Uncle Wally Cooper, Yorta Yorta elder, tells us about the Creation Stories
TRANSCRIPT
Music give you the energy, the life to go on and that’s why we do our music and do our traditional corroborees and it’s very important to learn and it’s a traditional way of showing it here. Like the drawings we do on the cement back there are part of the drawings that we do on the sand that my ancestors have done for over, like I said before, over 2,600 generations and that’s what we do. This here, all this around here, is part of my Yorta Yorta, of my descendants land and my heritage and this is all part of what’s you. It’s you, it’s me and that’s what it’s all part of, its part of our heritage, its part of showing our traditional way of life. OK. What do you reckon, we’ll have some fun today or what? Good stuff, good on yah.
Now we’re going to be talking about a story, a very strong, a very powerful story about a very strong human being, he changed himself, later on he changed himself into a serpent. And after he got everybody together he come along and he said right all you people must come together now and all you people must learn the stories of the land. Now the important part was the stories of the land, was the living ,was the animals, was the rocks was the trees and they were all part of our traditional heritage. A tree had a meaning, had a special place, a rock had a special place and even to a little, even the grass and even to the plain and they all had special areas, special places to be. Now this is what, the story goes that where Yolngoo took his people to the mountain and he said you all must come to me and you must listen to me. So what he did, we all come together, went up into the mountains and we started to listen and he started to tell em about a special place, like you’ve got the rivers. You got a special place of the tribal people live on the rivers. In our area there are five different tribes, you live on the river, your tribe lives on the plains, your tribe will live over here near the swamps and your tribe will live further down along on the river. That was an important part of the source of life, of knowing and creating life and creating the fish and creating the trees and making the places, our quarries where we get our ochres from.
https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/aboriginal-culture/land-and-spirit/baranjuk-creation-stories/