Culture preserved for future generations

Ngarluma man Clinton Walker has spent two weeks assisting elders in Newman mapping the ancient stories of their land.

Aboriginal culture has a 40,000 year history in the Pilbara.

Mr Walker said this long history had been preserved and passed down through tribal ceremony and oral traditions for generations.

"The stories of the Aboriginal people are mapped out in song lines - know your song, know your people," he said.

"A song line is like a path that connects all the stories of our land - each place has a song associated with that story.

"Every tribe has a different story told through song and all these stories connect everybody up and denote where you go for ceremonies and what land you share.

"What we are trying to do is find out how all these songs connect together to record the history of our people."

Mr Walker said it was vital to formally record these stories from the ageing elders of the region to preserve the ancient culture in the modern age.

"Elders have an encyclopaedia worth of knowledge of the land and culture and everything in between and when they pass on, all that knowledge gets taken with them," he said.

"So we have been mapping elders' stories on Google Maps, attaching video and audio stories to places along the way.

"They want to do this because they are worried the next generation may not learn everything which was traditionally passed down through ceremony, so we are recording as much as we can so it's accessible in the future."

Mr Walker said this project had taught him a lot about his own culture and how it connected with other groups in the region.

"It was good for me to see where my song line goes and how it's connected to other tribes further inland," he said.

"I'd love to work my way to the end of the song line, but it would be impossible to record it all in one lifetime.

"There's so much history here that goes back thousands of years and it's a history so many of the younger generations aren't aware of, which is what makes this work so important towards keeping our culture alive."