“Nation” v. “Rom”: Yolŋu Articulations of Communal Identity in Northeast Arnhem Land, Australia

“First Nations” is becoming the indicator of Indigenous communal identities in “heavily settled” Australia, in the context of a discourse about treaty-making. Yolŋu-matha-speaking people, who live in “remote” Australia, have recently started to adopt this trope when acting on the wider regional and national stage. But this does not reflect how Yolŋu characterize themselves to themselves. The crucial marker of Yolŋu communal identity is nhina yukurra rommirri – “living with rom.” Often translated as “Law,” rom at its most abstract is an all-encompassing and powerful ontological schema. Eternal, unchanging, and immune to the political power of the colonizing society, it underlies the networked structure of gurruṯu – kinship – which is the organizing matrix of Yolŋu communal identity. The nation as a bounded political entity is still not a Yolŋu way of being in the world, and this is evident in inconsistencies in the scale at which the term gets applied. However, in confronting the might of the settler nation Yolŋu are currently faced with an unenviable paradox, because nations can only make treaties with other nations. In acceding to the use of “nation” Yolŋu run the risk of colluding with the state in rendering invisible their own particular form of identity.