From an interview with Ron Yunkaporta by Peter Sutton, at Aurukun, Cape York Peninsula, Australia, 16 July 2006. Sutton’s interpolations are in square parentheses.

The poles are called Thuuth Thaa’-munth [‘Blunt-ended fan palm’ in Wik-Ngathan] and Muuy-pak [Bullroarer] in Wik-Mungkan.

The wood I use for them is thanychel or milkwood, oongketh or red-leafed cottonwood, or pathath, the cottonwood. Pathath is strong. The yellow-leafed cottonwood is too soft. I get the wood from Iith Kaangem (Kaangem Scrub) east of Aurukun, or from Ko’in. There is no need to ask the Traditional Owners of the sites. We use the Council truck; it is “work.” I go and cut my own wood.

I use wu’-murrp [red ochre], white and red paint. You get less payment for white-man paint. I get red paint from Yagalmungkanh, and white paint from Ikalath on the beach, from the cliff face. Yellow paint comes from the ground. You tie it up and cook it in paper-bark. In the raw yellow state it is called ngumpe-ngumpe. [When it is cooked] it becomes wu’, the red-ochre state. Where we get it from Yagalmungkanh, you dig the hard ground on the open plain, pintelang [in the saltpan], and it is soft underneath.

What I make is wiinth tharrn [strongly dangerous or sacred]. You and me, we own that thing. Dad [Victor Wolmby] told me.¹ But the art people ask me, give good money for fifteen poles, for ten, for six, for eight.

Without paint it’s just ordinary. When you put on paint it’s wiinth tharrn [or] ngenych tharrn [strongly sacred]. You might get sore belly, pain in the stomach from them when they are sacred.

Yoempenhanga maanya: I go make sculpture [literally: make-future-I image].

Note:
During an Apelech (Wik Aboriginal) mortuary ceremony, the ritual Law Poles, entitled Thuuth Thaa’-munth (blunt-ended fan palm), ensure that the spirit of the deceased is present. Afterwards, the poles are hidden away until they are needed again. Ron Yunkaporta made the three poles exhibited in Border Zones as a gift for his adoptive brother, the Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton.

“If you have contact with a sacred object,” says Sutton, “and don’t have the right standing to do so, or the object has not been sung to make it quiet, then it can be as dangerous as plutonium. These poles were sung by Ron so that they would not harm anyone.”

¹ Ron’s natural father, Victor Wolmby, took Peter Sutton as a son in 1976.