Butcher Joe Nangan

Joe Nangan (Butcher Joe Nangan) (1900-1989) was an Aboriginal Australian lawman, jalngunguru (healer or cleverman) between 1920 and 1940 when he became known as Butcher Joe.

On 26 January 1937, he married Therese Bende in a Catholic ceremony and they had a daughter, Mary. Widowed in 1963, Nangan married Josephine Balgalai on 17 June 1967.

Ceremonial responsibilities Ethnomusicologist Alice 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.

Works of art It is estimated that Nangan made several thousand artworks in his life. Nangan's depictions of traditional law and stories of his people are important records of Aboriginal life and legends. He recorded a vast amount of cultural knowledge, which he considered to be vital to an Aboriginal person's sense of identity, and was acutely aware of its rapid loss and the impact of this on individual wellbeing. Riji influenced the incised pearl shells he created during the 1950s and 1960s, such as Pearl shell with a variety of Australian flora, fauna and figures including a winged female spirit.

Pencil and watercolour drawings

Nangan's determination to preserve and pass on his knowledge through his drawings resulted in approximately 600 being produced over three decades. The first of these were possibly produced through contact with anthropologist Helmut Petri who obtained some of Nangan's drawings in the mid-1950s and believed they were his first naturalistic works on paper. Sketchbook of drawings of the Nyikina people (National Museum of Australia) Parrbul (The sea woman) (The Art Gallery of Western Australia)

Publications Although unable to read or write English, Nangan's stories are published in two books. Joe Nangan’s Dreaming (1976) is co-authored by Nangan and Hugh Edwards, as is the story of Bera, the Sun Maidens which was included in a volume of short stories called Daughters of the Sun (1994).

Order of Australia Nangan was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in June 1987 for service to the arts and to Aboriginal heritage.

Death Butcher Joe Nangan died on 21 January 1989 in Broome where he was buried.