Death has a sound in Yuendumu, a red-dirt town in the middle of Australia’s sparsely populated Northern Territory. The haunting ritual wailing, to mark the death of a loved one, permeates Samara Fernandez-Brown’s memories of the town her family is from.
The 22-year-old lives in the southern city of Adelaide, but she traveled 1,100 miles to the town of 800 residents—nearly all of whom are Aboriginal people called the Warlpiri—on Nov. 9, 2019 to attend her grandfather’s funeral. When she heard crying on the evening of the memorial, she assumed it was to mourn him. She soon learned the sobs were for someone else: her 19-year-old cousin Kumanjayi Walker.
