Lynette Knapp

Merningar Barduk Elder and Adjunct Research Fellow, UWA Albany Centre

I am a Merningar Barduk Elder who grew up on my family’s traditional country, which stretches along the southern coast of Western Australia from Denmark to Israelite Bay.

Due to childhood illness, I was not taken from my family and institutionalised like many others of my generation. As a child and young adult, I had the opportunity to learn from my Merningar father, aunties and other extended family about language and culture.

My mother was Gertrude Bynder and my father was Alfred Knapp.  My mother’s great grandmother was Munderan (mullet) and she married an Irishman called Thomas Egan, who was transported from Ireland to Albany. Munderan was a full blood woman from Albany.

My father’s father was a Mandabourn and a Whadjari man and his wife was Lillie Bevan and she was a Ngadu woman from Israelite Bay.

As a senior family member, I am committed to sharing my culture in a positive light and have collaborated with archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and conservation biologists.

I have worked closely with Prof. Stephen Hopper and Dr Alison Lullfitz on the 2020 -2024 Walking Together project. I have contributed both individually and with my family on more than 25 on Country field trips and contributed over 184 oral history recordings.

For my family, and for anyone else who has an interest, I will continue sharing in the hope that the knowledge, language and all other aspects of my culture that I can recall, is not lost forever.