Alye (boomerang)

$400.00

Alye (boomerang) is used by men for hunting and fighting or to beat the rhythm to accompany singing.

My name is Stefan Smith and I am one of the founders of the Ltyentye Apurte Traditional Craft Centre. I grew up my whole life in Santa Teresa (Ltyentye Apurte). I remember when I was a kid my grandfather and uncles making these tools. They’re gone now but we still have what they taught us in our head. One of things they used to do was get the old people to go out bush with the schoolboys to teach them. More recently, no one was making tools anymore around here so we decided to start a little program and get all the fellas who wanted to get involved with it and just start doing our traditional tool making. There’s six of us working. Two of my uncles, two nephews and my younger brother, Shannon. It’s just like a family business.

Our families and the community think it’s great that we started the program and particularly that we have started teaching the young ones again, so they can carry on what we do and they can know what we were using traditionally. Hopefully when they get older they can maybe carry on making and passing on this traditional knowledge. The old people know what we’re doing and they’re pretty proud of us. And they still tell us what trees should be used. My grandma tells me what kind of trees to use for coolamons.