Brenda Garstone is on the hunt for her heritage.
Parts of her cultural inheritance are scattered across the Tanami Desert in northwestern Australia. There, dozens of ancient boab trees are engraved with Aboriginal designs. These tree carvings — called dendroglyphs (DEN-droh-glifs) — could be hundreds or even thousands of years old. But they’ve received almost no attention from Western researchers.
That is slowly starting to change. Garstone is Jaru. This Aboriginal group hails from the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. In the winter of 2021, she teamed up with archaeologists to find and document some boab carvings.
For Garstone, the project was a bid to piece together parts of her identity. Those pieces were scattered 70 years ago when Garstone’s mother and three siblings were separated from their families. Between 1910 and 1970, an estimated one-tenth to one-third of Aboriginal children were taken from their homes by the Australian government. Like many others, the siblings were sent to live at a Christian mission thousands of kilometers (miles) from home.
As teens, the siblings returned to their mother’s homeland and reconnected with their extended family. Garstone’s aunt, Anne Rivers, had been just two months old when she was sent away. One family member now gave her a type of shallow dish. Called a coolamon, it was decorated with two bottle trees, or boabs. Her family told Rivers that those trees were part of her mother’s Dreaming. That’s a name for the cultural story that connected her and her family to the land.
Now, researchers have carefully described 12 boabs in the Tanami Desert with dendroglyphs that have links to Jaru culture. And just in time: The clock is ticking for these ancient engravings. The host trees are ailing. That’s partly due to their age and partly to growing pressure from livestock. They may also be affected by climate change.
Garstone was part of the team that described…
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