We have been working on mapping the Gurruṯu at Gapuwiyak.

Gurruṯu continues to be the Yolngu ‘governance environment’ par excellence. The domain of governance is the management of relationships, both mundane and ceremonial, between groups at various levels of articulation from the very local to the regional. (Morphy)

We started with a spreadsheet [Gapuwiyak Baparru Mala xls] listing all the clans, their language, places, leaders etc. The spreadsheet is a work in progress. We took the information from the spreadsheet and made a design for a poster with it. The central section of the poster is the land with some of its names. The information under each clan is specific to a place or places.  After trying a version of the poster with all the information in it we decided a better way would be to leave the information blank and just leave the categories. This way we could involve people in putting their information in themselves, or go and see elders if they didn’t know all the details. We have also been thinking about making a large poster to put at the store and how we could work with it at the school.