Fallout over four wives

The traditional ideal that multiple wives will create economic and domestic harmony has been shattered for one famous elder who is facing court and feuding spouses, write Jennifer Sexton and Ashleigh Wilson

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WHEN Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the Northern Territory's most influential black leader, took his fourth wife, she was 20 and a few years younger than his eldest daughter.

Under local custom in north east Arnhem Land, it is traditional for a man to have a number of wives and Yunupingu was already father to eight children by three women when Valerie Ganambarr took his eye.

He was legally married to the first of these women and had defacto relationships with the second and third.

When he fell in love with Ganambarr, he at first did not live with her in his homelands, even though it was her homeland too, but instead housed her in a flat in Darwin, 600km away. This initial distancing was due to the family politics, because although multiple wives were traditional for building strong family units around Yolngu men, the relationship with Ganambarr was not welcomed by Yunupingu's dominant wife, Margaret Kantawarra.

When his relationship with Kantawarra began in 1973, Yunupingu was still married to his first wife, Garngarr Frances Yunupingu. In 1975 he became a father to a daughter by Kantawarra and a son to Garngarr.

A few years before his relationship with Ganambarr, the third wife, Andrea Collins, took her one-year-old son and left the house outside Nhulunbuy that she shared on a part-time basis with Yunupingu, after the rivalry and family tensions became too much.

As recently as 30 years ago the incidence of multiple wives among Yolngu men was as high as 90 per cent. "By customary law Aboriginal men were entitled to take as many wives as could be arranged, within the proper relationships," says Joan Kimm, author of A Fatal Conjunction: Two Laws Two Cultures.

Indeed the strongest family units were the ones with the most wives, since women did most of the work, especially gathering food. "The more wives a man could have the more sustainable the economic unit was," Kimm says. Today, about half of the marriages in the region involve multiple wives, but the selection of those wives is more often determined by the heart than according to the rules of relationships in the system of promised brides.

Traditionally a man negotiated with a family to marry all the daughters, but this type of arrangement is rare today. These units were glued together around the natural bond that sisters share, and each of the women had a defined role in perpetuity within the group, such as child-rearing or food-gathering.

When Yunupingu and Garngarr Frances married in 1968, she was not a promised bride. She had actually been promised to someone else and the union caused more controversy in the local community because they made their vows in a church. Two of Yunupingu's four wives are related: fourth wife Ganambarr is a half-sister of first wife Garngarr.

In taking multiple wives Yunupingu, who has made a great success of his public life by straddling the black and white worlds, is following the tradition of his father, Munggurawuy, who had 11 wives.

He was the chosen one of the 24 children. He ran the powerful Northern Land Council for 25 years and was an influential political lobbyist and advocate for the rights of Aborigines. One of the most significant contributions he made to bridging the black and white divide was to help negotiate the payment of mining royalties for indigenous people. In north east Arnhem Land Yunupingu's clan is paid about $2 million a year in royalties and rents in exchange for allowing bauxite to be extracted from their land.

While Yunupingu has retired from political life he remains very much in control of the local community. He is the boss of the organisation, the Gumatj Association, which distributes the mining royalties, as well as government grants which bring the annual total to almost $5 million.

But the chasm between black and white collided for Yunupingu last week when he wound up in court after fourth wife Ganambarr took out an interim domestic violence order against him.

Ganambarr, 29, has signed an affidavit claiming Yunupingu, 58, grabbed her by the neck on the night of June 13, pushed her to the ground, kicked her in the back and pulled her hair. During the dispute, Ganambarr claims Yunupingu threatened to kill her, saying: "You are nothing but rubbish."

Yunupingu told the Nhulunbuy magistrate's court last week: "I got no more time for her. I want to wash my hands on all this and tell her she can have as much of her freedom as she likes."

As the remnants of this relationship unravelled in court, it was clear his relationship with dominant wife Kantawarra remained strong. She also accompanied him to court as he faced the allegations of violence. While only this part of the affidavit was read out in court and Ganambarr is yet to give evidence, sources close to her say the affidavit alleges a history of abuse and intimidation by Yunupingu.

The court also heard that Yunupingu had allegedly tried to strangle her with an electrical cord. One police officer said she was told that Ganambarr was holding the cord around her neck when Yunupingu tried to tighten it.

Yunupingu denies the allegations and his account of the incident on June 13 contradicts Ganambarr's. He also said he was distressed by the events. "It hurt me really bad," he said. "It still does."

While agreeing she had an electrical cord around her neck, he said he had to restrain his wife before shaking her, pushing her on to a nearby couch and pulling her hair. He told her: "If you want to kill yourself, kill yourself properly but not here, somewhere else."

His lawyer John Lawrence said the order was a stigma for Yunupingu and meant the suspension of his firearm licence. Lawrence said Yunupingu needed guns for a crocodile farm run by the Gumatj Association. The court heard Yunupingu has 18 firearms registered, although only six had been handed in to police on Wednesday. Yunupingu said he was unable to find the other guns.

Magistrate Greg Cavanagh continued the interim restraining order until the matter can be heard in full on July 24, when Ganambarr is expected to give evidence via videolink from Darwin. "I have heard enough to establish that a bizarre and somewhat violent incident occurred between husband and wife," Cavanagh said.

Reverend Djiniyini Gondarra, an elder at Elcho Island, off the Gove Pennisula in north Arnhem Land, says domestic violence in traditional marriages is not tolerated by the family or community. "Yolngu traditional law is very strict," he says. "If there was violence in the family, between husband and wife, the law would then be forced to put a sanction. If the man is breaking the sanction or proclamation, he would then be fined a serious penalty." Asked what the penalty would be, Gondarra says: "He would be speared or he would then be isolated from that society."

Anthropologist Howard Morphy, director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, says traditional Aboriginal marriages in Arnhem Land are based on a complicated kinship system. But while the more common scenario involves males arranging to marry sisters or "classificatory sisters", usually cousins, men marrying unrelated women also occurred.

He said between two and four wives was common for one man. "It's only certain categories of people who you might be able to marry," he said. "It's very like a system you may find in India or Indonesia."

In happier times for Yunupingu and Ganambarr, she moved out of the Darwin flat but she didn't move too close to the homelands where the two main wives were living.

Dominant wife Kantawarra lived at Ski Beach, just outside the mining town of Nhulunbuy, and Yunupingu often spent weekdays with her. On the weekends, he would visit Ganambarr at his outstation at Yinyikay. He usually travelled there by helicopter, bought with funds from the Gumatj Association, rather than a three-hour, 4WD journey over rough roads. This prompted locals to dub the chopper the Honeymoon Taxi. Kantawarra's status as dominant wife sometimes boiled over into trouble for the families. One of Ganambarr's sisters was once mistaken for her in the supermarket and was punched by a member of Kantawarra's family.

The royalties paid into the Gumatj Association and distributed by Yunupingu have also been at the centre of rivalry between the offspring. The children of the Ganambarr sisters have argued in the past that Kantawarra's family have had preferential treatment. Their complaints triggered an investigation last year into the Gumatj Association, of which Yunupingu is chairman, over whether the money was shared properly. While a Northern Territory Government investigation found a serious lack of transparency and governance, it found no evidence of fraud. It is up to the Gumatj clan to determine how the money is shared and Yunupingu is boss.

Yunupingu retired last year as chairman of the Northern Land Council after 25 years as one of the nation's most influential indigenous leaders. His contribution was acknowledged in being made Australian of the Year in1978.

In 2003, he clashed with the Northern Territory Labor Government after it passed laws that removed traditional marriage as a defence against having sex with underage children. At the time, Yunupingu accused the Clare Martin government of interfering in Aboriginal law. "Our traditional systems of promised marriage have nothing to do with abuse in any form," Yunupingu argued at the time. "Marriage systems which have existed for thousands of years must be dealt with separately to serious issues like child abuse or violence."

In her book A Fatal Conjunction: Two Laws Two Cultures, Kimm tells a story from 1969, which played out in the same court Yunupingu faced last week, that cast into sharp relief the divide between white and black law and culture. A Yirrkala girl, Rita Galkama, 14, was assaulted for refusing to be the third wife of Jack Milirrpum Marika, 42. He "belted her, tore her clothes off and tried to break her right leg". He was charged with aggravated assault.

Nhulunbuy magistrate's court accepted his defence that his traditional cultural rights be preserved.

"It is incredible that the magistrate describe the situation as 'a storm in a teacup' and said he would not record a conviction against Marika for aggravated assault," Kimm writes. "Marika was merely fined $5 for resisting arrest. It was Rita Galkama who suffered for her defiance."

Galkama knew that to resist the marriage and to press charges meant she would no longer be welcome to live with her family. She had to leave the area.