painting by Johnny Warrngula, an artist from just west of here, sold for $400,000!

Has the commercialization of Aboriginal art changed it in any way? I sat for an hour on a worn-out carpet in the back of Desart, an artists' cooperative, and watched Ruby and Mavis Wayne put the finishing touches on a painting. They used matchstick heads to delicately apply white dots to a winding watercourse, raindrops, and other symbols that they either couldn't, or wouldn't, explain to me.

Mavis Wayne uses the head of a match to paint dots on a large canvas

"What's this painting about?" I asked them.

"That's my country," said Mavis, pointing to a confusing swirl of circles and lines. "It's about the rain comin' through the land."

There's comfort in knowing that Mavis is still telling the same stories her ancestors told in stone.

Back at Kuyunpa, I asked Frank Ansell what we could learn from Aboriginal art today. "None of these artists are chasing fame and fortune," he said. "They're painting their beliefs, their stories of the land." From what I'd seen in town, a lot of this art was also driven by money. It's one of the few ways Aboriginal people can make a living out here.

"That's true," agreed Frank, "but the artists see very little of that money. They have to share the profits with their entire extended family. Once everyone gets a share, there may be little left for the artist."

"Then why do they share the money?" I asked.

Frank looked frustrated. "It's just not theirs to keep. They don't own the country. They don't own the Dreamtime. So they don't own the painting. It belongs to the whole clan."

Sharing has always been important to Aboriginal people. For thousands of years they've shared food and water, joined together in the same ceremonies, and suffered personally for the greater good. At a young age, initiation brands those beliefs into people so they never forget.

As I biked home with blood trickling down my leg, red ochre on my face, and a dull pain in my side, I felt that I was just starting to understand the Aboriginal way. In a sense, I felt like I'd been initiated myself into some bigger mystery that I was just beginning to understand.

Diggin' it,

John

AustraliaQuest
Classroom Connect