#also maybe dont reblog it bc it is me a non indigenous person talking abt ideas of aboriginal re-framing of historical monuments based on a

[website-com]

for our final assignment for indigenous lifeworld we were asked to write a reflective essay on how the course has reframed our thinking, as while we learnt history it was more about understanding better the context in which palawa life continues and context of the land in a way that a welcome to country pays lip service to doing. 

i started mine about my neighbour, a known palawa scholar and lecturer in the uni, and how he collects old, silly ‘aboriginal themed’ souvenirs. i thought that was so fun of him, especially since his main area of focus is in art and exhibition, having worked closely with the museum that used to display the dead bodies of palawa people to create their indigenous section, by far their best static exhibition. my mum thought it was fun as well, and bough him a boomerang plate that she found in an op shop because she thought it was quite cute. being my mum she immediately began thinking about it, while we were neighbours we weren’t that close, if anything we had a poorer relationship because of the chickens we can’t keep under control to save our life. 

She didn’t give him the plate. It’s downstairs, where he and his wife used to store things when this was their house. 

I actually wrote my essay about re-using the plate for something new. I was inspired by an early unit about the re-framing of Wybalenna. Wybalenna was on a small island off of the main and the place that was promised to the groups still fighting a vicious war with the english settlers if they made peace. They were promised flour and tea and ‘a nice white fella to keep you safe’ and to someday return to their land. Land that they died facing. 

I wanted to see if i could make something that better reflected the history of this place. it was boomerang shaped, a tool that was never used down here, and I wrote about how i could use its shape to paint the stars that walked down from the milky way to carve out the land during creation. How i could turn it into a mutton bird, break it up into tools. I ended every other section talking myself out of it, explaining how ive broken that sort of pottery before and it does not make a sharp stone knife.

I ended the essay by concluding that I didnt have the right to change it. Or rather it shouldnt be changed. I dont know who made it, it might not be in an artstyle used down here but thats not to say it was made by a white person. It wasn’t the plates fault it was sold somewhere that never saw a boomerang in use until kfc sold them with meals. From the start of the essay I was unsure if I should even be someone creating art that reflected a culture my ancestors were far more likely to have aided in wiping out. I talked myself out of it and said it was better left a contextual reminder. this sort of thing was made, it holds a history of the time. 

I think about that a lot. theres often a call for destruction of monuments to a history no one should be proud of. people often call for ones that reflect indigenous history to be erected in their stead and to forget about the colonisers. which is honestly quite a colonial way to remember something. when i heard the story of coming into being, not dreaming, as its called on the mainland, when pumpermehowlle and pineterrinner, the two stars, walked down and carved out the land. the woman recounting the story said that it was told by her great great (etc) grandfather, Mannalargenna, a revered leader born around 1775 and died on Wybalenna after cutting off his hair (which was typically worn caked in ochure) a few months after landing, wanting nothing other than to return. when Mannalargenna was asked how he knew it was true he said that his father had told him, and his fathers father had done so before then, potentially thousands of generations had told this story, keeping it alive in minds and mouths, never once writing it down. 

people never used to be immortalised in metal, its a mainland tradition but when someone dies all photos of them are put away or destroyed, their name is not spoken and if someone shares a name or a similar one with them they change it for a year or so after the death to let people go. theres often a warning on television programs featuring aboriginal people that it may contain images or voices of people who have passed. I met a man in the national portrait gallery in canberra who was deeply upset that the gallery contained no visible warnings and he saw someone who he knew he shouldn't have. while its not ridiculous to ask the gallery to remove any portraits of aboriginal people it will be a while before the wishes of people are valued above the ambiguous good of art, but if you go to the galleries website today i left a little mark on his behalf in the form of the dropdown message (prior to there was a little paragraph at the bottom, but you had to go out of your way to find it). if anyone lives near canberra i’d love to know if they implemented warnings in the physical location as that was the primary reason for my email, and i wish i could tell that man that he had an impact on the world no matter how small.

all of that to say that i dont think giving people the excuse to forget history is the right thing to do. the australian government doesnt need any more excuses. truganini, a woman asked to help round up her people to place them on wybalenna as maybe the last hope of survival, who died old and far away from her home, and was incorrectly called the last tasmanian aboriginal person (my neighbour is not only a scholar of research, but a palawa man himself) asked to have her body buried in the deepest part of the river so that no one could dig her up and put her on display, which people were very known to do. her skeleton remained in the tasmanian museum from the year of her death, 1876 until 1947. finally returned to the community for cremation in 1976. the last known piece of her was returned in 2002, a piece of her skin, left forgotten in a museums archive. 

(a part of an exhibition my neighbour put together)

I am not the person to start or mediate the conversations, but i think the ones that have been happening amongst my fellow non-aboriginal people about destruction of monuments and creation of new ones are not the sort of conversations we should be having. I still wonder how Mannalargenna and his father, and his father before that would feel about the stories they kept alive through mouth and mind would feel about my writing them on a page. left dead until i read them again.

(my professor told me to print out the essay i wrote and give it to my neighbour, but knowing me, it’ll end up in the bottom of the house right next to the plate. im my mothers kid after all)