Kim Akerman Tjapangarti, one of the foremost non-Indigenous interpreters of Kimberley art and artefacts has died in Hobart aged 76. He was only able to achieve this because of an openness that was spotted in 1966 by Nyikina elder, Paddy Roe in Broome, who asked him whether he would be prepared to take on the responsibilities of a law man and the knowledge of the Bukarikara, the spiritual force shaping culture and practice in the west Kimberley. Akerman then spent prolonged time in the desert with senior Traditional Owners. His relationships came to extend across Yawuru, Ngarinyin, Worora, Wunambul, Nyikina, Kukaktja, Walmajarri and Bunuba peoples.
Here’s how he was introduced when delivering a lecture for Rock Art Australia in 2015:
“Kim Akerman’s standing as the foremost ethnographer of northwest Australia is not recent. Twenty years ago it was acknowledged he was essential to any informed discussion on northern Australian rock art. He remains the touchstone. He gives those of us who know little of Wandjina culture an opportunity to glimpse the richness, complexity and deep spiritual dimensions of the customs and beliefs associated with the paintings and stories.
“He provides a brief history of Wanjina studies and an examination of the Wanjina cult of the north and central Kimberley. He shows how some of the various movements of the Wanjina over the landscape link the clans and peoples of three language groups. His study reveals a unifying myth cycle that incorporates the creation of human culture into a cosmological system that is embedded in the landscape to this day”.
Kim Akerman saw his first Wanjina paintings in Fred McCarthy’s book Australia’s Aborigines: their life and culture (1957). In 1966 he went to the Kimberley where he made friends with senior people such as Scotty Black, Sam Woolagoodja, David Mowaljarli and Johnny Mosquito (who gave him his skin name), forging ties that continued for many years. In the early 1970s Kim returned as an anthropologist with the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority and then with Community Health Services. In 1978 Kim was involved in the creation of the Kimberley Land Council, where he worked as an anthropologist until 1982.
Continual fieldwork throughout the Kimberley gave Kim the opportunity to engage in his other interests including learning about the rationale and mythology associated with the rock art of the region; and the traditional material culture and technology from people who had lived in a more traditional environment.
Kim later spent the last 30 years in Hobart (oddly) processing the records of his fieldwork and making the results accessible to relevant Aboriginal communities, appropriate institutions and others involved in Aboriginal studies. He is also involved with the translation of the results of anthropological research undertaken by early European anthropologists who had worked in north-western Australia and writing many academic papers.
Papers covered such topics as the use of the organic materials such as bone, shell and teeth by Aborigines, Aboriginal dress in the Kimberley, interactions with megafauna seen in rock art, and double rafts in the west Kimberley.
He also wrote many books on such subjects pearl shells, boab nuts and sculpture. He contributed to Images of Power – the key 1993 non-academic book from the NGV which introduced many to art across the Kimberley. Kim co-wrote the chapter on the Wanjina Tradition (“informed by his extensive field work in the region”), including the acceptance that the local Bradshaw figures (now better known as Gwion Gwion or Kira Kiro) “are not part of current religious belief or ritual practice”. Alone he wrote on his unique area of expertise, Kimberley Material Culture, including carved boab nuts, spear points, riji or pearlshell pendants, coolamons, spear-throwers and ilma – the threaded artefacts or boards used in ceremony. These were the main area of artistic activity through the Kimberley before painting appeared in the 1970s.
Rover Thomas famously began his post-stockman artistic life by dreaming the Goorirr Goorirr ceremony, telling of a dead woman’s spirit returning to Country in the east Kimberley. His verses and dances required painted ilma boards to illustrate them. Akerman wrote in one of his many academic articles: “The style (of the painting) can be seen to have developed directly from the traditional genre of the east Kimberley rock art. Here, boldly painted, bichrome figures of humans, animals, objects and spirit beings are usually blocked in with solid red, black or yellow pigment and details and outlines are emphasised with lines of white pipe-clay stippling.
“Rover’s presentation of sites and landscapes in this genre was a radical innovative move and one in which, at one stroke he not only redefined the conceptual framework by which Aboriginal art is to be considered, but also created an entirely original mode of depicting the land”.
Another artist featured in Akerman’s writing was Butcher Joe Nangan. According to Janet Holmes à Court, “In From the Bukarikara, Kim Akerman presents examples of Nangan’s works on paper and pearl shell created over many decades that permit the reader to gain an understanding of the development of the artist’s individual style. Rather than focussing on the stories or histories themselves, Akerman reveals how these underpin the artwork and how Nangan chose to create windows through which the stories might be glimpsed and appreciated. As such, the works of Butcher Joe Nangan are not just skilfully executed works on paper or pearl shell but portals through which the outsider is invited in to a world unknown to most of us.”
The Western Australian Museum houses a large collection of objects collected by Kim reflecting Kimberley material culture. WAM acknowledged, “Kim’s breadth of knowledge about each object in the collection, their usage, and the culture that surrounds them is unparalleled. Ranging from artistic bark buckets and ornaments, to more functional items such as stone/glass points and stone axes, the collection tells a unique story about living in the Kimberley region of Western Australia”.
