Laurie Baymarrwangga (Gawany) Baymarrwaà Âa (c. 1917 â 20 August 2014) was the senior Aboriginal traditional owner of the Malarra estate, which includes Galiwin'ku, Dalmana, Murruà Âga, Brul-brul and the Ganatjirri Maramba salt water surrounding the islands and inclusive of some 300 other named sites. She devoted her life to the intergenerational transmission of the ancestral language and knowledge of her homelands on the Crocodile Islands, for the benefit of future generations.
She is a great-great-grandmother of the Malarra-Gunbiirrtji clan, and in 2012 was reportedly 95 years old. She spoke the Yan-nhangu language, Djambarrpuyà Âu, and several other regional languages of northeast Arnhem Land.
She was named Senior Northern Territory Australian of the Year and Senior Australian of the Year in 2012. Her encyclopaedic knowledge was the inspiration for an ethnographic publication and a language documentation project.
Laurie Baymarrwangga (Gawany) Baymarrwaà Âa was born c. 1917, on Murruà Âga Island (the largest of the outer Crocodile Islands of north-east Arnhem Land), in the Northern Territory of Australia.
She was first photographed by the Rev Harold Shepperdson on Milingimbi in 1925 and then by Donald Thomson on Murrungga Island in April 1937. She survived the World War II Japanese bombing of Milingimbi in 1943.
In the 1960s, she began a return to her island homeland at Murruà Âga, becoming permanently resident in the 1970s. In 1968, she started a bilingual school under a tree on the island, and it was taken over by NT Education in 1975.
In 1993, she started the Yan-nhaà Âu dictionary project with fellow speakers and the anthropologist Bentley James. (Yan-nhangu Dictionary 1994âÂÂ2003) In her late eighties and with no English Baymarrwaà Âa worked in Yolà Âu matha with Bentley, and together they visited and recorded the first Yan-nhaà Âu maps (600 sites). With barely 250 Yan-nhaà Âu words recorded they began the Yan-nhaà Âu dictionary team (1993âÂÂ4) preparing the first Yan-nhaà Âu dictionary, first ethnography, and using self-generated funds, created a family of lasting collaborative projects. Side by side they created, conceived, designed and ran the earliest Crocodile Islands Rangers and junior rangers programs, an on-line (talking-pictorial) trilingual dictionary for homelands schools, multi-generational "Language Nests" project, heritage protection projects on the fish-traps, fresh water wells, fire regimes, creating cultural artefacts, and care for and registration of sacred sites on the Crocodile Islands.
Claire Bowern compiled a learner's guide to the language. Together, Baymarrwaà Âa and Bentley wrote the Yan-nhaà Âu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary of the Crocodile Islands with over four thousand Yan-nhaà Âu words translated into Dhuwal/Dhuwala and English for children speaking Yolà Âu and English. The Yan-nhaà Âu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary seeks to provide opportunities for new generations to know the language of place and walk in the footsteps of the ancestors. Together they handed out the atlas to over thirty homelands, twelve schools and hundreds of libraries Australia wide. The generosity and vision of this project spring naturally from the wisdom of kinship and reciprocity that are at the heart indigenous relations to country.
The Yan-nhaà Âu dictionary team continues work on Yan-nhaà Âu grammar.
In 1997, Baymarrwaà Âa and Bentley introduced Yan-nhaà Âu into the bilingual school curriculum.
In 2002, she initiated the Crocodile Islands Rangers, which she personally funded in 2009. They conceived of and negotiated the creation of a turtle sanctuary and were working towards a plan to feed local children every day with local fish caught and distributed by local rangers, "Lima gurrku guya riya-gunhanyini à Âalimalamagu gurruṯuwaygu : We will share our fish with our kin". (Baymarrwaà Âa 2002) In 2010, after a struggle stretching back to 1945, Laurie received back payments for rents owed to her as the land and sea owner of her father's estate. She donated it all, around A$400,000, to improve education and employment opportunities on the islands and to establish a 1,000 square kilometre turtle sanctuary on her marine estate. [...] She wants us all to remain courageous and undaunted in our recognition of the value of cultural differences in creating a future and a nation of which we can all be proud".
Laurie died in August 2014. The Crocodile Islands Rangers, which she helped establish, stated "Our wonderful patron sadly passed peacefully away in August 2014". The anthropologist Dr. Bentley James, who worked with her to create the Yan-nhaà Âu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary, said on his website,
A painting of Baymarrwaà Âa by artist Gill Warden was featured on the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 2019 International Women's Day poster.
The film about her life, Big Boss: Last Leader of the Crocodile Islands, won the United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Prize in the Promotion of Indigenous Recognition category in 2015.