Agnes Yamboong Armstrong, Jalinem

Per Henningsgaard

‘Left! Steady!’ my father barked from the back of the canoe. As our small craft stabilised and narrowly cleared the point of land that divided the river into two smaller streams, he added, quieter now, ‘Yes, good. Steady paddling into deeper water.’

I paused my paddling in order to reach out with my right hand and touch the leaves of a bush that stretched over the water from the sandy bank. We were that close to running ashore. But my father was right: the water in this channel was deeper than any we had encountered further upstream. Listening for the sound of my father’s paddle softly cleaving the water’s surface, I resumed my regular stroke.

Eighteen years later – and 17,000 kilometres away – I remember what he said: ‘Steady paddling into deeper water.’ It’s a metaphor, of course, but for what I don’t know. My father certainly didn’t mean it as a metaphor, so I can’t ask him, either.

A painting by Agnes Yamboong Armstrong evokes this memory in me. Her painting, which is exhibited at the art gallery on the university campus where I work, is titled Jalinem. It depicts creek flows from the flooded Ord River in the wet season. The Ord River is a 600-kilometre river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river I paddled with my father was the Mississippi River, which is 3,000 kilometres longer than the Ord River and half a world away in the United States. But there’s something about the island at the centre of Yamboong Armstrong’s flooded river – the shape of its point, the relative width of the streams on either side, the suggestion of the water’s speed as it is bisected and redirected into narrower channels – that unites these disparate worlds in my mind.

The museum label tells me that Jalinem uses a ‘monochromatic colour scheme and aerial composition’ that is typical of Yamboong Armstrong’s paintings. The colours are, of course, very different to those found in northern Minnesota. Yamboong Armstrong uses natural pigments that perfectly capture the pinks and reds of her desert country. Minnesota in the summertime is monochromatic, as well, but the dominant colour is green.

I look again at the museum label – white sans serif font on black card. In looking, I remember that another name for a museum label is a tombstone. But this tombstone is not commemorating someone or something that is deceased; instead, it endeavours to bring life – to bring meaning and clarity – to this artwork. I had no museum label for my father’s words, spoken in that canoe all those years ago, but here is one for Yamboong Armstrong’s brushstrokes: ‘The work is a metaphor for the flowing of knowledge through Country.’

The water pulled us onwards. My father began to sing. A lone Cooper’s hawk flew overhead, rising on the thermal updrafts.

Perhaps ten minutes after we passed the small island, we rounded a bend in the river and saw a bridge. As we came closer, I noticed a sign on the side of the highway. I could just make out the words: ‘Welcome to the Leech Lake Indian Reservation’. I wouldn’t have paid the sign much attention except that there was another sign leaning against its base, partially obscured by the tall grass at the road’s edge. Even half-hidden and on an angle, the sign was clearly identical to the one perched on metal posts above it. The doubling of this greeting struck me as significant, and I wondered at its reason. A few more paddle strokes and my question was answered: the sign on the ground was riddled with bullet holes.

Considering the angle of our approach, I surmised that we must have been paddling our canoe through the reservation and would soon exit its boundaries.

As I leave the art gallery, passing a sandwich board sign that advertises an exhibition titled The Alternative Archive and emerging into the weak June sunshine, I think about how I am walking on Whadjuk Noongar country. How Yamboong Armstrong’s artwork travelled here from where she paints at the Waringarri Aboriginal Arts centre in Miriwoong country. How my memory of a camping trip with my father is located in the lands of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

Standing out front of the art gallery and gazing across the lush grounds towards the Curtin University Indigenous Learning Circle, known as the Yarning Circle – a recent addition to the campus landscape – I am struck by a realisation. It was not just the however-many kilometres of my canoe journey that unwittingly transpired within the bounds of the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, the end of which was signalled by the appearance of a roadside sign. That particular multi-day trip began and ended outside of the reservation, but it was all Ojibwe land. I hadn’t recognised it at the time, but I recognise it now – though from a great distance and only imperfectly.

My former ignorance is all the more remarkable considering my home town – Bemidji, Minnesota – is situated on the doorstep of not one, not two, but three reservations: Leech Lake Indian Reservation, home of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe; Red Lake Indian Reservation, home of Red Lake Nation; and White Earth Indian Reservation, home of White Earth Nation. Also, my mother used to teach at the high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, and I attended powwows there. I grew up in a household that had Black Elk Speaks on the bookshelf, and when we took a family road trip to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, we stopped to read all the historical plaques about the Battle of Wounded Knee and visited the Crazy Horse Memorial. When I finally left northern Minnesota to attend university on the East Coast, I noticed that, for my new friends, when the conversation turned to the subject of the Indigenous peoples of North America, they were a historical curiosity rather than part of my friends’ lived experience. Of course, we were all just well-meaning white people trying to be woke before we knew what that meant – and probably screwing things up in the process.

All these years later – and thousands of kilometres away – I am still that.

I sigh deeply and stride off in the direction of the bike rack.

Later that night, sitting across the campfire from my father and watching the flames create a range of emotions on his otherwise still face, I thought about how ‘steady paddling into deeper water’ could sound ominous in certain circumstances. Like, you were getting in deeper and deeper, and soon you would be in over your head. Of course, if the water was so shallow that you risked running aground, as had happened to us earlier that day, then you wanted to head for deeper water. But what if you didn’t know the depth of the waters through which you were gliding? What then?

I rubbed my sore shoulders and resolved that, when in a position of ignorance, it was better to point your craft towards the centre of the body of water and pull hard on your paddle.

Author’s note

It wasn’t until I came to Australia as an adult that I heard anything approximating an acknowledgement of country. This experience prompted me to rethink my relationship to the place where I was born and raised, which was the traditional lands of the people variously known as Ojibwe, Chippewa or Anishinabe. When I first saw Agnes Yamboong Armstrong’s painting titled Jalinem, it immediately reminded me of a particular bend in the Mississippi River close to where my parents still live. I wanted to use this work of creative nonfiction to explore the relationship between these two places – on opposite sides of the globe – that are connected only in my mind.

Per Henningsgaard is a senior lecturer and the major coordinator for the Professional Writing and Publishing major at Curtin University. He teaches and supervises in the areas of editing, publishing and creative writing. He previously held permanent teaching positions at Portland State University and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.