Dr. Shellie Morris (Wardaman, Yanyuwa) is a legend in the Northern Territory. Affectionately known as the ‘Mother of Music’, she’s spent the past 25 years writing songs with more than 70 remote bush communities. In that time, Shellie’s learned to sing in 17 different languages – many of which are considered ‘sleeping’ or close to extinction, including her own Yanyuwa tongue. In this episode, Jen and Shellie head to Kakadu to visit Shellie’s sister Mandy Muir. On the way, Jen learns about Shellie’s emotional homecoming after being adopted at birth; the healing influence of her Elders, the Borroloola Songwomen, and the next generation of strong, cultural women who are keeping their languages alive through song.

Find out more about Shellie Morris:
https://arrkulayinbayarra.bandcamp.com/album/waralungku
https://www.shelliemorris.com/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Narration: Jen: This episode was recorded on the lands of the Larrakia and Bininj people. We pay our respects to their elders past and present with gratitude for thousands of generations of rich culture, storytelling and song.

[00:00:19] Shellie: See you little house. I mean giant house. See you little giant house.

[00:00:32] Shellie: Arnhem Land’s just a section, like golf country is a section, like Kakadu is a section, but really it’s Northeast Arnhem, West Arnhem, Barkly Regional. So if you, if that’s the, the pākehā way of saying things.

[00:00:52] Shellie: Sorry, I have to get that.

[00:00:56] Shellie: Yo Will what now? [00:01:00] Ah, yeah. I. I forgot that meeting today. Running around after grandmothers.

[00:01:05] Will: Alright.

[00:01:06] Shellie: Alright, ma

[00:01:07] Will: Where are you?

[00:01:08] Shellie: I’m driving out to Kakadu. Gonna eat some bush food. I’ll pluck a duck for you.

[00:01:13] Will: Eat for, eat for two.

[00:01:17] Narration: Jen: I’m on the outskirts of Darwin on Larrakia land. And I’m on the road with Dr. Shellie Morris.

[00:01:23] Narration: Jen: Shellie is a Wardaman and Yanyuwa songwriter and performer, and she’s a legend in the Territory. And as I soon found out, you can’t go anywhere without people stopping her for a yarn. We’re heading to Kakadu National Park to visit her sister Mandy Muir. That isn’t Shellie’s Country, but it is a special place for her and it’s been instrumental in bringing her home to her language and culture.

[00:01:46] Narration: Jen: That’s what this podcast is about. Not just where you come from, but who you belong to.

[00:01:53] Shellie: But look how, look, we’re out in the bush already.

[00:01:56] Jen: It’s amazing.

[00:01:57] Shellie: It’s so good. It’s one of the [00:02:00] highlights of my life is coming out here, so thank you.

[00:02:03] Jen: Oh, I was so excited when you were like, let’s go out home. I was like, yes.

[00:02:09] Shellie: Yeah. It’s so special.

[00:02:12] Narration: Jen: At Shellie’s apartment in town, there are beds made up in the lounge room. She’s just spent the last couple of weeks with her grandmothers. They’ve been rehearsing for the upcoming National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin. The NIMAs have been running for 16 years, and they’re the biggest night on the calendar for First Nations music.

[00:02:36] Narration: Jen: Shellie’s Borroloola family are bonafide rock stars, both on and off the stage. Some of them are well known painters whose work is in hot demand. Let’s just say their reputations precede them.

[00:02:50] Shellie: I’m just laughing because my grandmothers just scream at me all the time, like scream. It, everything’s instant, has to be now.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Shellie: My sister didn’t answer the phone, and so I rang Mum. I said, ‘where my sister?’ ‘Oh, she here?’ And I said, ‘well, tell her to answer her fucking phone’. And I was thinking, ‘that’s a bit rough’, but I’ve been around the Borroloola crew now for a month and it’s just like it scream, scream, and that’s the way they communicate.

[00:03:24] Shellie: And you’ve gotta get used to that, which is every, every way’s different. You’re more…Aṉangu down in the desert Country, you know, Aṉangu’s the name for Aboriginal people in the desert. Um, and then you’ve got Yolngu for the Northeast Arnhem land. You’ve got Bininj for West Arnhem, and then you just get into your clan names and everything else.

[00:03:51] Shellie: So, but everybody’s got this different way of being, which has been a journey to get used to [00:04:00] do. It’s mind blowing actually. You can never assume to know anything. I know nothing.

[00:04:08] Jen: Mm.

[00:04:09] Shellie: But I do know a little bit of a big story.

[00:04:17] MUSIC: I ask you to listen and learn your songs, singing out loud and strong. We need to hold on to what is ours, our traditional way of life.

[00:04:33] Shellie: I was in my early years of primary school, must have been class. Three or four. They showed a documentary on the desert people, who now I know are the Aṉangu people. I was just in awe of this documentary, and I’d ask the teacher, where are all the Aborigines - because that’s what, that’s what they were called, that’s all I knew - where are the Aborigines [00:05:00] today? And he said, ‘Oh, it’s all right. There’s none left’. And so I went home and told my white adoptive mother that, that saw a documentary on the Aborigines and she looked, swung her head around. And then I said, but it’s all right. There’s none left. And she put me in front of the mirror. She said, ‘One there’. I said, ‘One what?’ She said, ‘You’re Aboriginal’. ‘What?’ ‘You are Aboriginal person too.’

[00:05:34] Jen: So when did you meet your sis?

[00:05:38] Shellie: About 27 years ago now.

[00:05:39] Jen: Wow.

[00:05:42] Shellie: Yeah. My adopted parents came up with me, which was amazing, and we all met them together.

[00:05:48] Jen: That would’ve been freaky…

[00:05:52] Shellie: Freaky

[00:05:52] Jen: …seeing yourself…

[00:05:54] Shellie: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Jen: …In your sister.

[00:05:56] Shellie: Oh, mind blowing. And in fact, she couldn’t [00:06:00] meet us until later in the afternoon. So Mum, you know, my white Mum and Dad and I went to the cultural centre.

[00:06:07] Shellie: There’s a picture of my sister on the wall, and a tourist came up and said to me, oh, what a lovely picture of me. I hadn’t even met her yet. And the tourists even thought that we were the same person.

[00:06:22] Jen: Did you both know that you existed?

[00:06:25] Shellie: She knew I existed. I didn’t know she existed because our father, our birth father had said ‘You have a sister somewhere, but we dunno where she is. All we know is that she was left in Sydney’.

[00:06:49] Shellie: So she didn’t know whether I was alive or dead or was ever come, coming back. And it’s not easy ‘cause you know, you hear so many stories of a lot of them mob that were, [00:07:00] you know, some were forcibly removed. I was really forcibly adopted. I don’t think my mother wanted to give me up, but, um, from what I know is that she was young and her mother didn’t want that for her.

[00:07:16] Shellie: I know of a lot of Aboriginal people, they, they still dunno where they’re from and not knowing where you’re from. You can live a life like that. But there’s something really deep within you, in your core as an Indigenous person, is that you need to be connected to the clan. You need to be connected to the land, to the waterways.

[00:07:50] Narration: Jen: That need for connection, that full body knowing can never be broken, and there’s nothing more powerful than looking into the eyes of your family to [00:08:00] remember. From the moment Shellie and Mandy met, those sparks of connection started to fly. When you see them together, there’s a sense of completion of two halves becoming whole, and a giddy feeling of being enamored with one another. As though they’re catching up for all of those lost years.

[00:08:19] Shellie: We wrote this song…First song in [00:09:00] language…

[00:09:22] Mandy: I had a call from…I dunno what they call themselves…Stolen Generation Link Up they called, that’s right. Based in Darwin. And they, they just gave me a phone call and said, we found her, we found your sister. And that’s pretty much all they really said to me. It left me angry, confused…Yeah, I didn’t know really how to feel at first. Yeah, I think I cried that day.

[00:09:53] Mandy: Both mom and dad had told me that I had another sister [00:10:00] and, well, I thought Australia was so big, so I didn’t think I had no hope in finding her. So luckily she must have looked through the, the Link Up program and, and finally connected with our family. The sad thing was, I think it was about a year Dad had already passed.

[00:10:25] Mandy: Yeah. So yeah, it was really pretty devastating in, you know, from Shellie’s part because she didn’t get to meet him. Our father never stopped…never stopped looking. But sadly, you know, for the father there was no support for them back then, ‘cause he did try so hard to look for her.[00:11:00]

[00:11:04] Shellie: I remember me saying to Mandy many years ago when I first arrived, you know, 27 years ago, asking, ‘Well, where are you gonna go from here?’ She said, ‘What do you mean where am I going?’ Because I had no concept of that connection to Country, ‘cause I still had that. Western thought process. She said, ‘What do you mean I’m going, going nowhere?’ ‘What you gonna live here all your life?’ She said, ‘Yeah’. ‘Whoa.’ You know, for me, and that we call it balander, I call it Balander Brain, the white man’s brain.

[00:11:47] Mandy: One of the songs in the early days, we sat down and grandmother was there and we put that song together about how I actually really felt. I actually felt [00:12:00] angry, you know, and I, I didn’t really have no right to be angry because it wasn’t her fault. We weren’t able to have a childhood together.

[00:12:12] Narration: Jen: The effect of finding each other changed both of their lives. That didn’t come without big feelings, but they were determined to use their gifts of language and song to heal, and before long they were able to share these gifts with their community.

[00:12:36] Shellie: Okay. So first of all, to get there, you’ve gotta drive 1000 kilometers from Darwin to Borroloola, which we do in two days. We do a six hour drive on the first day, and then we do the four hours from the highway, the major highway inland to Borroloola.

[00:12:58] Shellie: But on the way, you’ve gotta pick up [00:13:00] all the grandmothers. So I traveled with three grandmothers, the three sisters, and obviously take good care of them on the journey. It’s not easy, but there’s incredibly well traveled. They’ve been traveling that road since they were born, so driving a thousand Ks, no problem if we had to do it in a day.

[00:13:23] Shellie: They sleep, they tell stories along the way. Teach me, we stop for bush food sometimes. Um, and then you get there and we all check into our accommodations. Family have to be placed in certain positions.

[00:13:37] Jen: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:41] Shellie: And, um, we normally start around 10 o’clock, we usually start with a song that’s on our heart. I might ask, ‘What song would you like to sing this morning?’ Everybody warming up and then we hit it. We get to the paper, we get to the stories. [00:14:00] Then we have lunch, and then sometimes family have a little rest. So we normally go till about two or three.

[00:14:08] Shellie: Sometimes we work at night. When we recorded the album, it’s 42 degrees. We’re in a room that’s fairly run down, no aircon. The place is self-combusting fires and nearly lost our accommodation. There’s funerals that we have to attend in the middle of this. So we try not to coordinate too much with the clock.

[00:14:33] Shellie: We just make sure everyone’s picked up and, and we arrive, and then we start. You’re a bit of a health worker, bit of a songwriter, bit of a taxi driver and a caretaker. You know, it’s, it’s not just going, ‘Oh, huh, went to work. I’m just gonna clock off’. Wouldn’t that be nice, clocking off? Look, the commitment, I believe for me - hello my darling…I [00:15:00] know you know the story there… talking saying, ‘I know that story. Yeah’. You know the commitment because it’s a lifelong commitment for me, and I realized, and I wanted it to be that.

[00:15:19] Shellie: You know, there were 52 funerals so far in Borroloola this year, 52. That’s just in one community. So this constant grieving, there’s no respite. Music is the respite. Yeah. Makes people feel, happy, strong, proud.

[00:15:54] Narration: Jen: Doing it the right way means slowing down. We’re driving along this vast stretch [00:16:00] of highway. It’s framed by red earth and a brilliant blue sky. Wedge-tailed eagles glide over us and goannas cross the bitumen. Time starts to feel different. There’s a stillness to this land that brings you into the moment. I can imagine the pace of Shellie’s long road trips with her grandmothers, and she makes sure I don’t miss out on the local delights.

[00:16:24] Shellie: We’ll get fuel tomorrow, unless you want to get it now.

[00:16:28] Jen: Let’s get it now.

[00:16:29] Shellie: Yeah, we’ll get it now and I’ll get a hot dog. Famous hot dog.

[00:16:34] Jen: Oh yeah.

[00:16:35] Shellie: They’re like famous.

[00:16:37] Jen: Really?

[00:16:38] Shellie: Well, they’re our favorite. Like…

[00:16:40] Jen: What makes them so good?

[00:16:42] Shellie: I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s just a hot dog in a little thing. And you put…probably none left by the time I get there now.

[00:16:50] Shellie: No, that’s the famous Crocodile hotel built to look like big crocodile. See Big leg there. And the famous servo.[00:17:00]

[00:17:02] Jen: I am in awe of that hot dog, like the hot steamed bun. I have to have a bite. Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s so fresh

[00:17:29] Shellie: Journey.

[00:17:32] MUSIC: Traveling across the land, hunting along the way…

[00:17:41] Shellie: Travelling across the land with my family in my hands, hunting along the way. Our Elders lead, the way the land is giving to us all that we need, working together in perfect [00:18:00] harmony. And then boom, before welfare came and took our children away.

[00:18:06] MUSIC: Before welfare came and took our children away.

[00:18:14] Shellie: And in language and that’s in Garrwa language Warbula ngarbaryar muku jilajbayarli Jarimbaryarli wawarra muku junu ngambarlangi …So in language it says you took our children away, where? And that was important for me too and for my grandmother that was taken. From those lands.

[00:18:45] Narration: Jen: It’s easy to look back and see how the past has brought you to where you are now. But the journey home is big work, especially when you’re connecting back to your people and language.

[00:18:56] Narration: Jen: Relationships and trust are built over time, [00:19:00] and sometimes you have to dig deep to keep going. Having a sister who grew up in culture gave Shellie the strength to stay on the path.

[00:19:09] Narration: Jen: But Shellie came with her own special skills too. She’d grown up in a wide education system and had plenty of experience in the patriarchal music industry. So she knew how to apply for grants, book shows, and make albums.

[00:19:24] Mandy: Uh, she’s the bloody master of music, I tell you. Yeah, she’s like the Pied Piper and she is the Mother of Music. You know, with some of our families, have given them hope, you know, with some of these music workshops. For some communities it’s scary ‘cause not all communities are the same.

[00:19:46] Mandy: But yeah, she’s had incidences where she’s, she’s gone in with the right attitude, but still there’s always some kind of…so she has to work that through with the [00:20:00] community herself, or I can give her guidance from afar.

[00:20:05] Jen: Hm.

[00:20:06] Mandy: Yeah.

[00:20:08] Shellie: I was ringing my sister all the time. What do I do? What’s the right thing? Um, she was terrified for me, like a city slicking, you know, city slicker sister, you know, going way, way, way out into the bush.

[00:20:21] Shellie: But music was my passport and my entry, and working with the children and women now for over 25 years, and working within many language groups. Was it terrifying? Yes. Was it difficult? Yes. And I just kept trying and I thought, well, music making people happy, making people feel strong and if I’m to go in with the good manners that I was brought up with, I should be learning a bit of the languages through song. And I found that was the way for me to learn to eventually speak those [00:21:00] languages was through song.

[00:21:27] Shellie: The Pride. The, the trust in me. Um, yeah, it’s, causes a lot of emotions because, you know, I struggled with that for most of my life. But to see it happen in a group of women from the bush who no one would ever hear from, and now they’re seen and they’re heard. And their generosity and their love.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Shellie: There was one young girl, she came up to us at Port Fairy and she said, I’m your, I’m your number one fan, little non-Indigenous girl. ‘Oh no, i’m your number one fan. I’m watching my Aunty Maria’. ‘Well come on then, crawl under the table and we’ll get photo together.’ And then her sister jumped under. And just to have this sea of strong cultural Aboriginal women from the Northern Territory have this beautiful photo. But to have a young person say that to us, it’s life changing for us and life changing for her.

[00:22:56] Shellie: We got nominated for ARIA. [00:23:00] That was very exciting. But I remember when we didn’t win the ARIA, I was so upset, ‘cause we were collecting a big, you know, shiny things and I wanted that ARIA. And my grandmother, my auntie - grandmother’s still there today, but auntie passed away - um, they looked at me ‘cause I apologized to them for not winning it.

[00:23:24] Shellie: They looked at me like, ‘Why do you worry for the shiny things? Can’t you see what this music has done for us?’ So 13 years later, when I went back, then the next generation said, ‘Where, we wanna make another album? Come on sis. Come on cuz’. It was the way the community, we did it our way for us not worrying about the shiny things anymore. We’re worried about language.

[00:23:57] Narration: Jen: Sometimes the shiny things [00:24:00] need you more than you need them. Like when we were driving to the river, and Shellie was telling me and her Mum Jessie about her Order of Australia medal.

[00:24:07] Shellie: I feel no good. You know, I should have invited Auntie Mookie to the bloody ceremony and I fucking forgot

[00:24:14] Jesse: Where?

[00:24:15] Shellie: At the ceremony getting my medal.

[00:24:18] Jen: What medal were you getting?

[00:24:19] Shellie: Oh, I got medal from the king. Um.

[00:24:24] Jesse: From the king, whoa. That’s all you need.

[00:24:31] Shellie: Because I, my friend rang me, she goes, you know, you got one of the top awards. I said, did

[00:24:36] Jesse: It must be made of gold.

[00:24:38] Shellie: Yeah. It’s, it’s made of gold, like proper. And the military

[00:24:41] Jesse: …Have to melt it down and bloody sell the bastard.

[00:24:45] Shellie: Sell the bastard.

[00:24:47] Jesse: Yeah I know, it’ll be beautiful hanging up on your bloody wall.

[00:24:56] Shellie: I wore it to Coles. The security goes, ‘Excuse me. [00:25:00] Excuse me. Um, is that an award?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a medal’. He goes ‘can I touch it?’ And I said, ‘Sure’. And he goes, ‘It’s real’. And I went, ‘Yeah’. ‘Who’d you get it off?’ This is the security guard at the bottle. ‘Who’d you get it off?’ I said, ‘The king’. He said ‘The king of who?’ ‘King of England.’ He goes, ‘Oh my God. What do, what do you do?’ ‘Some music’

[00:25:27] Jesse: I sing.

[00:25:28] Shellie: I sing.

[00:25:28] Jesse: I sing don’t you know? Shellie Morris, you dummy. Hello?

[00:25:36] Jesse: Oh, how can he be dumb?

[00:25:39] Shellie: Ah, oi, crocodile.

[00:25:47] Jesse: Oh, we caught him in the act doing a…

[00:25:51] Shellie: Doing a runner. He is doing a runner Mum

[00:25:57] MUSIC: Early days [00:26:00] in the Barkly Tablelands…coming together, travelling the land.

[00:26:15] Shellie: Barkly Tablelands. That was a great joy. One of my Aunties, was very special, this song to her. And so being able to create that around her stories and she went off and found translations and looked around for stories and sitting with the old people from those lands, the Garanji Lands, and were able to gather that song and we were sitting together. When you write together and everybody’s bouncing off ideas, and then that one word comes out

[00:26:52] MUSIC: Because the truth is we’re the backbone of this country.

[00:26:55] Shellie: We were sitting down and I went, ‘We’re really by all these stories, it’s like, we’re the [00:27:00] backbone’. And then someone said, ‘Yeah, we’re the backbone of this country’. ‘Yo, that’s the one now.’

[00:27:15] Shellie: Hello, my loves. Hello.

[00:27:26] Shellie: Jessie. Jen. Jessie. Where your mob? Where Mandy Muir?

[00:27:35] Jesse: Oh, don’t worry about the Mandy Muir

[00:27:37] Shellie: Where the, where the fuck’s? She gone. Where’s she gone?

[00:27:41] Jesse: I said Shellie Morris is just about here.

[00:27:44] Shellie: Yeah.

[00:27:45] Jesse: Hello.

[00:27:46] Shellie: Where’s she gone…?

[00:27:49] Jesse: You reckon she gone shooting with the tribe.

[00:27:52] Shellie: Oh good.

[00:27:54] Shellie: One of my Aunties said, she said, ‘You know, you were always meant to do this with us. You know, [00:28:00] it’s like you’re finally home. You’re finally home with us’.

[00:28:07] Shellie: That sense of peace, it’s like the biggest, it’s proper settled in my life, and no one can take that away from me ever again.

[00:28:31] Jen: Everybody’s trying to find their way home is made by me, Jen Cloher, with Beź Zewdie and Jon Tjhia. Thank you to the Yanyuwa, Marra, Garrwa and Gudanji people of the Borroloola. To Mandy and Jessie for taking such great care of me at Patonga Homestead. And to Shellie Morris for taking me home to Kakadu.[00:29:00]

[00:29:11] Shellie: And then there’s ‘Get Up, Stand Up’. And that was just, made me weak, ‘cause I thought, ‘Oh well I’m gonna push the boundaries and have a little bit doof doof, little bit techno here, little bit dance song’. But watching the family hear it, ‘I said…come this way. Sing that song’. ‘‘Cause her voice is, oh, insane. It’s gravelly, it’s funky, it’s, it’s the earth singing to you. And I said, ‘Drop that song in here’. ‘Which one song’. I said… in Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Marra, Gudanji ‘That we make? The world a [00:30:00] better place.’ I love that statement.

[00:30:14] Jen: This show is made with support from Creative Australia and Three Triple R 102.7FM. You can find more information about this episode, and listen to season one, at everybodys trying podcast dot com. And if you like this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it.