Long Road

Contra to Rex’s fieldwork approach this summer, mine was anything but “uptight, professional, even scientific”–if ever it was before. This year was marked by mainly just raw emotion.

Partly this year was different because my agenda was not to do anything “new”–or “collect” anything or answer any questions. I only had two things on the agenda: update the Mukurtu archive and give my newly published book, Aboriginal Business: Alliances in a Remote Australian Town, to the community. It was this later event that took up most of my time and energy (thanks to Craig and Eric the install and update took 15 minutes!).

But also, this year was different because the act of giving back this book was simply overwhelming. I don’t think anthropologists should deny, downplay or diminish these types of emotional events for the more “scientific,” “uptight,” or “professional” methods that fieldwork certainly also gains from as a method and set of practices.

This summer for me was marked by nostalgia. I say nostalgia is the new black, let’s bring it back.

Nostalgia is a necessary part of scholarship, and especially of anthropological fieldwork–precisely because it is such an emotional endeavor, the relationships one forges and maintains over years, and decades, don’t easily fit into a scientific paradigm or methodology, they may not fit neatly into a formal understanding of professionalism. Nostalgia is a necessary part of fieldwork–not fieldwork as an anthropological practice or as a method,though, but fieldwork as a set of intimate, personal, highly variant relationships one gains through long term engagement in a community with specific individuals and larger groups (mobs, in this case).

Nostalgia breeds the warmth necessary to see how one has been altered and what one has gained by these relationships and most importantly, the ups and downs over time. As I left Tennant Creek a few days ago in the early hours before the sunrise, I was struck by the range of emotions I felt.

The day before at my book launch I was amazed and overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from a whole range of people in Tennant Creek and especially among the Warumungu people who were there. For me the most significant part of the launch, that one thing that made the book’s importance real for me, was that the Warumungu women I had worked very closely with–and many whom I did not–decided after a long period of not performing public yawulyu (due to the deaths of several senior women, many of whom worked closely with me and whose lives touched me dearly) to open the yawulyu again and to begin the day’s event with a yawulyu. We discussed it during the week, practiced the days leading up to the launch, and on that day the women and young girls who sang and danced defined the book’s place in the community–at least for that moment. I was speechless.

The speeches given by J. Nakkamarra Nixon and M. Jampin Jones were equally humbling. Listening to both of them discuss how the book was something that they were proud of, that it was there for young and old, that it connected past and present, was truly gratifying. Elliot McAdam’s words were equally moving, as was the fact that before I arrived in Tennant Creek he had nearly finished the copy of the book I sent. Elliot–who I discuss in the book as well–knows the trials and tribulations of this town and it’s Aboriginal population. He has been there for years working and fighting for Aboriginal peoples’ rights and causes. It was great to hear him link the book to that larger history.

After the speeches and the cake it was equally gratifying to listen to the papulanji who were there as they came up to have me sign copies of the book. Nearly all of them have worked in Tennant Creek for along time–most with Aboriginal organizations. The book–for many of them–seemed to validate what they knew about the everyday work of making alliances.

It was a long afternoon and as it came to an end the familiar ritual of driving people back home took over. Only this time I lingered a bit more on my goodbyes. Driving down Staunton street I thought back to all the times I had turned that corner to pick up D. Nangali and just down the street E. Nappanangka, women who are no longer with us, but whose presence lives on in so many ways in town–the dancers that day were relatives, younger generations who have picked up where these elder women left off. As I rounded the last corner I was reminded of all the times I would see E. Nakkamarra waiting for me, sitting with kids and grandkids around her feet in the backyard. Now I took her back to the nursing home where she stays these days. That she was able to sing at the launch of the book meant more to me than anything else that day. (pictures from the day here)

Circling the town, weaving in and out of the many town camps and back up to Battery Hill I drove past the house where my family and I lived, I got out and walked along the gravel where Jakob used to ride his bike and collect old mining gear, down the back trail where Chris and I walked each night under the vast desert sky, and I sat down at the tree where E. Nappanangka and E. Nakkamarra performed the “smoking” ceremony for Zakary the week we brought him home from the hospital. Nearly six years later Zakary doesn’t remember that day, having just entered the world he could not have known that Tennant Creek or these women would forever touch his life and that of his family’s.

Watching the sunrise as I drove out of Tennant Creek it was hard to recall a time when it was so difficult to leave, so hard to let go. I know I’ll be back and of course each trip yields new projects. But this was an ending of sorts–the finishing up business for me and for all those around me that day of the launch, and especially for those who were so much apart of my time in Tennant Creek but who are no longer with us. Karmanta.

I know that departure narratives are so last century in anthropology, but post-post-writing culture I think these narratives and the events that inspire them should be held up, reclaimed and used as launching pads for discussions about the emotional practice of fieldwork, and as part of that discussion nostalgia plays a big role. So f**k the critique, let’s narrate these moments with abandon and anchor them in texts that engage with the whole range of anthropological endeavors, not limited to some ideal of what fieldwork should or shouldn’t be or do.