Mala-Minya, a sensory assemblage
In this story, we go hunting with a mala-minya. Proper one - man, dog and knife. Oh, and GoPro of course, through which we attempt to record the feeling of the sensory assemblage.
As the research progresses, we begin to walk and hunt for our minya (meat) with kaya-kaya (dogs). Tip is a majestic Bull arab breed belonging to Jarramali’s nephew, Kwinyala. Also being a hunter, Jarramali’s yabba (older brother) has trained Tip from a young age to now be incredibly accurate with locating wild boars. Jarramali would often refer to Tip as a mala minya, and also to their hunting union as a mala-minya. The practice of hunting a heightened sensory experience, an alert sharpness of a relational hunting being.
The mala-minya performance commences at camp when we dress Tip in his hunting harness.
We head off from camp on foot, Jarramali is following an intuitive feeling, his wawu alert to the presence of pigs at a particular spring nearby. Tip adjusts his body to the landscape, his four paws pouncing about in side-to-side scanning motions through the denser tougher scrub, whilst his feet scurry and bound through the more open woodlands or over wobbly creek boulders.
As we walk at a steady pace, I observe the body language between the two bodies, man and dog, each gestural exchange affecting and driving their collective movement forward.
Experiencing the textures of the scrub through Jarramali’s GoPro headcam together with Tip’s GoPro saddle cam, enables a kind of multi-cam mala-minya perspective, an experience of dialoguing with the scrub with-and-through differing heights, gates and sensory repertoires.
Observing through the GoPro, Jarramali points out the visual evidence the dog finds like uprooted diggings, trotter prints, visible scats, or tusk marks on the lower trunks of trees. Jarramali quips that for Tip, the place is awash with urine, saliva and musk.
In the GoPro traces, possibilities emerge to demonstrate the perception of climate change with-and-through encounters that skilfully assemble and comprehend the logics of co-evolving neighbourhoods.
Jarramali tells me he only really eats this sweet ‘Romeo Minya’ nourished by Romeo fruit, ground bulbs and fresh mountain-fed creek water up in the remote parts of country. Mum or the aunties in Wujal are delighted when we drop by with a Romeo rump, leg or shoulder for their freezer. Often chunks of it are cooked up, then and there.