#aboriginal landscape

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of february

brian gyamfi the almost love poem of eloise and kofi

angela jackson and all these roads be luminous: “angel”

sharon olds the promise

laura ma fossil record of a drowning carp

mahmoud darwish the butterfly’s burden: “i didn’t apologise to the well” (tr. fady joudah)

jimmy santiago baca��immigrants in our own land: “immigrants in our own land”

james richardson essay on the one hand and on the other

john kinsella peripheral light: selected and new poems by john kinsella: “drowning in wheat”

twyla m. hansen the other woman

monica sok abc for refugees

sumita chakraborty most of the children who lived in this house are dead. as a child i lived here. therefore i am dead

chaelee dalton blood type personality theory

tj jarret of late, i have been thinking about despair

zubair ibrahim siddiqui sun, suna, sunaofying

sun yung shin skirt full of black: “immigrant song”

richard eberhart a dublin afternoon

louise glück aboriginal landscape

michelle cadiz oil and other drugs

hafsa zulfiqar small nightmares i dream in a foreign country

james richardson fire warnings

alberto rios not go away is my name: “immigrant centuries”

n.s. ahmed on becoming memory

andrea krause for our anniversary next year

ajanae dawkins blood-flex

ananya kanai shah my girls & i

aleda shirley the glass lotus

mahmoud darwish almond blossoms and beyond: “think of others”

robert américo esnard dendrochronology of a family tree

buy me a chai latte

[timmurleyart]

Sydney and the moon. 🇦🇺🌕

[4eternal-life]

LIN ONUS  (Australian /Aboriginal, 1948 -1996)

Barmah Forest,  c. 1993 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 182.0 x 182.0 cm

© Invaluable

[privatedarius]

Albert Namatjira (1902–1959) famous Aboriginal artist, one of his many paintings of the Haasts Bluff country, Northern Territory.

[yourcoffeeguru]

Vintage Australian Art Bark Painting Framed Landscape Wall Hanging  || SWtradepost - ebay

[gymeagary-blog]

One Track For All

One Walk We Can All Learn From

"Telling the story of the southern Shoalhaven Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal history, from an Aboriginal perspective - a popular free attraction in Ulladulla.

The Aboriginal walking track has been constructed in a way that, from a higher vantage point or from the air, the two halves appear as two large goannas, with four carved platforms for some of the best views of the Ulladulla Harbour.

It is a cultural trail that will delight all, with the stories illustrated with carvings and paintings by local Aboriginal Elder Noel Butler, linking Indigenous culture with white man history." https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/south-coast/jervis-bay-and-shoalhaven/ulladulla/attractions/one-track-all

One of the four lookouts, this one on the Northern loop of the walking track. Each one features carvings illustrating the history of the area from the perspective of First Nations people and the early settlers. From this point, the first ships were seen on the horizon and times were a'changing.

A steep track to a fishing spot.

A timber plank probably four metres long intricately carved to record daily life 250 years ago in this area.

An interaction that happened often here abouts.

In The southern section of the 4 km of trails is recorded the story of the early settlers - the timber cutters, the whalers, fishermen and sailors, the dairy farmers, and those that supported the many who lived around the Ulladulla region. The two halves are joined by a common theme - change. There were once 150 timber mills in the area, hundreds of fishing boats, and Dairy farming was the major agricultural industry. All gone now, as will this ironbark trunk, now etched by the strong morning light.

Look at this record of the fish s[species commonly caught in the area when the local industry supported 150 fishing trawlers - there are now two.

Behind the harbour and its boats, mostly recreational, is the modern township of Ulladulla.

When you enter or leave this wonderful trail you are greeted by an incongruous sight. This wonderful carving of a giant frog stands guard over a local book exchange!

[tpeckarsky]

Your Moon, Your Mountains

I wanted to make a quilt for my newlywed friends. Here is their request:

We would love a quilt made by you! One of the things I’ve been loving most about our house is seeing the moon come up over the mountains and the stars out so clearly. I think a quilt along that theme would be so wonderful. I lean more towards cooler colors—blues, greens, blacks, and whites, but don’t let that hold back your inspiration.

So I made the “Your Moon, Your Mountains” quilt: Since my friends live in New Mexico, my inspiration was the Organ Mountains--Desert Peaks National Monument, captured in a Bureau of Land Management photo by Patrick Alexander, Las Cruces District Botanist.

Nick is from Australia, so I backed the quilt with a gorgeous aboriginal print fabric, which certainly evokes a star-studded sky.

The whole design was a surprise, and they loved it. The craziest thing was hearing Sarah say, “I know the photographer!” because of her connection with the BLM. Who knew?!? It was one of my most rewarding projects.

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

wow haha you* think this large area of land is uninhabitable and empty ? wow thats so funny that sounds so much like this fucked up terra nullius thing but surely you arent all mindlessly peddling that colonial narrative of australian land as uninhabited and therefore free for the taking, right ? that would be silly.

and its not like there's a common law doctrine that was only legally discredited in the last 30 years that literally refers to "desert and uncultivated" land as a justification for taking land that is inhabited but is deemed to not have "settled" inhabitants or "settled law" according to colonial standards, right ?

because if there was then it would obviously be super fucking racist to continue to legitimise and perpetuate the erasure of indigenous presence by reaffirming the conception of large swathes of land as desert and uncultivated empty and uninhabitable.

and obviously it would be not only racist but factually incorrect to identify an area as "uninhabitable" purely on the basis that that it was deemed less compatible with colonialist + capitalist agricultural and settler projects and practices, (putting aside the fact that nonnegligible areas are, in fact, settled and used as such) because that would not only continue the erasure of a diverse array of indigenous ways of life, but would also continue to give legitimacy to the idea that presence on land must be identifiable by colonial signifiers thereof, otherwise it is not real and does not count. so obviously you would not do that, yeah ? good talk <3

*"you" as in the ppl in screenshots/ppl who are saying this shit, not op. Just to clarify.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

We don't need to adopt all Aboriginal methods, but in this time of water, soil and farm-income crisis, it would seem a prudent management approach to consider the condition of the country at time of invasion. This condition was produced by a people who had up to 120,000 years of experience on the continent¹³ and a spirituality that always put the land first.

13. The duration of human habitation of the continent is now generally agreed to be 65,000 years, but recent research suggests that 120,000 years is probable: see Paul Daley, '"A Big Jump": People Might Have Lived in Australia Twice as Long as We Thought', The Guardian, 11 March 2019.

"Country: Future Fire, Future Farming" - Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe

[studioeaton]

(via International African American Museum lifted above Charleston site)

[mapsontheweb]

Aboriginal art, mapping a landscape differently

[probablyasocialecologist]

The tropical arid lands of Australia have been the continual home to Indigenous people possibly longer than anywhere on Earth today. Far from being one of the Earth’s remaining wilderness areas, the Western Deserts of Australia are the ancestral home of a number of Aboriginal peoples, who have managed these landscapes for millennia. Indeed, the effects of removing Indigenous peoples from the landscape in the 1960s was catastrophic, resulting in uncontrolled wildfires and a degradation of the ecological qualities for which this landscape was originally valued. Unsurprisingly, the return of these lands to Indigenous traditional owners over the past two decades has seen improvements in the socioecological dynamics of the region. Indeed, some Aboriginal peoples in Australia view “wild country” (wilderness) as “sick country’”: land that has been degraded through a lack of care through use. Thus, Aboriginal notions of wilderness are antithetical to the technocratic and romantic notions of wilderness representing “pristine” and healthy ecosystems that underpin many modern-day conservation efforts. The outcome continues to be a clash of worldviews in a globalizing society where the Western epistemologies governing dominant conservation practices operate in an echo-chamber that continues to erase other ways of knowing from conservation dialogue.

Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness

[stretchbrock]

Bedevil, stylised as beDevil, is a 1993 Australian horror film directed by Tracey Moffatt, the first feature directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman.

The film is a trilogy of surreal ghost stories. Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from both her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian families, Moffatt created a trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past. All three stories are set in Moffatt's highly stylised, hyper-real, hyper-imaginary Australian landscape.

BEDEVIL (1993) dir. TRACEY MOFFATT

[paperbackribs]

Tags: steddie, getting together, featuring the chaotic friendship of Eddie & Dustin

🤎🌱🤎

Steve's hands are already at his hips, “Eddie, what are you doing down there?”

Eddie glances up from the hole he’d dug in the woods beyond Steve’s backyard. Looking at the dirt nearly up to his shoulders he belatedly realises that he may have become a tad fixed on his big idea.

Dappled sunlight falls through the tapestry of foliage above and the chirping of birds nearby cheerily fill the lush landscape, but none of it seems to distract Steve from his concern as he squints down at Eddie.

“Where’s Dustin?” Eddie counters like he doesn’t currently resemble a cartoon villain digging traps for the native wildlife. He resists twirling an imaginary moustache over his bare upper lip, but Steve must have an idea of his thoughts because he squints suspiciously over his arms as he folds them.

“I don’t know,” Steve says slowly from high above, “should he be here while you create what looks like your own grave?”

Eddie props his arms over the lip, tilting his chin up and aiming for charming. Playful even. “Now, why would I do that, Stevie? Life is a magnificent thing, worthy of delight and whimsy.”

“Whimsy,” Steve repeats sceptically, “like you practically digging up my backyard. You know, someone could fall and sue me, right?” Despite his scolding tone, Steve bends to kneel on the ground, his delicious thighs by Eddie’s folded hands and head hovering over his.

Eddie flutters his eyelashes as Steve waits on him, nearly close enough to kiss if he would just tilt down a fraction. “You could get in here with me, make it so there’s no room for anyone else.”

Steve’s bright hazel eyes flash and Eddie wishes he could get a handle on whether it’s because of Eddie’s suggestive tone or if it’s that Steve is simply annoyed with his antics.

Just when the silences stretches for a second too long, enough that Eddie thinks Steve might lean forward, close the gap and take Eddie’s lips in what would surely be a spectacular first kiss, he instead smirks, slyly pushing a handful of loose dirt into the hole from the high mound above Eddie’s head. It rains over Eddie’s right shoulder, which he shrugs fatalistically — he’s fairly covered at this point anyway.

“Eddie, tell me why you’ve dug a hole near as tall as you by my backyard.”

“Or what, you’ll bury me with all the other bodies out here?”

“Something like that.” Another handful rains down and Eddie sighs, “It’s a compression hole.” Steve’s hand halts, “Like the socks?”

Eddie takes the opportunity to reach out and clasp Steve’s hand, ostensibly to stop it from pushing more dirt over his shoulders but really just taking the opportunity to touch Steve. Hold the warmth of his hand within his own, stroke the silken back of it with his thumb.

Eddie steals many moments like these and Steve always lets him, but he never knows whether it's because of Steve's generous nature or if it's because he wants Eddie touching him, specifically.

“Like the socks,” he agrees, eyes sharp as Steve’s cheeks flush a faint red. Yet he retains a sceptical mien about him so Eddie further explains. “Dustin has this book—”

Steve snorts, “Here we go.”

“Dustin has this book and it says that the Aboriginals from Australia have known for ages how to take care of deadly snake bites.”

“With a hole.”

Eddie is always fascinated to see the evidence of Steve’s smiles in the shine of his eyes, and he delights in being one of the few people who often brings out its brightness. “With a hole,” he agrees with a cheeky grin, happy at Steve’s amusement.

“Bit by a Red-belly then you're in the hole for x amount of days. By a King Brown then for an nth amount of days. Placed in the hole and buried up to your neck, the compression of it all works the venom safely through your system.”

He's sad to see those pretty eyes hidden from him as Steve closes them with a deep, bracing breath. “Eddie,” he begins in a warning tone, drawing his hand away, “is Dustin finding a poisonous snake to bite you with.”

“No, definitely not,” Eddie hedges but at Steve’s stern look he squirms, “because poisonous would mean that I can’t eat them?”

“Venomous then!”

Eddie thinks that maybe he’s losing his capacity to charm Steve if the ire rising in his eyes is anything to go by. He shifts uneasily on the hard dirt below him, feeling particularly trapped as Steve’s frown deepens while looking like he’s considering burying Eddie without the bite and definitely above his head.

The sounds of eager feet crunching over dry leaves and fallen branches sound behind Eddie and he tilts his head in time to see Dustin fly through the trees with a long, wriggling animal in his hands. “Found one!” He calls triumphantly, the curls around his face bobbing in excitement. There's a smudge across his cheek that Eddie suspects was made by crawling through the dirt and bushes to find his captured prey.

About twenty inches long, thin with yellow stripes framing its scales of green and brown, the garter snake wrapped around Dustin’s left arm tastes the air in front of it with its pink forked tongue. Simultaneously looking unhappy at being captured while utterly disinterested in the humans surrounding it.

Dustin’s face crinkles in confusion as Steve starts laughing behind Eddie’s back. “What? What is it?” He asks Steve who, Eddie looks over to see, has fallen back onto his butt, head tilted to the sky as he snorts and chuckles at the harmless animal Dustin has procured for their experiment.

“Never mind,” Steve waves an expansive hand towards the two of them, “carry on. As you were.” Humour dances over his brow and broadens his smile, “Here, I’ll even help. Pass it over, Dustin, I’ll throw the terrible monster at Eddie myself.”

It’s Eddie’s turn for his cheeks to flush now and he might be more embarrassed if it weren’t for Steve catching his eye, sharing a look of amusement with him rather than at him, and Eddie finds himself charmed by Steve Harrington once more.

It's not the first time and he knows that it won't be the last. Steve has had Eddie firmly wrapped around his little finger for far too long to say now, and Eddie's only waiting for the barest hint to step forward.

He sighs and turns back to Dustin, “Let the snake go, it’s a bust.”

Dustin opens his mouth to protest, but Eddie heads him off, explaining that the only creatures in danger of the carnivore in his hands are worms and maybe a mouse or two.

Eddie reckons that if Dustin were a mouse his tail would drop in disappointment right now, looking as sad as one can as he trudges away to release the snake in a safer place deeper in the woods.

He turns back to Steve to find him crouching now, braced with a hand outstretched towards Eddie. His eyes are still bright from his earlier laughter, but an invitation now winds its way through them.

“How about I help clean you up?” Steve asks in a dark murmur and Eddie lights up, finally finding an answer to the question that's been jittering in his heart.

“Why don’t you,” Eddie grins in agreement, clasping Steve back and pushing up to meet him halfway. As he scrambles out of the hole, Eddie pats the lip of its edge in affection as he continues to hold onto Steve’s hand. He silently thanks the soon-to-be-forgotten experiment and winds their fingers together, following Steve home.

💚 More steddie here

[yourcoffeeguru]

Vintage Australian Bark Landscape Art Painting Framed Under Glass signed by Artist 1987 || SWtradepost - ebay

[mybeingthere]

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 – 1996) is considered one of Australias most significant artists. Amazingly, she only began painting with acrylics in her late seventies but in a few short years became an artist of national and international standing.

Emily was the first female painter to emerge from an art movement dominated by men and did so in a way that transformed Aboriginal painting. Employing a variety of styles over the course of her eight-year painting career, she painted her Country and sacred Dreamtime stories in a deeply emotional and expressive manner.

She was born around 1910 at Alhalkere (Soakage Bore), on the edge of the Utopia pastoral station, approximately 250km north-east of Alice Springs. Alhalkere was her fathers Country, and her mothers Country was Alhalpere, just to the east.

Despite being married twice, she had no children of her own but raised her relative Lily Sandover Kngwarreye and her niece Barbara Weir. Both becoming famous artists in their own right. Other nieces that also became famous artists include Gloria Petyarre, Kathleen Petyarre, Ada Bird Petyarre, Violet Petyarre and Nancy Petyarre.

Well before she became one of its most senior contemporary artists, Emily held a unique status within her community of Utopia. Her strong personality and past employment as a stock hand on pastoral properties in the area (at a time when women were only employed for domestic duties), reveals her forceful independence and trailblazing character.

Her age and ceremonial status also made her a senior member of the Anmatyerre language group. She was a senior custodian of cultural sites of her fathers country. She was considered the Boss Woman of the Alatyeye (pencil yam dreaming) and Kame (yam seed dreaming).

Emily started as a traditional ceremonial artist, beginning painting as a young woman as part of her cultural education. An important component of this education was learning the womens ceremonies, which are associated with in-depth knowledge of the Dreamtime stories and of womens social structures.

This knowledge is known as Awelye in Anmatyerre language. Awelye also refers to the intricate designs and symbols associated with womens rituals. These are applied to the womens upper chest, breasts and arms using fingers or brushes dipped into rich desert ochres.

Aboriginal art outside of ceremonial painting began in Utopia in 1977, when batik-making was introduced to women as part of an extended government-funded education program. In 1978, Emily was a founding member of the Utopia Womens Batik Group. In 1988, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) completed its first project with the Utopia Womens Batik Group. This became an exhibition called Utopia - A Picture Story.

From the beginning, Emilys art stood out from the others. Rather than filling her batiks with Aboriginal symbols, she preferred patterns of layered lines and dots that revealed plant, figurative forms and cell like structures. The 88 silk batiks from this first project were acquired by the Holmes a Court Collection in Perth.

In the same year the CAAMA shop initiated The Summer Project, introducing the Utopia womens batik group to the use of acrylic paints on canvas. Among the 81 paintings completed was Emilys first artwork on canvas, Emu Woman.

Inspired by the many Dreamtime stories of which she was a custodian, Emily employed an extraordinary array of styles over the course of her eight-year painting career.

In her early works, Emily preferred the use of an earthy ochre colour palette, reflecting her experience of using natural ochres during ceremonies. Over time she expanded her repertoire to include a dazzling array of colours found in the desert landscape. Colours are significant in her paintings. Yellow, for example, often symbolises the season when the desert earth begins to dry up and the Kame (yam seeds) are ripe.

Her shifting styles also reveal her self-confidence and willingness to experiment with form, pictorial space and artistic conventions. She drew creatively from the geographic landmarks that traverse her Country and the Dreaming stories that define it. Whenever she was asked to explain her paintings, her answer was always the same:

Whole lot, that's the whole lot. Awelye (my Dreamings), Alatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (a Dreamtime pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (a favorite food of emus, a small plant), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That's what I paint; the whole lot.

This is because she chose to present a very broad picture of the land and how it supports the Anmatyerre way of life. Her artworks embrace the whole life story of the Dreamtime, seeds, flowers, wind, sand and everything. Although her works relate to the modern art tradition, this resemblance is purely visual. The emphasis in Emilys paintings is on the spiritual meaning, based in the tradition of her people.

The evolving styles of Emily Kame Kngwarreyes paintings

Emily started to paint in 1988. Her early style featured visible linear tracings following the tracks of the Kame (Yam Dreaming) and animal prints associated with the Emu Dreaming. Fields of fine dots partially obscured symbolic elements.

By 1992 her paintings were so densely packed with layers of dots that her symbolic underpainting was no longer visible.

Another evolution in her painting style occurred when she began to use large brushes. She worked faster, more loosely and on a larger scale. Sometimes dragging the brush while she dotted, producing lines from the sequential dots.

By the mid 1990s she had pioneered a style of Aboriginal painting referred to as dub dub works. They were created by using large brushes which were laden with paint and then pushed into the canvas in such a way that the bristles part and the paint is mixed on the canvas.

Using this technique, she created wildly colourful artworks and her paintings became progressively more abstract. Different artists from Utopia including Polly Ngale and Freddy Purla have subsequently adopted this style.

During the last two years of her life, she used the linear patterns found on womens ceremonial body designs as the primary inspiration for her paintings. The abstracted sequential dots of colour gave way to parallel lines which were much more formally arranged. She had used lines earlier before gradually submerging them under layers of dots. This time, she created simple, bold compositions of parallel lines in strong dark colours.

The above style in turn evolved to looser meandering lines which appear to trace the shapes of the grasses and the roots of the pencil yam as they forge their way through the desert sands.

In 1996 she produced a body of work in which she depicted pencil yam dreaming using a rich ochre colour palette. In this final burst of creative energy, Emily produced a beautiful body of work known as her scribble phase. In these atmospheric paintings, lines and dots were replaced by flowing fields of colour.

https://www.kateowengallery.com/.../Emily-Kame-Kngwarreye...