Telling Australian sand stories

An award-winning research thesis has documented the aesthetic and cultural complexity of ‘sand stories’ from Central Australia.

Jennifer Green, from the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, explains that sand story performances use multiple modes of communication in which a skilled storyteller incorporates symbols drawn on the ground, gestures, hand signs and speech or song to communicate ideas and meanings.

“A sand story begins with the narrator sitting and clearing a space on the ground in front of them,” Dr Green says. “Between ‘scenes’ or ‘episodes’ the narrator wipes the space clean before beginning to draw again. In some stories leaves and other small objects are used to represent story characters.

“Although I have spent many years working on Aboriginal languages in Central Australia, the idea of moving beyond spoken language to consider other forms of communication, such as sign, gesture and drawing, was very exciting.”

Dr Green began her PhD in the Netherlands where she spent six months at the Max Planck Institute for Psycho-linguistics in Nijmegen. There she learnt some of the documentation techniques that she would put into practice in fieldwork in remote bush communities and in Alice Springs.

“In order to get a good record of the drawn images on the ground and of the gestures and signs formed in the air, I filmed the stories with two cameras – one placed above the storyteller and one in front – thus capturing two viewpoints simultaneously,” she says.

“I worked mainly with senior women, although I did film some sand story sessions with teenage girls and with men.”

Dr Green discovered that story actions often include both drawing and gesture.

“This finding blurs the distinction between gesture and drawing, and forces a broader analysis of communicative action.”

The research has led to the creation of a collection of subtitled DVDs that are available for the local Indigenous communities to use in education, and as an archived collection for future generations.

“All Aboriginal languages are endangered and many have been lost. Non-verbal means of communication are even more threatened. This research represents one of the few in-depth studies of communication in which speech, gesture and graphic representations all play a role,” she says.

By taking an approach that integrates linguistics, semiotics, sign language, gesture studies, ethnomusicology and anthropology Dr Green’s thesis makes a significant contribution to the ethnography of the Central Australian Indigenous peoples and to the understanding of this cultural storytelling style of an ancient culture.

However, the results of the research and her methodologies are not just applicable to stories from these communities. It adds to recent work in linguistics and other related disciplines which recognises how all peoples combine multiple modes of expression in day-to-day communication.

“As well as speaking, in everyday interactions people create traces and manipulate imaginary objects in the air with their hands, they engage with objects and tools within their reach, they point to things, and they make marks,” she says.

The research won Dr Green the 2011 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in a PhD Thesis.

Dr Green has more than 30 years’ experience working with Aboriginal people in bush communities in Central Australia. She has researched and compiled two major Aboriginal language dictionaries (Alyawarr, and Central and Eastern Anmatyerr), and has worked on many other research projects including the documentation of oral histories and the preparation of reports for Land Claims and Native Title Claims.

www.languages.unimelb.edu.au