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Local couple follows their passion for recording Aboriginal engravings, paintings |
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Friday, 31 July 2009 |
By Mike Bodine
Special to the Mammoth Times
 Bill Harney photo by Dave lee Yidumduma Bill Harney, senior elder for the Wardaman people of Australia, sits beneath one of the many massive rock art sites near the Land of Lightning Brothers.
Artist Dave Lee and wife Charolette Anderson have shared a love of rock art for decades. Lee first moved to the Owens Valley in 1981 and Anderson knows her way around the valley; her father founded the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol and she’s been a regular in Bishop for decades.
The pair started by photographing Native American sites with Lee sketching the petroglyphs, usually in the Owens Valley, but they frequently traveled to the Southwest United States. Lee also published papers and books on the subject.
Lee and Anderson earned a steward position at the Granite Mountain Reserve near Kelso in 1994. The reserve and surrounding hills lie in a small corner of one of the most inaccessible areas in the states, the East Mojave Desert. It was popular with Native Americans, as there is rock art to be found in nearly every nook and cranny.
“We saw sites and rock art that was being trashed,” Lee said. When he approached the BLM about it he discovered the site was not even recorded. So, the two recorded that site and eventually stumbled onto their first paying gig documenting sites for the BLM.
Since then, Lee said they have recorded about 300 sites and more than 35,000 separate images in the East Mojave, alone. In the Owens Valley, they have recorded about three dozen sites, “and some of the largest sites in the valley,” Lee said.
Even though he’s spent years scouring the valley, he finds new locations all the time; last year he found 10 large house sites, “just off the road.”
A house site is usually a circle of rocks, the remnants of a living site, sometimes only a rock high.
Other finds include petroglyphs and pictographs. A petroglyph is a rock engraving, or image, literally chipped into stone. A pictograph is a painting. Sometimes the two styles are interwoven with pigment coated over an engraving.
Lee explained that a drawing at a water source, for example, could have been reworked as generations of people would use the resource and re-mark the spot. This was done by tracing over the symbols, or painting over them.
Lee said that the science of rock art is in its infancy as it has been dominated by artists for years, but only now gaining attention from the scientific community. Lee explained that the same style of art dominates the Great Basin and the Southwest, but as for its meaning... well, that’s still the topic of controversy.
The couple’s fascination with rock art has taken them to Australia, and in particular to the Victoria River District – ancestral home of the Wardaman people and widely known as the Land of the Lightning Brothers – because of its concentration of rock art. The Lightning Brothers are two ancestral heroes at the center of Australian aboriginal creationism stories.
While there in 2005, they met Yidumduma Bill Harney. Harney is the senior elder of the Wardaman people, and, according to Lee, the last person alive who still knows the ancient stories that accompany the rock art. Many aboriginal cultures were decimated or disbanded in Australia, similar to the Native American cultures in our country.
Harney is also a guide for tourists interested in rock art, but, Lee said, Harney could tell Lee “was not your average tourist.” Harney took Lee under his wing and the two have been recording the art and publishing their work ever since.
“Bill believes he has a very serious responsibility to pass on his knowledge to younger Wardaman people and to anyone else who wants to learn,” Lee said, adding that as more native people move from the bush to metropolitan areas, there is less interest to learn Creation Stories.
Lee said he considers himself extremely fortunate and lucky to be able to learn from such a knowledgeable man as Harney.
Lee and Anderson are ‘Down Under’ right now and report having the “best summer ever for the fifth year in a row.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 07 August 2009 )
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