Yinalung yenu: women’s journey

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Eora to Alice: the story of a journey
by Leonie Dennis.

Education materials
Teachers notes

Women have always had an important place in Indigenous Australian society — as child rearers, educators, food collectors, artists, storytellers, healers and decision-making Elders.

Yinalung yenu: women’s journey takes you into the world of Indigenous Australian women, focusing on the areas where women are more influential than men: creating and nurturing, teaching and community, family and health, lore and law, and food gathering and preparation.

Six prominent Koori* women share their stories, revealing how Indigenous traditions are finding new forms of expression today.

*Koori refers to Indigneous people from south-east Australia. It means ‘person’ in many of the local languages.

Why ‘yinalung yenu’?
The words yinalung yenu mean ‘women’s journey’ in the language of the Eora, the first people of the Sydney region.

Much of our knowledge of the Eora language comes from the notebooks of William Dawes, Australia’s first astronomer, who was actually taught much of what he knew by an Indigenous woman. Her name was Patyegarang and she often admonished Dawes for his bad pronunciation and praised him when he got it right.

Talks After Noon
Wednesday 28 May - 12.30-1.30pm
One small life
Bronwyn Bancroft
Join Bronwyn Bancroft, featured in the exhibition, as she talks about the developments in her life as an Aboriginal woman artist and mother, her childhood growing in a small country town, her education, her life developments and the politics that affected her personally.