Wright Tracker

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-916751-13-2
Verlag: And Other Stories
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 640 Seiten

Tracker is a collective memoir of the Aboriginal leader Tracker Tilmouth. He was a visionary who with irreverent humour told it like it is. Having known him for many years, Alexis Wright interviewed Tracker and those around him, weaving their stories together in a manner reminiscent of the oral history writing of Svetlana Alexievich.

Alexis Wright, a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria, is one of Australia's most acclaimed and fearless writers. Wright is the only author to win Australia's two most prestigious prizes, the Miles Franklin Award (in 2007 for Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (in 2018 for Tracker).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wright, Alexis

Leseproben

The Warlpiri Invasion of Europe

Tracker Tilmouth

The best story is the Warlpiri invasion of Europe when we went to the UN. I went to the United Nations originally and I said this is all wonderful, but it is really a talkfest where the Australian government gets up and tells the world how good they treat the blacks. When you compare that to Africa or South America, we are way out in front in terms of money, and spending, and treatment. They, the Australian government, kept doing this. I said to [Michael] Dodson, We’ve got to out-think this process. I said, We need to bring a bit of culture.

So I said, I am going to bring dot painters and all that so they can paint in the UN. When you go to the UN no one is allowed to bring anything political because no state is to be upset or whatever. So we brought it all. We got all the Warlpiris lined up, old Rastus, old Roy, old Topsy, all them mob, they are all finished now, and Frankie [Jakamarra] Nelson. And got on the plane. First we go to Alice Springs. Someone asked them: Where are you mob going?

We’re going to Chin-ni-pa.

They had them little football bags full of a couple of shirts. So we had to go down and get them cases and clothes from Sainties [Saint Vincent de Paul], and we loaded them all up and got them attired properly, Harry Nelson and everybody else. Anyway, they got on the plane to go to Darwin and that was fucking freaky for them, to be going on this big plane in Darwin to go to Singapore.

I did not really tell them where they were going. No. They thought we were going just over there. It would have been wasted showing them a globe and saying, You are actually going to go around here.

Where’s that? And what’s that?

I declined to inform them, wasting my time and theirs, in understanding exactly where I am taking you. Just turn up. So the Tennant Creek mob rang me and said they wanted to know where Geneva is? I said, Don’t tell em.

Anyway we loaded them all on the plane in Darwin and Harry Nelson was on the plane and he knew how to order a beer, and they said, When you are on Qantas you actually don’t pay for the beer. So that was wonderful and the next minute the woman, waitress, air hostess, was carting grog down to the Warlps who decided to bring out the boomerangs and there was loud singing of love, then of country, then unfettered crying for Yuendumu, all in Warlpiri, and the grog kept flowing.

Then the air hostess said to me, Can you tell your people not to make too much noise. I said, They’re not my people let’s get that straight, and if you keep giving them grog the noise will get louder. And the worse thing was there was green pituri [bush tobacco] marks in every basin.

So we get off there [in Singapore] and we get to the hotel and we are sitting back at the hotel, and old Rastus and I were having a cup of tea in the garden. We had no room service. I said, No room service, to the hotel people because of the drunks. Anyway, Harry Nelson had worked out that all he had to do was go off to a bar somewhere. Right! So Rastus and I was sitting there and the next minute we heard this yak-hi-ing, this singing and waving to us. Here is Harry, going past in a rickshaw, one of the little things, with a brand new fake Rolex on his arm and hanging out of it, and waving to us. I said to Rastus, Oh! Shit, we’ll lose him in the traffic. Anyway Rastus said, Oh! No. They’ll eat him. I said, What do you mean?

Payback. We ate a couple of them. This old bloke from the Tanami remembered the gold rush days, and probably heard stories about eating Chinamen.

Anyway we got Harry Nelson back into the plane for the flight to Paris, and we get to the Charles De Gaulle Airport in France. That was alright, I got everyone across that. Get to Geneva next, yeah no worries. I am buggered by then, absolutely buggered, jet-lagged, I couldn’t sleep because I was worrying about losing these Warlpiris in mid-flight. Anyway as we were getting into the hotel they came knocking on my door, Tracker. Oh! Yes! I had brought all the art equipment, all the rolls of canvas and all the paints and everything else, I had a box full of it. I gave it all to them, Wonderful, do you want to do some painting? Off they went and it must have been a couple of hours and I was sleeping away and then I hear bang, bang, on the door. The manager, Monsieur.

Yes.

You must leave.

Why?

They are an-e-MALS. This little French bloke.

I said, What’s your problem? You know? That’s a bit rough.

He said, Monsieur, we inspect. I went over there and opened the room and what they had done is they had painted, and when they did the yellow background they painted it on the carpet so there was a yellow square when they lifted off the canvas from the floor. And then there was a red square and a black square, and a red and a brown square all over this carpet. He wanted them thrown out.

While he was carrying on like a pork chop, Frankie Nelson brings out this folder and here he is, [a photo of him as] artist in residence at the Georges Pompidou Centre, with the French premier, shaking his hand. This bloke just about went down on one knee. He had met van Gogh in life. So he went down on his knees to pay homage to Frankie Nelson, and then out of the blue, out came this dot painting of Geneva, do not ask me how, but this little dot painting which they said: This is Geneva. The bloke was nearly crying.

So that was all well and good, and the next day I went to the UN, and for two days I did not check on them. The next day I went to the UN and came back and as I was getting into the lift, in came this bloke with the hors d’oeuvres, and another bloke with the champagne in flutes and everything else, and they got off at the same floor as me. Well! Someone is having a party. They went past, Excusez-moi, and went off and I followed them, and they went to Harry Nelson’s room and I opened the door and here was the manager of the hotel with Harry Nelson selling dot paintings to Japanese and German tourists, no French francs, only Swiss francs, Deutsche marks and American dollars. They had made twenty-five thousand dollars for the day. That was what they had made.

So, wonderful idea. Then they went down to paint in the UN as the guest of Madame Diaz, the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights. The guards wanted them to move along and she went out and said, Non, non, non. Please, they are my guests. They had this big Milky Way Dreaming that Frankie Nelson painted for the UN and gave it to her. Beautiful big canvas. Absolutely.

Previously, on our first trip to Geneva, we were all living in a little dog box and I went for a run as I was pretty fit in those days, and I went for a run along Lake Geneva and running along there this Israeli girl came running past me, and then she had spun around and chased me back. She thought I was Palestinian or Israeli or something like that. I said, No, I’m Aboriginal. Anyway, her name was Sarah and she was very friendly and so the next day she said, I’ll show you Geneva. I thought just a normal motor car will turn up. She turned up with one of those convertible BMWs and we were flying around Geneva. She was chauffeuring me around. Her uncle and her father owned the hotels along Lake Geneva, Jewish mob, and they were all full of Arabs. She said, Where are you mob staying? I said, We’re in this little hotel with a limited amount of room. She said, No, we can do better than that, you can have my...