Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sadly, on 19 November this year, Dr Gumana AO passed away surrounded by his family and kinship at his homeland of Gangan in North-east Arnhem Land. He was a spiritual man whose life spanned the transition of his country from an exclusively Yolngu reality to the establishment of the Arnhem Land reserve and the birth of land rights. He is mourned by all Yolngu people of East Arnhem Land as the last of the great lawmen in the area, but also as a humble, kind, patient, gentle and friendly man with a razor-sharp mind and a fierce resoluteness in the face of injustice. He was esteemed by all the Balanda who knew him, and I was privileged to know him well.

Dr Gumana spoke about a vengeance massacre of up to 30 of his people at Gangan when he was a young boy. The young Dr Gumana suffered from Hansen's disease, or leprosy, which caused him the loss of a majority of his fingers and toes, and he was sent to the Channel Island leprosarium at around the age of eight. This was a notorious prison-like hellhole of depravation and neglect. Dr Gumana met and married his wife at Channel Island, learned English and became attracted to elements of Christian philosophy. He remained on Channel Island for nine years, and his release may have coincided with the patient walk-off in 1946 in protest at the atrocious conditions. When he returned to Yirrkala, his discovered his parents were not there. Undaunted, he paddled for over 20 days by dug-out canoe with a friend to be finally reunited with them at Numbulwar.

Dr Gumana's life has been one of incredible courage and intellect. Following his return to Yirrkala in the 50s, he acted as a bridge between the European missionaries and his people in resolving philosophical, spiritual and practical issues which arose on a daily basis. In 1968, he assisted the Yirrkala people and acted as an interpreter when they took their protest over land to the courts. He acted as an interpreter and cultural bridge. He played a key part in the homeland movement of the 1970s in developing his homeland of Gangan. He worked closely with Lance Bennett and the Aboriginal Cultural Foundation in organising overseas dance troupes in 1982 and 1988. He was ordained a Uniting Church minister in November 1991.

He said when awarded first prize in the 19th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002, 'I did not make this larrakitjjust for my community, but for the world, so that black and white can walk together.' He was a signatory of the Bark Petition—as a thumbprint annexure—in 1963. He was the last surviving artist of the world-renowned Yirrkala Church Panels, also made in that year, which are housed in the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre, which he helped to start in 1976 and which still carries his design as its logo. He was an artist of the Barunga Statement, which hangs in this Parliament House.

In May 2003, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia. He was a wonderful man, and, when asked what else he would like said about him, he replied, 'Tell them I'm a man from the bush.' He was a significant Australian, by any measure.