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Introduction: All Kinds of Things from CountryThis is a volume about Yanyuwa ways of understanding the environment they, along with all the speciesnmentioned, call home. Yanyuwa country is 970km southeast of Darwin, on the shores of the Gulf ofnCarpentaria. It incorporates the tidal reaches of the McArthur and Wearyan Rivers and the Sir EdwardnPellew Islands (Figure 1).Confronted by an object that is tall, with a woody trunk, roots and green leaves, most people from anWestern European background would classify the object as a plant, more precisely a tree. Features suchnas salt encrusted leaves, distinctive fruits and above-ground roots alert us to the fact that it is a mangroventree. With further examination and some scientific taxonomic knowledge we may be able to assign thenmangrove to an exact genus and species such as Avicennia marina, the grey mangrove.Classifying in this way, an observer relies on the apparent differences in the structure and form, ornmorphology, of nature. This is similar to scientific methods of classification, such as the Linnaean system,nwhich groups organisms according to morphological and evolutionary similarities.Yanyuwa people's classification of the environment immediately challenges this seemingly logicalnmethodology, reminding us that there are other ways of seeing and other ways of understanding the naturalnworld. For example:n n n Ma-mangaji ma-ngatha ma-jamurimuri ma-wurrama ma-mangaji ma-warnjarrngu kulu nganu li-Wuyaliyanjaninyamba-wundarrbanji likilinganji- kirlakangku.n n n That tree, the grey mangrove, is my most senior paternal ancestor, and we people of the Wuyaliya clan namenourselves as those people who are kin to the grey mangrove (Annie Isaac Karrakayn, Bradley Field n n n Diaryn1988). n n
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