My Older Sister Esther
Tells about Weaving


from notes by EarthFoot host
Denise Goodfellow (Lawungkurr Maralngurra)

This is what Denise's Yabok, or older sister, says one day in November, 1999:

Esther's weavingsWe get pandanus by hook stick (inverted branch) and we press it to take thorns off (press it between the fingers).  We boil them with the dye, colour, yellow, red, green, sometime white, sometime black, purple, sometime pink.  'Mandurmdum' we call that tree for yellow dye (Pogonolobus reticulatus, a member of the family Rubiaceae); we making green from pandanus.  We burn the dry pandanus and get ashes and I put it in the billy can and it turns to green. Other ladies they smash the green pandanus and boil it up for green dye.   Purple we can get out of the grass seed (gundalk) .  I take the red roots, smash it and put it in the billy can.  I mix it up with pandanus (strips) and then let it dry after.  I wash him clean and hang in the trees to get him dry. Next day we make basket now,  We mix all different colour. Our mother taught us, and that string bag our grandmother and our mother teach us.  Our sister Miriam she can do that big floor mat, she can do that.  When our eyes getting clear we can do that (both my sisters have glaucoma)."

Denise says that Esther is the senior custodian of  Baby Dreaming.  If women want to become pregnant it is she who intercedes with the Baby Spirits.  She sometimes sees their tiny footprints around the sacred waterholes.

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