Dingo wild dogs2/1/2024 Morales established the programme in collaboration with the Warlukurlangu centre and later other organisations who assist with funding her work to care for the community’s dogs. “Healthy dogs mean healthy people”, so says the dog programme of Warlukurlangu Artists - one of Australia’s longest-running aboriginal-owned arts centres. In consultation with the community, she began working with a vet to reduce the population, giving the dogs birth control implants and identifying those that were unwanted because they were aggressive, sick or suffering. But “those were the dogs that were shot by the police”. “I was told about a community manager who said, ‘Tie the dogs you don’t want to put down to a tree’”, she says. “In the past, they were putting down the dogs that were easy to get to, the friendliest, the ones people wanted,” she recounts. “People were noticing that it wasn’t that I didn’t want the dogs, it was that I wanted to make them better,” she says. Morales began talking to locals, building their trust over time. But it was “very similar to this”, she says, gesturing to the red earth of the Australian outback. Morales grew up in the Chilean countryside of South America. Initially, when she spoke about animal management, she was met with suspicion in the community. And though she came to take up a position as assistant manager of the local arts centre, it was Yuendumu’s dog problems that would consume her. In other communities those dogs can be really cheeky and crazy.” Trevor Jupurrurla Walker with his daughter and dog Creamy īefore moving to Yuendumu in 2003, Morales worked at the National Gallery in Canberra as a conservator of the Aboriginal collection. “They don’t need to be scared because the dogs here aren’t too cheeky,” she says. They think those dogs are going to bite them,” Nampijinpa Hudson says. “When white people come to Yuendumu they’re scared of all the dogs everywhere. It is also not uncommon to see a member of the community trailed by a large pack of dogs. To describe it as roaming might imply an aimlessness, whereas the dogs of Yuendumu trot with determination, seemingly always at attention and on the lookout. The camp dogs that roam freely around Yuendumu are a result of dog and dingo interbreeding. In Warlpiri rituals, stories and song lines, dogs and dingoes feature prominently. “Toilet and bathroom, everywhere!” Dingoes and dogs Our dogs “follow us everywhere”, she says. Dogs are like a shadow for Warlpiri people,” local artist Vanetta Nampijinpa Hudson told Al Jazeera. “Yapa people love dogs because they protect us. Australia’s Aboriginal communities attach deep cultural significance to their relationship with freely-roaming camp dogs In Warlpiri folklore, it is their dogs who can sense and sniff out the presence of the Jarnpa, a type of invisible monster with superhuman strength and a taste for killing. ![]() In her observation of the relationship between the Warlpiri people in Yuendumu and their dogs, anthropologist Yasmine Musharbash writes of the role as akin to a family member and protector, “alerting a camp to the arrival of strangers, be they human or spirits”. English botanist Joseph Banks first sailed into Botany Bay in 1770 with two greyhounds onboard.ĭingo burials found at archaeological sites give some insight into the long relationship between their contemporary half-wild descendants and Australia’s Indigenous communities. ![]() While the “dingo” - a word derived from the Aboriginal Dharug language - arrived in Australia about 5000 years ago, domestic dogs came later with European colonisers. According to one study, 65 percent of Aboriginal households claimed ownership of at least one dog. But over the past decades, she has led an extraordinary life in Yuendumu dedicated to the promotion of Indigenous arts and the transformation of the community’s dog population.ĭogs are particularly prominent in Aboriginal communities where dog ownership is much higher than the national average in Australia. It took Morales a long time to earn people’s trust. ![]() Like many of Australia’s remote Indigenous communities, Yuendumu had no vet and the nearest was located in Alice Springs, about 300km (186 miles) away. Many of the dogs were aggressive too, fighting and killing each other over territory and food. They were unvaccinated, malnourished, easily infected with bacteria, and their puppies were dying from infections. Twenty years ago, when Gloria Morales arrived in Yuendumu, a remote community in Australia’s Northern Territory, “there were dead dogs everywhere”, she remembers.Īn overpopulation crisis meant dogs were starving, sick, covered in mange.
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