Butcher Joe Nangan
Joe Nangan (Butcher Joe Nangan) (1900-1989) was an Australian Aboriginal lawman, jalngunguru (healer or cleverman) and artist. In his role as a custodian of legends, Nangan was responsible for the preservation of the sounds and performances of ceremonial dance and songlines. As an artist, he created hundreds of pencil and watercolour drawings, as well as incised pearl shells and boab nuts, that convey powerful connections to his Country.
Joe Nangan was possibly born on the 25th of February 1900 at Kanen (Fishermens Bend) in Western Australia. His Country extended east of Broome: from his Walmatjarri father (later known as Dicky Djulba), he held rights to an area called Paliara, near Christmas Creek station, and from his Nyikina mother (later known as Anne Binmaring), to an area called Jirkalli (or Jirrkaliy) on Dampier Downs station.
Nangan initially worked as a on pastoral stations before learning the trade of station butcher. In 1916, he was droving elsewhere when members of his family were killed in the Mowla Bluff Massacre. Nangan worked as a butcher at the Catholic mission at the Beagle Bay Community between 1920 and 1940 when he became known as Butcher Joe.
On the 26th January 1937, he married Therese Bende and they had a daughter, Mary. Widowed in 1963, Nangan married Josephine Balgalai on the 17th June 1967.
Ethnomusicologist, Alison Moyle, has studied the nulu or nurlu form of the Kimberley people. The nulu is a dancing or corroboree song. It is primarily vocal and is accompanied with boomerang clapsticks. These songs are said to “found” in dreams and are communicated to those who “find” them by spirits.
Nangan’s Nulu ganany (series of songs) includes references to his mother’s death and the spirits near her grave. As early as the 1920s, the spirit of Nangan's aunt endowed him with the marinji-rinji nulu and Mayata, the pelican being. She showed him the pelican headdress depicted in Nangan’s drawings. He wore the headdress in the Mayata nulu (dance of the pelican), which he performed in the Broome area from the 1920s until 1985.
Nangan’s custodial responsibilities were broad. In addition to the territories he inherited from his mother and father, Nangan assumed responsibility for ensuring that law was also maintained in neighbouring territories as the populations dwindled through disease and massacre. This is evident in the breath of mythic content in Nangan's legacy. Many of the stories depicted are connected to the Jirkalli area on Dampier Downs station, but many others belong to or affect the Jukun, Yawuru and Karajarri people nearby.
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