In 2022, we engaged with scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Los Angeles who then travelled to our remote Aboriginal community of Kalkaringi which lies 780km south-west of Darwin. The Wanyjika-warla documentary, book and exhibition communicates the ideas explored in this research with the scientists and linguist Felicity Meakins to investigate a potential capacity for some of our people to sense the Earth’s magnetic field.
Refined over tens of thousands of years of paying attention to, speaking about and orientating on Country, the sophisticated navigational practices encoded in Gurindji language have played a fundamental role in cultivating a greater ability to tune into the Earth’s magnetic field. When we describe the location of objects in small-scale space (as well as large scale space) in Gurindji, we express it geocentrically saying ‘the pencil is west of the ruler’. This is very different from English speakers who express the same location as ‘the pencil is left of the ruler’ – an egocentric way of describing space based on the position of your own body.
The Wanyjika-warla book and artworks were created over two months (June-July 2025) through a two-way process of art-making, storytelling, field research, cultural practice, school lessons and workshops hosted at Karungkarni Art on Gurindji Country.
The upcoming storybook will be written in Gurindji, Gurindji Kriol and English. The narrative embeds the language of navigation and magneto-reception within a story of grandmother, grandchild and their family going fishing together and highlights the importance of paying attention and making use of all our human senses to understand our place in the world.