by Dr Kishan Kariippanon
The
Tobacco
of Arnhem Land
Kishan Kariippanon is a medical doctor,
working in public health and communications. He is currently in his final year of a
doctoral study to understand and analyse
the impact of mobile technology and social
media on young people, in a remote community in East Arnhem Land. He was born
in Malaysia, into an ethnic Tamil family,
who came to Malaysia to work in the tea
and rubber plantations. His grandparents
were illiterate, though did everything in
their power to enable their grandchildren
to go to university. This documentary was
made in honour of elders past and present
and dedicated to Gatjil Djerrkura OAM, the
founder and first chairman of Miwatj Health
Aboriginal Corporation.
44 SwitchOn
Story
The Tobacco Story of Arnhem
Land, is a documentary about the
Yolngu nation and their history
with tobacco. The Yolngu Nation
are the land and sea owners of
East Arnhem Land in the northern
most regions of Australia. Miwatj
Health Aboriginal Corporation, a
primary health service provider for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in East Arnhem Land, has been
running a regional tobacco control
program to tackle the high rates
of smoking, particularly in young
people.
The seven Miwatj Health Tobacco
Action Workers that make up the
backbone of th e program are senior men and women from 5 communities in the region. This story
was produced to showcase how
tobacco became so entrenched in
the Yolngu culture and lifestyle.
The making of the “Tobacco Story of Arnhem Land” began in mid
2012, when I observed the sharing
of cigarettes or ‘ngarali’, amongst
Yolngu at a local eatery in Nhulunbuy. Nhulunbuy is a town located 1.5 hours away by plane from
Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. This sparked an idea
to work with the Tobacco Action
Workers and other senior men
to bring the history of tobacco to
light.
The deep cultural significance of
sharing, the asking and giving of
‘ngarali’ was a practice that I became very interested in. I wanted
to understand the history of tobacco and how it became part of culture. Through this interest, I met
many senior elders who knew of
this history. The arts, songlines and
dances, passed down the knowledge of tobacco from the 1700s,
when the Macassans first arrived
in the region to trade for ‘trepang’
or sea cucumber.