Dillybag

A dillybag or dilly bag is a traditional Australian Aboriginal bag, generally woven from the fibres of plant species of the Pandanus genus.^{[verification needed]}. It is used for a variety of food transportation and preparation purposes.

Dilly comes from the Jagera word dili, which refers to both the bag and the plants from which it is made.^[1]

The Dilly bag otherwise known as "yakou", "yibali" or "But But Bags" is a bag worn around the neck to hold food like berries, meat, fish etc. the Dilly bag is normally woven out of vines or tough dried grasses and sometimes had feather or animal fur inside the bag to stop small pieces of food falling through holes in the weave. Mainly used by women to gather food but can be used by men to help carry some tools for hunting.

Another use for the dilly bag (also named Mukurtu) was as a holder for personal or tribal artifacts. Privacy was protected by the threat of being cursed. This concept was used as a basis for the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Digital Archive ^[2] developed by the Warumungu community of Tennant Creek, N.T. Australia in collaboration with researchers Dr Kimberly Christen, Craig Dietrich, Chris Cooney, and Tim Dietrich. This project has received much comment for its new approach to Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The "Dilly bag" term is also used to describe bags used by non-aboriginal Australians, for example a smaller food bag carried by swagmen along with their swags. (p. 20, Book 9, The 10 Bushcraft books, by Richard Graves, Dymocks publishers c. 1970). The term is also used by Australians to describe similar bags for other purposes.

See also

• The Politics of Search: Archival Accountability in Aboriginal Australia ^[3]
• ANTHROPOLOGY OF/IN CIRCULATION: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies ^[4]
• Dixon, R.M.W.; Moore, Bruce; Ramson, W. S.; Thomas, Mandy (2006). Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning (2nd ed. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-554073-5. 

References

1. ^ Dixon et al. (2006): p. 184.
2. ^ http://www.mukurtuarchive.org/about.html
3. ^ http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/papers/Christen.pdf
4. ^ https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/2022/3167/1/Kelty_et_al_2008.pdf