Ritual revival
For the first time in more than 40 years, Arnhem Land communities perform a traditional Dow ceremony to boost fish numbers and honey supplies.
For the first time in more than 40 years, Arnhem Land communities perform a traditional Dow ceremony to boost fish numbers and honey supplies.
ASTHE DRY-SEASON sun sets over a remote Top End waterhole, an Aboriginal ranger lights a pile of wood stacked high in a sandy arena. Before long, huge flames flare upwards into the cobalt sky and embers of dried leaves and twigs rise like thousands of dancing fireflies. Young boys from clans of the Dalabon and Rembarnga language groups of central and southern Arnhem Land are led to the firelight and urged by their parents to run around the blaze.To the adults’ delight, the boys begin chasing one another, falling, jumping, and scooping sand into the flames to send up sparks.
Suddenly, from beyond the circle of firelight, a painted figure wearing an owl mask springs from the darkness and grabs one of the children. The boys squeal with excitement and quicken their pace as the captured child is laid at one end of the arena.
As the activity continues, various men take on the role of malevolent owl until all the boys are captured and laid out on their backs, wriggling their legs to symbolise the movement of fish. Meanwhile, young girls join the group and women empty baskets of imaginary fish onto all the wriggling little bodies.
And so passes the first stage of Dow (pronounced ‘dough’ in English), a Rembarnga ceremony that takes place during yekke (early to mid-dry season), in years when nadijrrkku (glassfish) numbers and sugarbag (honey) supplies are low. It is a ritual that people perform to will fish numbers and honey supplies to increase.
UNTIL RECENTLY, THE DOW ceremony had not been performed in Arnhem Land for more than 40 years. However, last year it was resurrected by elders Otto Bulmaniya Campion, Robert Redford and Jack Nawilil.The three men live in different parts of Arnhem Land: Otto near Ramingining in the centre, Robert near Bulman in the south and Jack near Maningrida on the north coast.
Otto, Robert and Jack all experienced Dow as children, enjoyed it immensely and were unhappy to see it go from their cultural landscape. Together, they came up with the idea at an indigenous rangers’ meeting to bring Dow back. Last year, members of the Dalabon and Rembarnga came together at the small outstation of Mobarn (also known as Bluewater), close to Weemol in southern Arnhem Land, to perform the ceremony.
Robert remembers Dow being performed in yekke, a time when traditional early burning would be completed before the start of the windy mid-dry season, which is when fires can travel for many kilometres and burn for days.
Yekke, which usually occurs in May and June, is the time for completing the carefully planned traditional burns that contain and restrict destructive late dry-season wildfires.
If people do not see glassfish in the waterholes by yekke, they know something is wrong.“If we don’t see all those small fish nadijrrkku, we know we have not been burning the country properly and need to perform the Dow ceremony to make the fish and honey increase again,” Robert says. “If that owl is not happy with what humans have done with fire, he will hide the fish from us so we know we need to perform the Dow ceremony again.”
AFTER THE FIRST PHASE of the ceremony, all the children stand and pretend to be trees with sugarbag hives inside them.The owl-man is now a hunter looking for honey. He symbolically chops into the children’s bodies with a stone axe and they chant as they lean from side to side, their voices humming in chorus, before they fall to the ground.As the owl-man pretends to chop into their bodies and eat the sugarbag inside, he calls out the name of the honey and bee species he finds.
Finally, the entire group stands, and in turn they visit each of the four compass points of the ceremony ground. At each point, they chop at a tree with their hands to obtain sugarbag. “When all the people come to the trees, they rake the surface of the tree trunk with their hands just like that bird ngangangh-nganga [the greycrowned babbler], as it climbs,” Otto says. “This is an increase ritual for honey. If that ritual is not performed then there will be no honey that season.”
Once the fourth tree has been visited, all the participants grab firebrands from the bonfire and hurl them into the sky while calling out the names of country – by site and clan name – where they want fish numbers and honey supplies to increase. By throwing burning branches, they recognise their need to control fire at this time of year so it doesn’t destroy the bees that make the honey.
“If that owl is not happy with what humans have done with fire, he will hide the fish.”