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Forrest's Sojourn: a journey into the other

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy, Charles Sturt University

Janawirri Forrest (Yiparrka).

Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Arts Management (Melbourne University)

Masters of Art Curating (Sydney University)

January 2017

Figure 1: GLOBAL RECEPTION: Wanambi Kutja: By Janawirri Forrest Yiparrka. Displayed at Bandigan Art Gallery on Macquarie Street. 2004.

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Table of Contents

Certificate of Authorship 3

Acknowledgements 4

List of Figures 5

List of Tables 7

Abstract 8

Preface: Meeting Mr Myers: becoming reflective 10

Chapter 1: The becoming art of being Aboriginal 11

Shifting sands (three worlds and the third space) 12

Big name: no blanket (aesthetic/ethics) 12

Vanishing (visible/invisible) 13

Lousy Little Sixpence 15

Chapter 2: The becoming of the Aboriginal art narrative 18

Half way down the track 20

The third space and the question of cultural transference. 24

Chapter 3: Communication / miscommunication 34

Observing the whispering hearts 34

Aboriginal for a day 41

Communication / miscommunication 45

Fringe dwellers 54

Chapter 4: Visible/ invisible 61

Walya Ngaamadiki 62

Palya Wangkanyi 62

Tjuta ngurra 63

Chapter 5: Conclusion 96

Significance of the Study 96

Visible / Invisible 98

Practice-Led Research 99

Framework for the production of my artworks 101

One and Three worlds 103

References 105

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Certificate of Authorship

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge

and belief, understand that it contains no material previously published or written by

another person, nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the

award of any other degree or diploma at Charles Sturt University or any other

educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any

contribution made to the research by colleagues with whom I have worked at Charles

Sturt University or elsewhere during my candidature is fully acknowledged.

I agree that this thesis be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance

with normal conditions established by the Executive Director, Library Services, Charles

Sturt University or nominee, for the care, loan and reproduction of thesis, subject to

confidentiality provisions as approved by the University.

Name

Signature

Date

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Acknowledgements

I wish to put forward a list of people to acknowledge their help, inspiration, mentoring,

cultural knowledge, cups of tea, yarns by a fire, playing cards and believing that I could

do what I set out to do.

In no particular order: Black Allan Barker(dec), Chubby Dan(dec), Stephen Baamba

Alberts, Uncle Googs (dec), Uncle Pinka(dec), Clifford Possum(dec), Jimmy Pike(dec),

Turkey Tolsen(dec), Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra, Joe Gaia, Jackie Gaia (dec) Peter

and Gabi Fassbender, Ineke Jonker, Violet Sheno, Barend Toet, Ted and Dorothy

Freeman, Yupuma Gurruwiwi (dec), John and Suzie Colquhoun, Vic Forrest

Tjakamarra, Walangari Karntawarra Tjakamarra, Sam Wickman Tjupurrula, Kofi

Ayivor, Christian Scholtze, Aunty Evelyn Walsh, Aunty Ann Yarran (nee Forrest. dec),

Charmaine Green, Roland Stettler, Willi Grimm, one of my best friends Alan Dargin

(dec), Tim Huang. My last mention is for my wife Jocelyn Freeman, who has supported

and encouraged me through the ups and downs of a PhD candidature - and daughter

Ningali Forrest-Freeman. You are both part of my world right here and now and I

couldn’t have achieved what I have done without you both.

Although I’m sure I’ve missed more than a few people I’d like to thank all my friends

and family for all the support I have had over the years in my sojourn.

I would also like to thank Charles Sturt University for my APA scholarship.

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List of Figures

Figure 1: GLOBAL RECEPTION 1

Figure 2: GLOBAL INDUSTRY 16

Figure 3: CULTURAL CONNECTION 19

Figure 4: LIVING ON COUNTRY 24

Figure 5: ITS TIME 29

Figure 6: CULTURAL JOURNEY 31

Figure 7: SENSE OF FREEDOM 39

Figure 8: VISIBLE/INVISIBLE 44

Figure 9: AUTHENTIC VOICE 46

Figure 10: DISCORDANT JUMBLE 49

Figure 11: INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIMITIVE 51

Figure 12: COLLABORATION 54

Figure 13: LIBERATING EXPERIENCE 56

Figure 14: HIGHLY VISIBLE 57

Figure 15: CONSULAR CATALOGUE 62

Figure 16: OLD AND NEW 64

Figure 17: CULTURAL RIDE 66

Figure 18: UNIQUE SIGHT 70

Figure 19: TRADING MY SKILLS 71

Figure 20: OSTRAVA EXHIBITION FLYER 72

Figure 21: MEDIA FASCINATION 73

Figure 22: DOUBLE DIDJ UPFRONT 74

Figure 23: EXHIBITION PROMOTION 78

Figure 24: CULTURAL CATCHUP 79

Figure 25: OLD ACQUAINTANCES 80

Figure 26: FUSION 81

Figure 27: INTERNATIONAL AWARENESS 83

Figure 28: RECIPROCITY 84

Figure 29: VISIBLE ABROAD 85

Figure 30: IMPACT NOW 85

Figure 31: SECOND ANKALA ALBUM 87

Figure 32: CREATIVE SPACE 91

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Figure 33: TRANSFERENCE 93

Figure 34: L’ORIENT 95

Figure 35: QUALIFIED OPINION 97

Figure 36: STARK CONTRAST 100

Figure 37: GLOBAL IMPACT 101

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List of Tables

Table 1: My Three Worlds: becoming 15

Table 2: My Three Worlds: painting 87

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Abstract For much of my life I have worked both as a visual and performing artist which gave

me profound experience of the Aboriginal art market from an Indigenous Australian

perspective. I have explored this experience through research-as-reflection into my

personal participation in both becoming an Aboriginal artist whilst the becoming of

Aboriginal art was happening both in Australia and internationally.

Whilst on tour as a musician I had a chance discussion with an anthropologist in New

York. I later found he had written up part of our conversation in a scholarly article that

misrepresented what was discussed. His article provoked this research and prompted me

question my experience as both artist and performer.

The method of my research has been to reflect on my life as a Western Desert

Aboriginal artist and musician in relation to the developing Global Indigenous art

market that has emerged in the last thirty years. I discuss this experience as living in

“three worlds”; one, as a man whose identity has emerged within traditional and

contemporary Western Desert Aboriginal frames; two, as interaction with Australian

society and that of my mother’s European heritage; and three, as an arts professional

working both in Europe and the USA.

In my thesis and paintings I reflect on the becoming of Aboriginal art and probe my

participation and role in this phenomena. As an artist practicing internationally I

experienced the becoming of Aboriginal art from the inside (not as an anthropologist),

which led me to question the relationship between the aesthetics and the ethics of this

becoming. I also questioned the becoming visibility of Aboriginal art from the

invisibility of Aboriginal people, which led to both misrepresentation and

miscommunication about both Aboriginal people and their art. Living life as an

Aboriginal person is one of constant search and therefore re-search. Through scholarly

research plus personal reflection represented in my paintings I developed a method to

illustrate my response to this change in recognition.

With this combination of academic and personal reflection I have retraced my trajectory

within the emerging visibility of Aboriginal cultural life. It is a story fraught with

tension that needed to be told from an Indigenous Australian point of view about how

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and why this art movement has occurred and the affect on me as an Aboriginal artist.

The becoming of the Aboriginal art narrative has created a dialogue about art and the

humanities world-wide and it’s important to have experienced this phenomena whilst

also questioning, through research, its affect. I have been able to participate in this

artistic revolution, which is something I could not gain from instruction or living solely

on my ngurra (country) or even living in Australia – I had to go and find that third

space, becoming an Aboriginal visual and performing artist in this post-colonial

international third space.

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Preface

Meeting Mr Myers: becoming reflective

WHEN I came across a paper by Prof. Fred Myers, who is the Professor of

Anthropology at New York University during my research for my PhD proposal, I was

a little bit shocked at first, maybe a little angry and also perplexed as to why this

person of academia had never even tried to validate the conversation that we had in

New York in his house, in 1996. 1

The paper was released in 2004 eight years after the initial conversation. I wasn’t

aware I was being interviewed at the time and Prof. Myers did not tell me I was being

interviewed at his soiree, which he had invited me to along with other people. I cannot

recall Prof. Myers having a recording device or taking notes of our conversation. I

certainly wasn’t asked if I was going to be interviewed on this social occasion. So

when Prof. Myers presents me as his anecdote at the beginning of the paper, I wonder

at his research method and accuracy of conversation recall. Especially when he

remembers the story I told him of my grandfather and my grandfather’s funeral. Myers

said I told him my grandfather lived to nearly 200 years old and states: ‘What was I to

make of this, really? I am largely a rationalist and I don’t believe anyone has lived to

this age.’ He then questions my statement of these old men appearing out of the desert

with spears which is part of the funeral custom of my grandfather’s family and

questions was this what I had actually seen? I pondered was this in jest or did I have a

case of liable? Throughout our own storytelling over time Aboriginal people have

made many attempts since European invasion to deal with its impact and this will be

brought into greater detail in the following chapters. What it does reinforce to me is the

need for Indigenous Australians to be allowed to research and provide information that

reinforces our right to tell our own stories in our own words, experiences and

reflections. My thesis sets out to address this need by exploring my own vision of my

own emergent visibility.2

                                                                                                                         1  Prof.  Myers  had  invited  me  to  his  house  along  with  other  guests  as  I  was  exhibiting  at  the  Australian  Embassy  in  New  York  at  the  time.  See  Myers,  F  (2004)  Unsettled  Business:  Acrylic  Painting,  Tradition  and  Indigenous  Being.  Visual  Anthropology.  Volume  17,  Issue  3-­‐4,  2004.  P.1.    2  There  are  many  examples  through  the  written  and  visual  representation  of  Aboriginal  people  taking  control  of  their  own  stories  and  retelling  them  for  the  benefit  of  their  community  and  the  broader  community  at  large.  See  Caruana,  W.  (1987).  Australian  Aboriginal  Art.  Australian  National  Gallery;  Burke,  J.  M.  M.,  &  Langford,  M.  (2004).  Ngara:  Living  in  this  Place  Now;  Neidjie,  B.,  Davis,  S.,  &  Fox,  A.  (1985).  Kakadu  man.  With  S.  Davis  and  A.  Fox.  Canberra:  Mybrood  P/L..  

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Chapter 1: The Becoming Art of Being Aboriginal The purpose of my research is to explore and present my experiences, through

anecdotal and academic reflection, of my life as a Western Desert Aboriginal artist

and musician in relation to the developing Global Indigenous art market that has

emerged in the last thirty years. My experiences relate to my lifestyle interacting

across cultural boundaries. This is what I will illustrate through this thesis as living in

“three worlds”.

- I have experienced life as a man whose identity has emerged within traditional and

contemporary Western Desert Aboriginal frames

- my dialogue with Australian society, as well as that of my mother’s European

heritage and

- my experience as an arts professional working both in Europe and the USA. Within this thesis I also reflect upon the issue of how Aboriginal art and its

development had been disguised in appearances by various stakeholders through time.

The audience sees that which is visible in the form of galleries and public exhibitions

and private collections but has little insight into the out of sight reality of Aboriginal

art and its emergence from communities that are urban, rural and remote.

To understand a little deeper the impact of Aboriginal art, there needs to be an

understanding of the visible. That is to say the intention that has been formed by

stakeholders to create certain appearances while disregarding the invisible, unethical

underbelly of the impact itself. Sometimes the lack of communication and sometimes

blatant miscommunication by stakeholders creates tension about what is authentic

Aboriginal art. Is there a dialogue which occurs between aesthetics and ethics in

relation to Aboriginal communities and the art which is taken and sold both within

Australia and abroad? It is these issues which will be thought of both through my

intentional personal and academic reflection as I seek to assess the impact of Aboriginal

art both within Australia and globally. Therefore, my research reflects on becoming an Aboriginal artist from the Western

Desert and I question the context of the becoming art of being Aboriginal seen in such

non-Indigenous artists like Preston and Durack – to the becoming of Aboriginal art

narrative, from anthropology to art to global market.

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Shifting sands As a Wongi man from the Western Desert of Australia, who is also a practicing arts

professional with more than 20 years industry experience, as well as being a qualified

art curator, I believe I can comment on the transference of cultural knowledge which

has contributed to the developing phenomena of Aboriginal art across the globe? That is

to say the question about Aboriginal art and its impact globally, has raised a debate

amongst academics regarding its authenticity, yet we as Aboriginal people need to

contribute to this debate. To further this question I plan to produce an exhibition and

look at papers, reports, journals and articles that allow me to present my personal

experience of “three worlds” and Aboriginal art in an academic context to highlight

how art and craft is utilized by stakeholders in Australia. These stakeholders may well

come in the form of philanthropic and government representation. With the

development of modern Australia, I will explore interest in Aboriginal art from

overseas stakeholders who helped define some of the dialogue about Aboriginal art that

has happened to date3.

Of course, the pinnacle of this conversation is that Aboriginal people have always

known the significance of their art, both in terms of its role within the community and

as a vehicle of expression. But as a representative of someone who lives in ‘three

worlds’ I believe my contribution is significant because it offers insight into a ‘third

space’.4 The debate about culture and its intergenerational authenticity takes on a new

angle, with regard to traditional, commercial - and the concept of ‘high art’.

Big name: no blanket This has profound effects on the interpretation of the art scene both within Australia

and abroad. When the impact of Aboriginal art is put under the microscope, essential

ethical issues arise. Art dealer Adrian Newstead reflects on the emergence of

Aboriginal art in his book, The Dealer is the Devil: An Insiders History of the

                                                                                                                         3  International  interest  is  included  in  the  creation  of  recent  galleries  such  as  the  Kluge-­‐Ruhe  Aboriginal  Art  Collection  of  the  University  of  Virginia;  the  Musée  du  Quai  Branly,  Paris;  AAMU  Museum  voor  hedendaagse  Aboriginal  kunst,  Utrecht.    4  Homi  Bhabha  writes  and  talks  of  the  third  space  in  relation  to  post-­‐colonial  theory.  See  Rutherford,  Jonathan.  1990.  The  Third  Space.  Interview  with  Homi  Bhabha.  In:  Ders.  (Hg):  Identity:  Community,  Culture,  Difference.  London:  Lawrence  and  Wishart.  P.208.    

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Aboriginal Art Trade5 refers to the “ruthless repression” experienced by the Papunya

community when Aboriginal men began to use acrylic paints on hard surfaces and

boards in 1971. As he states in an interview with Susan Chenergy for The Saturday

Paper, “We believed sincerely we were doing something really, really important. That

we were helping Aboriginal people to earn a living while still living in the communities

and still living a consistent cultural way of life.”6. Can such a huge successful modern

Aboriginal art industry and its massive impact be separated from the Indigenous

communities that it represents? For generation after generation into antiquity

representatives of communities traded art and craft. It is a necessary ethical obligation

to understand the cultural diversity and the need for Indigenous representation, not

just in the artwork itself but in the trade and administration of work. After all, an

annual average $200 million dollar industry hailed within the art museums and

galleries, including private collections, across the globe, ought to have a deep

reciprocal connection to the Indigenous nations within the modern Australian nation7.

It is a simple logical aspect in a complicated modern day paradigm that has seen

policy after policy, government after government, extend its rule of authority over the

various communities across the country.

Vanishing Indeed, as mentioned before regarding the appearance of the impact of

Aboriginal art, it has been a glaringly obvious feature of colonialism NOT to see

Aboriginal art, until it became beneficial to do so. Essentially, it was convenient

to discredit Indigenous art and its aesthetics, to make it invisible as an aesthetic,

to miscommunicate its worthiness, in order to complete a process of

colonization. A process that had no ethical or moral code, belittling the

Indigenous as little more than savages in an uncultured land compared to the

visible signature of European culture moving to shape the land with an aesthetic

overrule. Susan Lowish, in her paper, ‘Setting the Scene. Early Writing on

                                                                                                                         5  Newstead,  A.  (2014)  The  Dealer  is  the  Devil:  An  Insider's  History  of  the  Aboriginal  Art  Trade.  Brandl  &  Schlesinger.  6  Chenery,  S  (2015)  ‘Art  Dealer  Adrian  Newstead’s  remote  control’  The  Saturday  Paper.  https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/art/2014/05/03/art-­‐dealer-­‐adrian-­‐newsteads-­‐remote-­‐control/1399039200  .  Retrieved  17/08/2015.  7  This  is  based  on  a  current  estimate  by  the  Australian  Government.  See  Australian  Government.    Australian  Indigenous  Art.  Retrieved  November  23,  2016.  http://www.australia.gov.au/about-­‐australia/australian-­‐story/austn-­‐indigenous-­‐art        

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Australian Aboriginal Art’8, refers to older academic reflections as an example

of how present day commentators used passages of text as an example of the

influence of mid-19th socio-evolutionary theory on perceiving Aboriginal art.

In other words, the policy of the day meant the devolution of Indigenous arts and

crafts and a complete denial there was any impact at all of art and crafts in the

Antipodes. It was government policy that denied the existence of such cultural

recognition of the aesthetics of art purely to create a victory for the British

Empire on the developing map of a colonized world in an era of European

expansion for various strategic, cultural and economic gains. Tony Bennett, in

his book chapter “The Exhibitionary Complex” refers to Michel Foucault and

the ‘spectacle of the scaffold’, which forms part of a system of power. Museums,

galleries and exhibitions played a pivotal role in the formation of the modern

state, which also set an educative and civilizing effect on the populace9. The first decades of British policy on Indigenous communities and their local trade

between differing Indigenous nations, including art and crafts, was devastating. Many

of the visual portrayals of Indigenous Australians in this early colonial era also

reinforced the lack of any cultural aesthetic within the first contact communities.

Again, Bennett describes the development of the exhibition and its relation to the

spectacle, in order to co-ordinate a social heirachy. He writes of how Imperialism

aligned itself so as to create the ‘other’, especially where the representation of the

‘non-civilised’ people were concerned. Indigenous art became invisible thereby

downgrading any type of aesthetic conversation about value and worth. Geographic

areas were plundered in the expansion of the colony and artefacts collected to justify

the brand new burgeoning academia of the Enlightenment era and the new scientific

curiosity of developing disciplines like anthropology. The ethnographic preceded the

artistic and aesthetic interest of the observers and this set the tone for future attitudes

towards Indigenous art and communities. This glaring flaw in the morality and ethics

of the European colonizers meant they had no qualms about breaking apart and

destroying communities and recognition of their existence through massacres or

transporting body parts, including skins of Indigenous people, back to England10.

                                                                                                                         8  Lowish,  S.  (2011).  Setting  the  scene:  Early  writing  on  Australian  Aboriginal  art,  Journal  of  Art  Historiography  Number  4  June  p.2  9  Bennett,  T  (1995)  The  Birth  of  the  Museum:  History,  Theory,  Politics.  (London  and  New  York:  Routledge)  10  Ibid  

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Enid Schildkrout describes inscriptions on the body like scarification, body paint and

tattoo as part of an ongoing theoretical debate in Europe since the 1800s with the rise

of anthropology as the study of the ‘exotic other’.11 Attitudes were consolidated by

either Christian morality spun from a racist theology aligning Indigenous people to

little more than fauna or the Darwinian theory of Evolution which argued Indigenous

people were lower in the evolutionary chain. Mark Francis reflects on a particular era

in Australian history (1880-1920) in which Indigenous people were subjected to

systematic and institutionalised control as Europeans justified their actions through

racist theory influenced by Social Darwinism12. Rapidly, Aboriginal art and culture

came under the appearance of mission domestication or scientific exploration and

anthropological endeavour, making Indigenous voice and expression invisible. I pause

here to emphasise I do not highlight these atrocities to upset or sensationalize – but to

allow an understanding, a backdrop as to why the impact of Aboriginal art has been so

significant across the globe today. Through the skewered looking glass of

Enlightenment society, Indigenous Australians were categorised as the ‘other’ against

which European society could define itself. Alan Trachtenberg describes how the

Great Exhibitions were created to promote national displays, often with Indigenous

people in a village arrangement as exhibits13. Laura Fisher gives several examples of

how this was the case in Australia, which then created a backdrop for a later moral

flaw with the misrepresentation of Aboriginal people and their art as exotic,

accentuating the indigeneity of the work and highlighting its otherness to give it

impact across the globe.14

Lousy Little Sixpence Under the guise of this aesthetic I will also demonstrate how the impact of Indigenous

art on the world culminated into a multi-million dollar industry from a fledgling $2.5

million. At present, estimates vary, but the Aboriginal art industry is an economic power

house and is worth around Australian $200 million annually15. Again, Adrian Newstead

                                                                                                                         11    Schildkrout,  E.  (2004)  Inscribing  the  Body.  Annual  Review  of  Anthropology.  Vol.  33,  pp.  319-­‐344.    12  Francis,  M  (2009).    Social  Darwinism  and  the  construction  of  institutionalized  racism  in  Australia.  Journal  of  Australian  Studies.  Vol  20,  Issue  50-­‐51,  pp.  90-­‐1  13  Trachtenberg,  A  (1982)  The  Incorporation  of  America:  Culture  and  Society  in  the  Guilded  Age.  New  York:  Hill  and  Wang.  14  Fisher,  L  (2012)  Hope,  Ethics  and  Disenchantment:  a  critical  sociological  inquiry  into  the  Aboriginal  art  phenomenon.  PhD  Thesis,  The  University  of  NSW.  15  Mercer,  P.  (2013)  ‘Australia’s  Aboriginal  Art.  An  Economic  Colossas.’  Retrieved  from  www.BBC.com/culture/story/20130426-­‐Australia’s-­‐Aboriginal-­‐Art-­‐Craze.  

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illustrates the unregulated free-for-all, which the boom years of Aboriginal art created

with the questionable economic gain for Indigenous communities16. But the flip side is

to wonder at why Indigenous people have not seen the fiscal benefit of this impact?

Such fiscal benefit is not visible and although Indigenous Australians are now

portrayed as having a unique aesthetic viewed by the world, the lack of an ethical

framework and the continual verbal assault by stakeholders about the state of

Aboriginal affairs and the Indigenous ‘problem’ does little to improve the fiscal

situation. Darren Jorgensen’s aptly titled article, “Bagging Aboriginal Art” delves into

this paradox in some depth17. Indeed, often communities are maligned with

stereotypical misrepresentations which create an ‘unsolvable’ dilemma in modern

Australian society. Again, this reinforces the history of how Aboriginal people have

been viewed, how they appear to the general populace which allows the aesthetic to be

ripped, almost with unfaltering vicissitude, from Indigenous society over time to leave

a muddied parameter of any ethical obligation by stakeholders who feel they have

ownership over the creation of Aboriginal aesthetics and its impact on sales.

It is important to consider this thesis within the framework of the following

research conditions.

In the contradictory contexts of the becoming art of being Aboriginal seen in

works of non-Aboriginal artists, and the becoming of the Aboriginal art narrative

seen from anthropology to art to a global market, my research reflects on

becoming an Aboriginal artist from the Western Desert seen from three worlds.

I represent this in the following framework for describing my relationships within

my three worlds;

                                                                                                                         16  Newstead,  A.  (2014)  The  Dealer  is  the  Devil  17  Jorgenson,  D  (2011)  Bagging  Aboriginal  Art:  Arena  Magazine.  vol  111,  pp.  38-­‐42.  

 

Western Desert Urban/European Artist

Visible / invisible My reflection from the Western Desert world is that it's common that things are hidden in the narrative of the painting and certain iconography can only be interpreted through participation in Aboriginal Society

My reflection from the urban and then European world is that a lot of art has hidden agendas and meanings behind it and if you don’t understand those stories, things that are visible to some people in society are not visible to others.

My reflection from the world of an artist – musician and painter is the creative process is one that is both visible and invisible because the audience doesn’t see the creative process, only the end product.

Ethic / aesthetic From my Western Desert perspective it is important to understand there is more to aesthetic in Aboriginal art as elders from communities seek to ensure ethical representation of Indigenous art works. The visible and invisible is an essential component that links to the ethic/aesthetic aspect of the Indigenous art movement in Australia and abroad.

From my experiences within the urban situation has shown that most art, including aboriginal art, has been looked at more aesthetically and traded without any much reciprocal ethical relationship with Indigenous communities.

I was lucky enough to spend time with Clifford Possum who was my classifactory uncle (mother’s brother) who taught me both about the aesthetic and ethics of painting and stories that belonged to me and my particular skin group/Tjukurrpa relationship with him.

Communication /

miscommunication

From my perspective there has been many attempts by non-Indigenous artists to make sense of Indigenous art - but it can never really have any real meaning.

Attempts by non-indigenous artists to communicate the ‘essence’ of Indigenous imagery have resulted in a miscommunication of culture and iconography. The wilful miscommunication of the indigenous imaginary can be considered to be sentimental…

Various post-colonial cultures attempted to depict ‘aboriginality’ in various artforms and this is akin to cultural fraud.

Representation /

misrepresentation

From my Western Desert point of view and through my instruction as a young artist from senior aboriginal men and also my knowledge of western desert culture I was able to understand what I was allowed to represent in my artwork and that misrepresentation was not encouraged.

In the urban I can view where cultural appropriation has occurred and this creates a misrepresentation of art.

From my point of view as an artist, going to Holland to my mother's country and seeing the respect of the people that were viewing this works. Their response was like: "Wow! We hold this work in high esteem!" The work was looked at as art and the painter as artist. This was treated with the same reverence as any great artist is treated in their own culture. Not only that, this point is celebrated across different countries across the globe. A classic example is the presentation of works at the Quay Musee Branley, Paris.

Table 1: My Three Worlds: becoming of the Aboriginal art narrative

18    

Chapter 2: The Becoming of the Aboriginal Art Narrative.

Figure 2: GLOBAL INDUSTRY: Sales of individual pieces of Indigenous Australian art can sell for more than $150,000 per piece. Pictured here is Tommy Watson with one of his grand-scale works of art in his country near Alice Springs. `Everything is on a big scale out there in the desert,' says arts adviser Ken McGregor. Picture: Steve Strike. Source: The Australian

I have mentioned the history of the European invasion and colonization which led to the

modern nation that is called Australia as the starting point to better understand the

impact of Indigenous art today and its ramifications, both aesthetically and fiscally on

Indigenous communities.

It is then important to especially highlight post-war 50s and 60s in Australian history

because these are eras where Aboriginal art becomes visible to the general public and

debate occurred. Indigenous art motifs were picked up and utilized by mainstream

Australian artists or organizations, in an era when the question of reciprocity in terms

of profit or copyright acknowledgement or fraud was not considered an issue.

Communities remained invisible, laden by stereotypical caricature and misrepresented.

This has led to the modern day handling of the impact of Aboriginal art and the frenzy

surrounding its sale, collecting, and management of artworks across the globe. Art

houses claiming to be exclusive dealers of Indigenous works mushroomed to create

further hype around the promotion of it as well as benefit in real cash terms, lining

pockets not necessarily aligned with the creator of the work of the community of which

they represented.

19    

One only needs to look at the anecdotal Australian short film ‘Mimi’, produced in

2002, to see issues were already being raised to mark a flagpole in the shifting sands to

create some definition around the speed and depth of the burgeoning Indigenous art

industry and its impact internationally18. In ‘Mimi’ we see Australian actor Sophie Lee

take the role of an unscrupulous investor in Aboriginal art, with no interest in the

aesthetic of the objects she buys but rather assessing its future profitability only. The

medium for discussion is the use of comedy and horror in an art house style short film

to raise issues about investors and unscrupulous intermediate profiteering. ‘Mimi’

aims to question attitudes about Indigenous art and Aboriginality. Curator Romaine

Moreton asserts writer Warwick Thornton wrote ‘Mimi’ as a way to satirize the

Aboriginal art industry from an Indigenous artist19. The film followed the winning

entry of Richard Bell in the 20th Telstra National Aboriginal Arts Award in August

2003 with his work title ‘Scienta E Metaphysica or Aboriginal Art. It’s a white thing.’

While Indigenous Australians have always known their aesthetic the film also raises

questions which seem to perplex many non-Indigenous observers about the

transference of culture through different mediums. Moreton writes: ‘Indigenous art is a

growth industry that came into prominence during the 70s, and implicit within the

notion of authentic Indigenous art is also the idea of the authentic Aborigine’20 But for

many Indigenous people, living within the space between black and white has always

been part of survival and transference of culture since European invasion. For

example, I was born before the 1967 referendum and there was furious public debate

about whether Indigenous Australians should be counted as citizens. On my birth date

in April, technically I was still classified as a non-citizen. But many Aboriginal people

found ways to resist stereotyping and I moved between both my traditional Aboriginal

family as well as my more urban relations. Although it is not a traditional instrument

from my community I had opportunity to learn the didjeridu from one of my uncles at

                                                                                                                         18  Writer  Adam  Thornton  highlights  how  the  emergence  of  Indigenous  art  in  the  90s  became  an  investors  dream,  culminating  in  a  rapid  growth  to  a  $100  million  dollar  industry  in  2007.  However,  the  script  is  designed  to  emphasise  how  this  contemporary  form  is  an  ongoing  expression  of  an  ancient  traditional  form.  See  Thornton,  W  (2002)  ‘Mimi’    Retrieved  June  2016.  http://aso.gov.au/titles/shorts/mimi/clip1  19  Moreton,  R.  (2002)  ‘Mimi’.  Curator’s  Notes.  Retrieved  June  20,  2016  http://aso.gov.au/titles/shorts/mimi/notes.  Moreton  links  how  the  growth  of  traditional  aboriginal  art  is  also  linked  to  the  notion  of  the  authentic  Aborigine.  Moreton  states:  “It  is  this  correlation  between  the  idea  of  an  authentic  Aborigine  and  authentic  Aboriginal  art  that  Thornton  comically  manipulates  in  this  short  film.”  20  Ibid  

20    

age 9. By 1990, I had been performing as a didjeridu player for eight years since

leaving high school in year 10. I spent many hours busking on the streets of Perth with

an old Yinjaabarni man known as ‘Black Allan Barker’, who was my classificatory

skin father. This old man taught me cultural ways of performing and understanding

that we could work in both worlds as an Aboriginal person expressing their culture and

also in protest against what had happened in the 170 years since the British Empire

staked a claim on West Australian soil in 1829. This man was to be my mentor for

many years until his death in 2003. While Europeans have viewed Indigenous

Australians with narrowly defined stereotypes of how we can be defined, we ourselves

have not accepted in any way or form the position of fringe-dwellers and we have

continued to practice transference of culture.

Half way down the track. One such classic example of this desire to communicate and transfer cultural

meaning in any medium can be seen in the story of the Carrolup children,

Indigenous children who found themselves removed from their families, later

described as part of the stolen generation. The flip side is it is also one of the earliest

examples of European desire for obtaining the spectacle without any real reciprocity

for the children incarcerated. Rather, there was a move toward Government status

and policy, which excluded Indigenous people in the late 1940s. The aesthetic

impact, without ethical obligation had been in the making for a long time. However,

the young age of these artists shows they were involved in what they and their

families and communities had always done, which was re-interpreting their stories,

even if it was in a more modern medium.

21    

Figure 3: CULTURAL CONNECTION: Carrolup incarcerate and artist Reynold Hart. A native Corroborree. (1949) now resides along with more than 100 other pieces painted by Carrolup children at Curtin University, Perth.

It appears the administrator at Carrolup Mission had some intention to sell the works

of the Indigenous children who were part of the stolen generation. In 1949 a woman

from England, Florence Rutter, saw the works and was ‘gifted’ them by the children at

Carrolup. She said she would take them and try and create some funds to help the

children, who then generously gave her 119 pieces of their art. The works were

exhibited with much success during the 1950s in Europe21. The fact the children were

aged from five to fourteen was part of the spectacle of the exhibition. However, it is

not known if any money was returned to any of the children for their art22. Facing

financial hardship later in life, Rutter sold the collection to an art collector, Herbert

Mayer, who in turn, gifted the collection to the Colgate University in upstate New

York23. It is not known if any of the money was returned to the children of Carrolup.

However, the paintings were recently repatriated to Australia and gifted to Curtin

University.24

                                                                                                                         21  Since  their  repatriation  there  has  been  a  lot  of  interest  in  the  works  of  the  Carrolup  children  and  their  influence  on  later  artists.  See  Carrolup  artwork  in  http://www.noongarculture.org.au/art/  22  Emerging  current  discussion  around  the  issue  of  the  paintings  has  yet  to  find  any  evidence  the  children  received  money  for  their  works.  See  Wynne,  E  (  2013).  720ABC  Perth.  ‘Carrolup  artists’.    Retrieved  June  26,  2016.  http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2013/05/14/3759101.htm  23  See  Carrolup  School  and  Australian  Landscape  Painting.  Japingka  Aboriginal  Art  Gallery.  https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/carrolup-­‐school/  24  Lee,  F  (2013)  Aboriginal  Artworks  to  Return  To  Australia.  The  New  York  Times.  Retrieved  June  18,  2016.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/arts/design/colgate-­‐to-­‐give-­‐aboriginal-­‐art-­‐to-­‐australian-­‐

22    

This example requires further analysis. Here we see the interplay between the creators,

the children of Carrolup – and the stakeholders, firstly the mission manager and later

private collector Florence Rutter. We view the interplay and understand that the

colonizers having expended so much energy trying to deny and eradicate the existence

of Indigenous people began to hatch a plan, which involved the utilization of

Aboriginal people and their ‘assets’. Assets could be seen in indentured labour on

many farms and in the city as well as in the further promotion of the concept of the

other, now the exotic, witnessed in the impact of the Carrolup artists work abroad.

The impact is the Carrolup ‘asset’ had a visible aesthetic. As an asset, stakeholders

began to understand how to see and visualize Aboriginal art.

Upon further reflection, we see the impact of Government policy to force a space for

Indigenous children that helped continue the misrepresentation and create a daily

invisibility of the next generation. The ethical handling of the aesthetic of what the

children created was not seen with much more than just a fleeting reference by

Florence Rutter as witnessed by the lack of knowledge about if any funds were indeed

passed back to Carrolup. Certainly, it would seem there is no recollection of funds

given to the children. Former Carrolup artist and inmate Mervyn Hill talks of this

space created when he recounts how he went with his mother and siblings into town

because it was school holidays and so his mother could receive her pension and pick

up supplies then the family would return together home. His father was away at work

somewhere else. Mervyn recounts the shock of what was to come when he states they

ran into the Carrolup people who were collecting up all the Noongar children. He is of

the opinion the police didn’t like Aboriginal people and were happy to have them

removed from visibility. “We were more or less taken against our will and we were

more or less stolen generation,” he says25. Director of Berndt Museum of

Anthropology John Stanton explains why the removal of children was considered

important because of the visibility of the “sins of the father” where husbands and sons

had been seen to sire offspring with Indigenous women, the evidence of which could

be seen within the boundaries of the town. Stanton also explains it is an example also                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      university.html  25  The  recuperation  of  the  Carrolup  artworks  has  led  to  an  increased  interest  in  the  social  and  political  backdrop  where  children  were  taken  from  their  families  and  placed  in  the  mission.  See  National  Film  Archives  (2003)  ‘Sins  of  the  father’  Message  Stick.  SBS.  Retrieved  June  20,  2016.  http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/child-­‐artists-­‐of-­‐carrolup/clip1/    

23    

of the government policy and the extent of the control as forced removal was acted

out by police within towns across the country.26

Katanning Indigenous Art Centre representative and Noongar elder Ezzard Flowers, is

adamant the creation of art pieces seen in the collection would have allowed the

children maintain a cultural connection rooted in authentic experience.

"Art is a medium that has a healing focus," Mr Flowers said.

"I'm sure that when the children started doing their artwork back in Carrolup back in

those days that they were not only focusing on what they were doing in regards to art

but they were reconnecting to country through those scenes.

"There are scenes of corroborees, of hunting and the environment. They were

connecting back to culture and totemic symbols." 27

Government policy reflected the creation of a special space for children after due

consideration of community concern about the many Indigenous children with

European heritage; that a special space was constructed so children could be dumped

half way down the road. It was becoming increasingly harder for Aboriginal people to

decide where they were going to be living and Carrolup shows how a third space was

created for the children of mixed decent. The Government chose a site out of town

with the intention of excluding these children from mainstream society28. A site with

fresh water was chosen and a hospital and school were built especially for these stolen

generation. The distance from any towns meant it was hard for the children to be

anywhere else but located at Carrolup and it was clearly created to distance children

from their families with the intent of creating an invisible group within society.

Fortunately the provenance of their art works found in the collection at Colgate

University and their repatriation to Curtin University speaks profoundly of the ability

                                                                                                                         26  There  are  many  current  debates  about  the  context  of  frontier  colonialism,  the  stolen  generation  and  its  impact  on  Indigenous  Australia  and  culture.  See  Moses,  A.  D.  (2004).  Genocide  and  settler  society:  Frontier  violence  and  stolen  indigenous  children  in  Australian  history  (Vol.  6);    Berghahn  Books.Krieken,  R.  (1999).  The  barbarism  of  civilization:  cultural  genocide  and  the  ‘stolen  generations’1.  The  British  journal  of  sociology,  50(2),  297-­‐315;  Manne,  R.  (1998).  The  stolen  generations.  Quadrant,  42(1-­‐2),  53.  27  See  Wynne,  E  (2013)    ‘Carrolup  artists’  720ABC  Perth.  Retrieved  June  26,  2016.  http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2013/05/14/3759101.htm  28  More  research  could  be  conducted  to  support  anecdotal  information  from  many  communities  across  Australia.  One  academic  example  is  by  Hunter  who  argues  Indigenous  history  and  colonization  cannot  be  separated  and  her  specific  study  on  a  Kimberley  community  highlights  how  the  ex-­‐mission  is  placed  out  of  town,  away  from  the  main  thoroughfare,  which  in  turn  creates  social  and  health  issues.  See  Hunter,  E.  (1993).  Aboriginal  health  and  history:  Power  and  prejudice  in  remote  Australia.  Cambridge  University  Press  

24    

of Indigenous Australians to transfer cultural knowledge and make it visible through

the medium of art and craft. Poignant examples of Carrolup paintings reproducing

ceremonial scenes shows the desire to communicate scenes witnessed as children

within their own community before they were stolen, displaced from their country and

placed in a constructed space.

The Third Space and the Battle for Cultural transference The 1957 Grayden Report revealed the extent of the degradation Aboriginal people

were suffering under State Government rule where little funding was directed to

Indigenous communities.29 Indeed, blindness, malnutrition and disease were

commonplace amongst my people in Western Australia. We were aware of our plight

as Aboriginal people and how we had been invaded and an attempt to wipe out our

culture and lineage had been sustained at a high level, whereas most Australians had

no real understanding of the situation. However, a national debate had begun to

emerge.

In August 1967 the popular Australian LIFE magazine wrote a story about the future

of Aboriginal Australians following the referendum. The story it titled: ‘What Next

for the Aborigines?’ after Aborigines were awarded the right to be counted in the

census in the 1967 Referendum, thereby enacting Federal powers to legislate and

accommodate Indigenous people, reducing the power of each individual state.

Journalist Ernest Shirley writes in the article: ‘Of 120,000 Aborigines – a mere one

percent of the population – only two have graduated from university. There is no

Aboriginal professional class – not one black Australian doctor or lawyer – and few

have obtained the status of shop assistant.’ 30

We already knew this was our plight but in my community we also were working to

change the situation so we could survive, culturally and socially. My Aunty May

O’Brien (MBE) was the first Aboriginal woman to graduate from Claremont Teachers

College in 1953 with a teacher’s certificate. As such, she was also the first known                                                                                                                          29  This  report  was  given  by  William  Grayden  on  12  December  1956  and  is  often  referred  to  as  the  'Grayden  Report'.  See  Grayden,  W  (1956)  Report  of  Conditions  at  Laverton  and  Warburton  Ranges.  A452,  1957/245,  National  Archives  of  Australia,  Canberra  30  Shirley,  E  (1967,  August  21)  What  Next  for  the  Aborigines?  A  New  Awareness  Urgently  Needed.  Life  Magazine.  P.  33.  

25    

Aboriginal woman from Western Australia to graduate from a teachers’ institution.

Later in the 1970s she was awarded an MBE for work in Aboriginal education and

was also awarded the John Curtin Medal. She also took her specialist knowledge and

experience abroad as she was also the Australian delegate to the United Nations

conference on women in 1980. My Aunty Ann Yarran was well known for her

ground breaking work linking into community health for Aboriginal people through

the Aboriginal Medical Centre in Perth. She advocated incorporation of the family

unit in health and well being and the ongoing respect for Indigenous culture and

heritage. We all knew our Aunties had achieved great things and our culture was

strong enough to survive. Essentially our families knew we needed to keep our culture

alive because there had been so much pressure to wipe it out. We knew our culture

was important. When we were pushed to the point of annihilation, when we were

forced to clear and work on our own land like slaves, we knew this humiliation need

to be countered with clever strategy. We knew we had to allow a bridge to emerge

between our community and what the Government was trying to force us to become,

in order to create change that would better our people and allow us to survive.

Meanwhile, most of Australian society really had no idea of what we were suffering

or who we were as people. LIFE journalist Shirley continues with his reportage by

stating: ‘The worst form of discrimination remains however, is the passive

indifference of most white Australians, who know little or nothing about their black

countrymen, their background and their traditions and care less about how they are

doing in an integrated society. To this majority of Australians, the referendum meant

just a lip service “fair go for the Abo” so Australians could appease outside critics and

settle back to forget the Aborigines until something else cropped up.” 31

                                                                                                                         31  Ibid.  p.  40.  

26    

Figure 4: LIVING ON COUNTRY: While most Australians could not understand how Aboriginal people lived, this LIFE magazine photo of a family at Ernabella Mission outer camp in South Australia, highlights a third space many non-Indigenous Australians could not understand. 32

For many readers in 1967 the photo display above would represent the good work of

the mission. The man is fully dressed and the women are neatly dressed in mission

dresses. However, from our perspective as Aboriginal people from the desert, we were

still living on ‘ngurra’ (country). Under the clothes of the Aboriginal man we see the

ochre of ceremony and the red headband used by Western Desert culture. This also

displays his initiated status as an Aboriginal man within the community. Usually only

the senior law men who have been through a significant amount of law would wear it

publicly all day. The camp still retains many features of traditional lifestyle but more

importantly it also displays the fact that many families continued to think and live as

they had done so for generations regardless of what Europeans thought - unless

otherwise forcibly controlled to do otherwise.

                                                                                                                         32  Ibid.  p.  33.  

27    

Activist Faith Bandler stated in that same LIFE interview just weeks following the

success of the 1967 Referendum: “It will be our job to see that the Referendum result

has some real meaning. At the moment Aborigines are the only Australians who live

under six separate laws – one for each state. I see this Referendum as the first step

towards political and social equality for the dark Australians whose equality until now

has only been theoretical.”33

In a much later interview Bandler reflects on the type of hypocrisy that existed in

Australia, something that led her to push for the YES vote in the 1967 Referendum.

Aware her father had been blackbirded from Ambryn, in the former New Hebrides to

work on the cane fields in Australia, Bandler herself noted the type of society that

existed in favour of people who had come by boats, not those whose country it was.

She writes how she observed Aboriginal people working whilst she was working and

getting paid in Young with the Land Army. She states: “So you know that was the

environment I grew up in! And during the war I joined the Land Army and I was

picking cherries at Young for a nice boss - there were three of us there doing that.

And then there was a fence and there was another farm. And in the morning a

truckload of people would come from Cowra. Now we would be paid whatever the

wage was - I've just forgotten. It was minimal because we were in the Army. But

everyone who got out of that truck was Black. And, I sort of thought, 'Well - you

know - this is rather nice' - and talked over the fence to them and so forth. And so I

said, 'What sort of pay do you get?' - you know. 'Oh, we're paid by the basket' 'How

much a basket?' 'Shilling'. Now the white workers who were there - I can't remember

what they were paid but it wasn't a shilling a clothesbasket. And I began to think

about these things - you know. So I suppose that had an awful lot to do with becoming

a committed person. And you know I knew Pearl [Gibbs] very well and she belted me

along. She never gave me a day's peace when she was in Sydney. And I thought, 'Well

this can't be for nothing.' You know, 'this woman knows what she's doing - it can't be

for nothing.’ 34.

                                                                                                                         33  Ibid.  p.  44.    34  Taffe,  S  Miller,  L.  (1996)    The  National  Museum  of  Australia.  Retrieved  June  26,  2016.  http://indigenousrights.net.au/people/pagination/faith_bandler    In  this  interview  with  Faith  Bandler  she  reflects  on  the  social  milieu  and  how  she  became  involved  in  the  YES  vote  in  the  1967  referendum.      

28    

Bandler refers to Gibbs and their collaboration for the YES vote in the referendum.

The development of a bridge by our communities so others who were not Indigenous

could meet us upon it allowed a discourse to begin to emerge which brought about

positive discussion and change for our people. Literally that bridge also brought about

a groundswell movement with the walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge on May 28,

2000. More than 250,000 Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians committed to

that walk across the bridge for reconciliation and it took more than 5 hours as people

streamed across the bridge to become the largest protest ever witnessed in Australia to

date. It was an historic day. 35

As I say, coming from a space where successive Governments had forcibly tried to

diminish our existence to the point of extinction, we began to feel the winds of

liberation as we realized our cultural survival had to push past the politicians and the

walk across the bridge proved we had groundswell support. Prime Minister Paul

Keating had also delivered his famous Redfern speech and people had begun to listen

and sympathize as the history of what had happened to Indigenous Australians since

the first boat people had emerged. He said the unspeakable and made it audible to the

public and the world. He made that place we knew of, the bridge between cultures, a

known reality (1992: 1). Keating made the effort to appear in Redfern Park in a

suburb that had a high population of Indigenous people. His speech was broadcast

across Australia. He stated:

“This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our

ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first

rate social democracy, that we are what we should be - truly the land of the

fair go and the better chance. There is no more basic test of how seriously

we mean these things. It is a test of our self-knowledge. Of how well we

know the land we live in. How well we know our history. How well we

recognize the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, it cannot

be separated from Aboriginal Australia. How well we know what

Aboriginal Australians know about Australia. Redfern is a good place to

contemplate these things. Just a mile or two from the place where the first                                                                                                                          35  This  is  a  well-­‐documented  event  in  contemporary  Australian  society  although  estimates  range  over  the  volume  of  people  who  actually  walked  across  the  bridge  that  day.  See  Monument  Australia.  Reconciliation  Walk.  Retrieved  July  6,  2016.  http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/culture/indigenous/display/23459-­‐reconciliation-­‐walk    

29    

European settlers landed, in too many ways it tells us that their failure to

bring much more than devastation and demoralization to Aboriginal

Australia continues to be our failure. More I think than most Australians

recognize, the plight of Aboriginal Australians affects us all.”36

Paul Keating’s Redfern speech had been delivered on December 10, 1992. It had

followed the significance of the Mabo ruling in June that year, in which the High

Court of Australia had finally acknowledged something which we as Aboriginal

people had always known but which we had had to endure the humiliation of denial,

which had been thrust upon us by successive waves of boat people37. That is, that

there was no Terra Nullius or ‘land belonging to no-one’ when invasion occurred.

That was just a rude presumption to make believe a fairy tale, that Australia was a

land of opportunity – something that saw its extremity in the 1950s, while many in

our communities were almost unable to survive. Australia was riding on the sheep’s

back – but they were and had always rode on Aboriginal people and their labour

without any real acknowledgement. In the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths

in Custody (1991) Commissioner Dodson described the common relationship between

pastoralist and Indigenous worker. He described how this system engendered a

relationship of meter and servant between pastoralists and their Aboriginal

employees:

‘Now in those days (the 1940s and 1950s), to our experience there was no such

thing as money. We didn't see any money at all in the old days. All that the

stockmen got as pay was perhaps two shirts and two pairs of trousers a year,

while they were working. Boots, hat, canvas swag, and a couple of blankets

were supplied too. That' s about all. No money! The swags would usually last

for two or three years. Anyone who owned a swag used to share it with those

who didn't... The government used to give the station owners or managers some

sort of permit to work blackfellas such as myself and all the others here. The

permit gave them the status of a 'protector'. It gave them the same authority as

the policemen, who were also protectors. If there was any trouble with the                                                                                                                          36  Keating,  P  (1992)  Redfern  Speech  Transcript.  Retrieved  July  8,  2016.  https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf  37  Australian  Institute  of  Aboriginal  and  Torres  Strait  Islander  Studies  (AIATSIS)    Mabo  Case.  Retrieved  July  8,  2016.  http://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/mabo-­‐case    

30    

blackfellas, then the police used to sort it out. But, because he was the permit

holder and as such a protector, the station manager could do pretty much as he

liked’ 38

The walk off protests at Sir Vestey’s Wave Hill Station in 1966 by Aboriginal men

and their families is significant here. 39 Aboriginal people campaigned with support of

the unions to receive pay for their work. With the later acknowledgement in 1975 by

Golf Whitlam and recognition of whose land he was standing, things began to change

for us as Aboriginal people and our culture began to be recognized and appreciated in

the arts40. The Gurindji campaign led to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern

Territory) 197641. This gave us confidence that things could change and we could

practice our culture without being persecuted.

Figure 5: IT’S TIME: Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was a much needed visionary on the Australian landscape as he sought to acknowledge Aboriginal land tenure in 1975 eight years after the 1967 Referendum.

                                                                                                                         38Commonwealth.  Royal  Commission  into  Aboriginal  Deaths  in  Custody.  RADC  (1991)  National  Report,  Vol.  2.  17.3.19.  Retrieved  July  3,  2016.    http://www3.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/rciadic/national/vol2/214.html  39  National  Archives  of  Australia.  NAA.  The  Wave  Hill  Walk  off.  Retrieved  August  1,  2016.    http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-­‐sheets/fs224.aspx  40  The  Whitlam  Institute.  Returned  Land  to  the  Gurindji  People.  https://www.whitlam.org/gough_whitlam/achievements/indigenous  41  National  Archives  of  Australia.  NAA.    OpCit.  

31    

Twenty five years later after Gurindji spokesperson Vincent Lingiari received his

ngurra (country) back into his hands in the form of dirt, I was witnessing a massive

change within Australian society. When I walked across the bridge that day in 2000 I

remember the feeling of what it was like. It was quite liberating and emotional to see

so many people just there, showing their support because growing up in Australia

with all its racism which I had heard about as a child and experienced first-hand, it

was nice to know there were people out there who really did care. It might just be the

killing times of my grandparents era and the stolen generation of my parent’s era,

might be well in decline. It was an acknowledgement by non-Indigenous people that

we weren’t by ourselves anymore. There were other people who really understood

what was going on for the last couple of hundred years. It felt like change was going

to happen and it would be good for our people and our cultural expression.

This brief background to the emerging awareness is essential to understanding the

becoming Aboriginal art market that had grown from the Papunya Tula community in

the 1980s. We knew as Aboriginal people in my family that we needed to talk and

transfer information amongst each other about how the white people in Australia

viewed us and what they were trying to do to us. Not only did we have a job of

working within our communities to repair the damage that had been inflicted upon us

by sustained attack, the killing times to the stolen generation and the degradation and

starvation from lack of government policy and concern, we also knew we had a job of

educating people about our culture and that we were alive and real and had survived.

Even as a small child I knew part of my heritage required cultural education about our

people and later in my life, this was always an aspect of my work as a performer. For

many years playing didjeridu and painting in Europe, people would ask (what was to

me) the silliest questions. But I knew if I didn’t supply some educational answer to

highlight our unique culture as the oldest surviving people on the globe, then an

opportunity would be lost to create a discourse that would benefit all communities.

When I was born, we were coming from a place where we had been treated with

disrespect. By the early 90s we had progressed in status towards a global awareness of

what is Indigenous and this has mostly occurred through the transference of culture

through generations, witnessed in the Aboriginal art phenomenon.

32    

Figure 6: CULTURAL JOURNEY: Busking with my mentor old Black Allan Barker in Sydney in 1993. Busking was never considered a shameful thing as it gave me a chance to learn, practice and collaborate with many other Indigenous artists and musicians from around Australia.

Black Allan Barker was a friend of my father who had known him when he was a

young man and had spent many times himself sitting at a fire with Black Allan being

one of the many Aboriginal people singing contemporary songs in First Nations

languages. This was my introduction. I went to some of these nights around these fires

and met Aboriginal men from all different areas of Western Australia, some who are

friends with whom I have regular contact to this day. These were my formative years

since high school coming to the late 80s. Other people who had influenced me on my

artistic development during those formative years were numerous. Sheno Enterprises

art dealer Violet Sheno had asked a friend of mine Chubby Dan to perform outside

her stall as well at Subiaco markets, outside of Perth. We did the gig and Danny

showed up for maybe another two weeks after the initial gig but then stopped coming

33    

and I worked at Violet’s store on a Saturday afternoon for a number of months. The

gig was important because Violet, a middle-eastern woman, was selling Aboriginal art

works and cultural paraphernalia. It was important because I was paid well, $100 for

the afternoon, plus the chance to continue to develop my style and stage fitness.

34    

Chapter 3: Communication / miscommunication

Observing the whispering hearts. Apart from Carrolup being one of the earliest examples of a group exhibition of

Indigenous artists, again most of the representation of Aboriginal art was hidden under

the observation and misinterpretation of anthropologists, something that is prevalent

well into the 21st century as stated by academic Susan Lowish in previous discussion

on this subject.42 There still is fervent dialogue about the impact of Aboriginal art over time because

the authority of anthropologists can confine the interpretation of Aboriginal art and

reinforced stereotypes. Judith Ryan, in her paper, “The raw and the cooked: the

aesthetic principle in aboriginal art”, argues it is essential to interpret Aboriginal art

from the aesthetic rather than purely iconographic point of view. She states:

‘For most of this century we have been locked inside an anthropological,

scientific quest to pith the frog, dissect its heart, uncover, expose and publish

its secrets. Indigenous art has not yet fully escaped from the ethnographer’s

classifying microscope and been allowed to speak to us on its own terms, to

exert its power through metaphor as an undiluted expression of a particular

culture.’43

The interpretation of anthropologists and the concurrent ethnographic limits the

impact rather than expands understanding of Aboriginal art across the globe. One

must understand the context of the anthropologist as a leading authority and conduit

in the interpretation of Indigenous community and its representative art. This was

promoted through the lens of the spectacle as discussed previously with the

construct of the ‘other’, witnessed for example in the village displays of the

Great Exhibitions44. This is one reason why the Carrolup children were received

with such curiosity with various exhibitions of their work across Europe in the

1950s. It was their age as well as their ability to recreate with such detail that

attracted many to view their works. Here was the aesthetics of anthropology at

play, purely to create the concept of the ‘other’, the primitive, thereby downplaying

any framework for common aesthetic. The aesthetic came from the observer                                                                                                                          42  Lowish  (2011)  Setting  the  scene  43  Ryan,  J.  The  Raw  And  The  Cooked:  The  Aesthetic  Principle  In  Aboriginal  Art,  Art  Journal  of  the  National  Gallery  of  Victoria,  36,  http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-­‐raw-­‐and-­‐the-­‐cooked-­‐the-­‐aesthetic-­‐principle-­‐in-­‐aboriginal-­‐art/  44  Bennett  looks  at  the  intent  of  the  development  of  the  exhibitions.    

35    

denying the visible aesthetic of the observed. Laura Fisher (2012: 1) in her paper

‘Hope, Ethics and Disenchantment: a critical sociological inquiry into the

Aboriginal art phenomenon’ states that Indigenous people in Australia shown by the

displays of the Great Exhibitions, sets a pattern of portrayal of the archetypical

primitive. This she states is something that continued from a tradition created by the

pseudo-scientific discourses of the 19th century. Indeed, the aesthetic here from the European point of view and witnessed over

generations and across disciplines since 1788, was mis-represented to such a skewed

angle that many Aboriginal people became lampooned as the archetypal primitives45.

Other stakeholders picked up on this visual misrepresentation and took this aesthetic to

the extreme. The great exhibitions reinforced the concept of the ‘other’ held by

Europeans who had ‘settled’ other cultures. Whole villages were constructed with

Indigenous people on display at the exhibitions world-wide and Australia was no less

seeking to highlight the dominance of one culture over the other. This is what Tony

Bennett (1995) states through his book The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory,

Politics when he explores the development of the exhibitions. As a consequence,

many representations of Indigenous art were relegated to museums around the country

and abroad, unlikely to ever see the walls of a gallery because of the status attributed

by anthropologists. Moira Simpson, in her book “Making representations: Museums in

the post-colonial era”, explores these points by highlighting the contemporary debate

on Aboriginal items in collections across the globe.46

Following the Referendum, things began to become more equitable for Aboriginal

people in terms of personal freedom and access to educational opportunities whilst

retaining culture. After my fledgling years playing didjeridu at Subiaco markets I

began to vision a cultural journey that allowed me to use my personal musical and

artistic ability combined with my culture to both improve my personal development

as well as the education of the general population about what it means to be an

Aboriginal person in Australia.

                                                                                                                         45  Dodson,  M.  (1994).  The  Wentworth  lecture  the  end  in  the  beginning:  Re  (de)  finding  aboriginality.  Australian  Aboriginal  Studies,  (1),  2.  46  Simpson,  M.  G.  (2012).  Making  Representations:  Museums  in  the  Post-­‐Colonial  Era.  London,  Routledge  

36    

Armed with this confidence I ended up busking my way around Australia using my

didjeridu as a tool for self-employment. I managed to get from Perth up to

Toowoomba doing this. Meanwhile, I bumped into quite a few people along the way.

Violet had relocated to Melbourne in the late 80s with her new partner and this was

the first catalyst to leave Perth to visit family and also do some more work with

Violet. During this time I met numerous Aboriginal artists including Lisa Belaire

(dec), the Tiddas and Joe Gaia. I was going out watching the bands and meeting

Aboriginal people in the arts and I was asked to come and watch these bands and

meet other performers. I talked with a lot of people and Joe Gaia and I became

friends. Later Joe asked me to come and do some gigs with him playing didjeridu in

and around the Melbourne music scene at the time.

Not that we hadn’t always practiced collaboration as Indigenous people in art and

music. Most Indigenous Australians of a certain generation, especially in West

Australia, knew of the Coolbaroo Club in Perth (1947-1960) and its success in

creating a meeting place for Aboriginal people in a time when the 1936 Native

Administration Act still controlled all aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives.

The Chief Protector A O Neville, using the Aborigines Act 1905 in the amendment

of the act in 1936, formulated policies on Aboriginal people through several means.

Some of these policies were about the movement of Aboriginal people, the

prohibition of non-Aboriginal people frequenting Aboriginal camps47. Marriage

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people also became illegal and punishable

by law and the Chief Protector was the legal guardian of every Aboriginal and ‘half-

caste’ child until the age of 2148. Neville had the power to remove children from

their family and place them in institutions, which occurred at Carrolup as well as

Moore River Native Settlement in Mogumber, where up to 500 people were kept at a

time in very poor conditions. It is against this backdrop the Coolbaroo club was

formed. As Perth was a prohibited area from 1927-1954 in a 5km square for

Aboriginal people, (unless with a pass to travel), there was a need for Aboriginal

people to find a space where they could meet and celebrate their culture and

heritage.49

                                                                                                                         47  Aboriginal  Act  (1905).  S42  &  S43.  West  Australia  Government.  Retrieved  November  22,  2016.  https://www.slp.wa.gov.au/pco/prod/FileStore.nsf/Documents/MRDocument:14106P/$FILE/AborgnAct1905_00-­‐00-­‐00.pdf?OpenElement  48  Ibid.    49  See  Noongar  Culture.  Prohibition  Map.  This  map  displays  the  prohibition  area.  Retrieved  September  

37    

Two Yamatji brothers, Jack and Bill Poland, found conditions in Perth intolerable

after returning as WW2 veterans. They were supported by a non-Indigenous friend

Geoff Harcus and an Indigenous woman from Port Headland, Helena Clark (nee

Murphy), to set up a club, which was a melting pot not just for the exchange of

current political views but also traditional forms of cultural transference, away from

the prying eyes of white administrators and their enforcers. Set up out of the 5km

precinct at the Pensioners Hall in East Perth, the Coolbaroo Club met every Friday

night and grew in status to form a significant political platform called the Coolbaroo

League, which also ran its own newspaper, the Westralian Aborigine.50 It ran from

1952-57, agitating for and reporting on such significant issues as the integration of

Aboriginal children into Government schools in the 1950s to the final disbandment of

the 5km prohibited area precinct in 1954. Also first of its kind, was an Aboriginal run

art shop, set up under the league by Ron Kickett in 1955 with the aim of giving:

‘Aboriginal people with artistic abilities the opportunity to make money through their

talents.’51

Figure 7: SENSE OF FREEDOM: This flyer from the recent Perth Council Exhibition on the Coolbaroo Club shows how popular the event was as a means of escaping the repressive regime of the 5km prohibited area for Aboriginal people.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     18,  2016.  http://www.noongarculture.org.au/wp-­‐content/uploads/2012/07/ProhibitedMAP-­‐final-­‐new.pdf  50  Kaartdijin  Noongar  –  Noongar  Knowledge.  South  West  Aboriginal  Land  and  Sea  Council.  Retrieved  September  18,  2016.  http://www.noongarculture.org.au/coolbaroo-­‐league/  51  Darbyshire,  J  (2010;  p.9.)  The  Coolbaroo  Club.  An  Exhibition  Exploring  the  Contemporary  history  Aboriginal  people  in  the  city  of  Perth.    City  of  Perth  Council.  Retrieved  November  18,  2016.  http://www.perth.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/Catalogue%20Coolbaroo%20Club.pdf  

38    

What is so significant about the Coolbaroo Club is the continuation of traditional

cultural transference in a contemporary setting and the exchange of art and culture,

from Aboriginal people within Australia but also black musicians from around the

globe. Nat King Cole and the Haarlem Globe Trotters were just two of the headliners

of fame who walked through its doors52. Over time, it was also the place where

hundreds of Aboriginal people came together with their white supporters and was

significant for the continuation of corroboree, the biggest remembered in the year of

1953.53

Coolbaroo Club film Director Stephen Kinnane points out in this time of great

suffering for Aboriginal people, who were struggling to survive against the

overarching Prof.aconian legislation put in place by A O Neville. The Coolbaroo

Club is often spoken of and remembered by those who participated in it or were told

about it, with happiness and positive enthusiasm. He also notes the name Coolbaroo

is a Yamatji word meaning ‘magpie’ which founder Helena Clarke remembers as

important because it encouraged Aboriginal people to join together, rather than think

of themselves in terms set on them like ‘half-caste’ or ‘one-eighth’. It was also a

space of significance because in a time when the overarching laws and the social

engineering was so restrictive, people found ways to get together and collaborate for

social change and cultural continuation, including non-Aboriginal sympathisers.54

Berndt Museum Wildflower dreaming Curator Barbara Bynder talks of her aunty’s

and parent’s involvement in the Coolbaroo Club and league and how many

Aboriginal people came to Perth from regional areas attracted by the Coolbaroo club

and looking for social change. Bynder states Perth was unaware of what was really

going on but in forming the Coolbaroo Club and making it happen, it is a magical

story and really inspiring. The flipside is there was this idea in the 1950s Australia

was moving from Depression in the 30s, through the Second World War - but

Aboriginal people were kept invisible, pushed into camps and reserves and kept

there under legislation and policy, she continues. “Wildflowers are seen and unseen.

Sometimes they are there at your head and then they disappear. Wild flowers are                                                                                                                          52  Ibid.  P.  7.  53  Ibid.  P.6.  54  Hyman,  A  (2010).  The  Coolabaroo  Club  and  the  Coffee  Pot.  ABC  South  Coast.  Breakfast  with  Peter  Bell.  Retrieved  November  18,  2016.  http://blogs.abc.net.au/wa/2010/10/the-­‐coolabaroo-­‐club-­‐and-­‐the-­‐coffee-­‐pot.html?site=southcoast&program=720_perth_breakfast  

39    

very resilient. I also think this is a very good description of Aboriginal culture.”

Bynder says55.

This was the backdrop of my childhood. Scholarly evidence is only just emerging

about this era in relation to us and our stories56. More history is evident via the

internet through Government organization webpages as witnessed by exhibitions and

documentaries listed above. These are the emerging stories we remembered as

families about what our communities had done to survive. It shows the resilience of

Aboriginal people My grandmother, Mary Forrest, was known to be at one time the

Treasurer of the Coolabaroo Club. My Aunty Mish is interviewed in the

documentary by Producer Steve Kinnane about what the club was like.57

These things were only happening just a decade before I was born. This was the

context of which we grew up. And those who were in the know knew how to find us

and they were welcome if they were ready to collaborate in a positive way for better

conditions for our people where we could practice our cultural ways without the

interference of punitive measures to diminish our lives.

I can still remember as a child being taken by my father in Perth to ceremonies

performed by the Swan River community where there was corroboree.

People think all these things that happened were 200 years ago but this was the

backdrop of my childhood only ten years before I was born. The year I was born the

1967 Referendum which counted us in the census so legislation could be made to

improve our lives, rather than leave it to the draconian regulations set up by A O

Neville in my fathers and grandparent’s time.

                                                                                                                         55  Bynder,  B.  (2014).  Wild  Flowers  Dreaming  Exhibition.  Berndt  Museum  at  Lawrence  Wilson  Art  Gallery  within  the  Prof.  Harold  Schenberg  Art  Centre.  Retrieved  November  18,  2016.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzszLWvReF8  56  Mention  is  made  of  the  Coobaroo  Club  in  emerging  scholarly  work.    See  Haebich,  A.  (2016).  Fever  in  the  archive.  Thesis  Eleven,  135(1),  82-­‐98.  See  also  Haebich,  A.,  &  Morrison,  J.  (2014).  From  karaoke  to  Noongaroke:  A  healing  combination  of  past  and  present.  Griffith  Review,  (44),  72.  57  Kinnane,  S  (1996)  The  Coolbaroo  Club.  Ronin  Films.  Retrieved  November  18,  2016.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6tPtrxSfyg    

40    

It is significant that the 1988 Bicentennial protest against 200 years of European

occupation was just over 20 years since the Referendum and I was 21 years old. It

was interesting times because there were a lot of Aboriginal people moving across

the country and coming into Sydney for the protest. There was also a lot of

awareness in the media at the time about the protest because it was expected to

happen on a large scale. We figured we may as well be there as performing artists. I

met up with Black Allan again, who also happened to be working and living in

Sydney at the time, with one of his daughter’s and son. Allan and I once again sat

down on the streets at Circular Quay and also at Paddy’s Markets in Redfern where

the carriage works are now today. We used to busk at Paddy’s Markets and when it

closed, go down to Circular Quay. In those days there were not many people playing

didj.

In the 80s it was really good busking. There was a lot of awareness and a lot of

support for Aboriginal culture and a lot of people were asking for a treaty back then.

Yothu Yindi had come out with a hit song titled ‘Treaty’, which had excited so many

people, not just in Australia but internationally. I made good money busking and I

could earn enough to live without any Government support. It used to be able to rent

a room and eat out every day as a consequence. What people said about my playing

was shown through the donations. Some people would give five cents, some ten

dollars, sometimes international tourists came up and couldn’t believe there were

black people in Australia and wanted a photo taken with us and Prof.op $100 US in

the till. Even though Yinjaabarni and my people didn’t have didj, we collaborated

and I played didj and Black Allan sung in Yinjaabarni and English and also played

guitar and I backed him up in didj. This shows how we adapted traditional style and

western style instruments into a new world music fusion to display our culture.

Because of the number of years that I spent in Sydney, I noticed that there was a

burgeoning Aboriginal arts industry and we were so excited to see Aboriginal art and

so many people coming through. I think Allan Dargin (dec) had started to travel

overseas and was collaborating with a lot of well-known Australian mainstream

performers – and even international performers like Tommy Emmanual and James

Morrison and also Jimmy Plant and Robby Page from Led Zeppelin. Charlie

MacMahon also had his band out in the 70s, ‘Gondwana’, and Shane Howard had

41    

Joe Gaie play didj for the band Goanna on the song ‘Solid Rock’ with a massive hit.

But the most spectacular use of it was Yothu Yindi because this was their culture and

they had collaborated with mainstream to bring out their music with a mixture of

their language and Western language. Again, this was a high mark for Aboriginal

people as cultural respect and awareness for us as Indigenous began to emerge across

the globe.

Aboriginal for a day Still, the concept of the being ‘other’ continued to depict Indigenous art as primitive to

serve the needs of European worldviews. We as Aboriginal people could see more

interest developing in Aboriginal art and culture but we also felt many people still

needed a lot more awareness about how they perceived us as Aboriginal people. They

only saw us from their mental space as Europeans or still as the ‘other’ more primitive

aspect of Australian society.

Elizabeth Durack is one such classic example of an early contact European who,

carrying a worldview unable to understand the importance or reciprocity, claimed

fraudulently to hold the works of an Aboriginal artist from the Kimberley region.58 In

the mid-90s the name Eddie Burrup began to appear in the Aboriginal art scene in a

mixed exhibition at Elizabeth’s daughter’s gallery, Kimberley Fine Art, Durack

Gallery, Broome.59 In 1996 Burrup was invited to participate in Native Title Now at

the Adelaide Festival of Arts. Later in the year works by Burrup were selected for the

Telstra 13th National Aboriginal and Islander Art award, Northern Territory. In 1997,

Durack disclosed that Burrup was her pseudonym. This was an identity she considered

was her alter ego.60 Durack freely assumed the right to make Aboriginal art as Burrup.

Museum of Contemporary Art Aboriginal art curator at the time, John Mundine,

remarked to London’s Independent newspaper: ‘It’s the last thing left you can

possibly take away other than our lives or shoot us all.’61 Durack was bemused by the

                                                                                                                         58  Laurie,  V  (2016)  Daughter  reveals  motivation  for  Eddie  Burrup  art  scandal.  The  Australian.  News.  August  6,  2016.    59  Durack,  E  (2016).  Elizabeth  Durack.  Eddie  Burrup.  Official  web  page.  Retrieved  September  16,  2016.  http://www.elizabethdurack.com/burrup_11_perspective.php  60  Nolan,  M.,  &  Dawson,  C.  (2004).  Who's  who?  Mapping  hoaxes  and  imposture  in  Australian  literary  history.  Australian  Literary  Studies,  21(4),  v.  61  Walsh,  John.  (July  26,  2000)  The  Scandalous  Outing  of  Eddie  Burrup.  The  Independent.  Retrieved  September  21,  2016.  http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/the-­‐scandalous-­‐outing-­‐of-­‐eddie-­‐burrup-­‐734163.html  

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controversy. On her official website it is written of her detractors: ‘A few disparage

Durack’s entire oeuvre. In most cases, the detractors’ attacks are so wide of the mark

of Elizabeth Durack’s/Eddie Burrup’s outlook, aspirations and motivations they would

be comical were they not so pious and malicious.’62 ‘Despite the controversy Durack

continued to paint under her non-de-plume and sell until her death in 2000 63. In fact,

her work showed a high level of miscommunication as she sought to represent her

works as creations from a traditional Aboriginal man. She showed no remorse at

selling the works before the fraud was discovered.

Figure 8: VISIBLE/INVISIBLE: This Times article is one of many released by the Australian media after the Barrup scandal – but Durack showed little remorse for her actions, unable to comprehend any breach of ethical reciprocity with the Indigenous community. Even to this day there is anecdotal evidence Europeans still don’t understand the

brevity of their attempts to be ‘Aboriginal for a day’64. In ABC’s recent drama Rake,

the main character is hiding away in a small country town. He resides in small tin

shack with Aboriginal art on all the walls and stored in the room. It is only when the

artist returns that it is revealed she is a white European-Australian upper-middle class

woman who rolls her vowels as well as the Queen.65 The audience is humorously

shocked to discover the artist travels west to meet Aboriginal people for the purpose

of procuring their work unsigned. It is then she adds her own signature to it. Her

identity is fraudulently promoted as Aboriginal, for her own egoistic and financial

                                                                                                                         62  Durack,  E.  OpCit.  http://www.elizabethdurack.com/burrup_8_detractors.php  63  World  Heritage  Encyclopaedia.  Mary  Durack  &  Eddie  Burrup.  Retrieved  September  17,  2016.    www.gutenberg.us/articles/eddie_burrup        64  Perkins,  R  (2010)  Bran  Nue  Dae.  Robyn  Kershaw  Productions.  At  the  end  of  this  movie  Ernie  Dingo  quips  ‘let’s  all  be  Aboriginal  for  a  day!’  He  is  satirizing  the  idea  that  recent  interest  in  Indigenous  history  and  culture  and  the  desire  to  embrace  it  sometimes  negates  the  very  real  life  experience  of  what  it  is  like  to  actually  be  Aboriginal.    65  ABC  Drama  (July  9,  2016)  Rake.  http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/rake/    

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improvement. The remnants of the Durack story still remain in current culture as it is

so shockingly close in history – just over a decade and a half away. Durack claims in

her work she is a man, which means she also claims knowledge of Indigenous culture

as a man. Consequently, she is also claiming ‘skin’ and this has cultural consequences

as she is visibly boasting she has rights and privileges to someone else’s country

which undoubtedly results in cultural consequences if presumed by elders to be guilty

of an offence.

Juxtapose with a real desert man like Clifford Possum and his status within his

community and there is no doubt most Australians and indeed, many from abroad,

understand what it means, the obligations and reciprocity, to be an Aboriginal man

within our community. Possum made visible in his art works what was allowed within

his cultural protocol and this is authentic, as opposed to the visible of fraud pretending

to be authentic. The whole Durack scandal occurred within a time frame when

Aboriginal people were starting to move into a visible presence and to have their

voices heard.

Figure 9: AUTHENTIC VOICE: Artist Clifford Possum (dec) was an initiated Aboriginal man who understood the importance of displaying culture without breaching ethical protocol in community.66 From my personal experience, this period from the late 80s following the Bicentennial

protest through the 90s was an exciting time for Aboriginal people to begin to make

their real story heard and seen and their real presence felt. All in all it was a good                                                                                                                          66  One  of  my  great  influences  as  a  young  man,  this  image  is  taken  from  Redrock  Gallery.  See:  http://www.redrockgallery.net/pages/Clifford-­‐Possum-­‐Tjapaltjarri.html    

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feeling to be Aboriginal in the arts industry. I never expected to make huge amounts of

money out of being in the arts but that didn’t matter. What mattered was developing as

an artist, collaborating with other Aboriginal artists, feeling the satisfaction of creating

awareness of Aboriginal people and their culture for people not just in Australia but

visitors from abroad. It was a heady time and I wanted to be on this bus. After ‘88

things started to get really busy. I went back home to Western Australia. I enrolled in a

bridging program at University for Aboriginal people as a mature age student as I was

21 years old but for one reason or other, it wasn’t my time to go to university. I left

Western Australia and went to Canberra. It was there when I was busking in Civic one

day when I met well-known German flautist Peter Fassbender, who asked me to

collaborate on a recording with him and come and tour Europe. We recorded in 1990

and I returned to Perth.

Then I met Walter Lehny in the Creative Native gallery in Perth and he had offered me

a job in the Coach House gallery, behind the Orient Hotel, in Sydney’s famous tourist

area, the Rocks. He asked me to help him set up the gallery before Christmas and to

sell the art of well-known Western Australian Aboriginal artist Lance Chad

Tjyllyungoo. It was exciting times. The Federal Government policy of Self-

determination also helped an understanding and respect for Aboriginal people. There

were many stereotypes of Aboriginal people and their capacity for aesthetic and

cultural beauty which were being smashed by the growing awareness we are the oldest

living culture in the world67. We had self-determined that for hundreds of thousands of

years. People began to display a new appreciation for what Aboriginal people had

achieved and created over Millennium and their ability to survive, even when such a

harsh regime had been forced upon us for more than 200 years since invasion. But there

was still a long way to go in terms of a true reciprocal understanding. For me, this was

a time of celebration and people both within Australia and abroad. We were thirsty to

know more about our culture, something which had been downplayed or

miscommunicated. Now with the developing telecommunications that allowed

satellites to beam information across the globe, we were developing a world gaze and                                                                                                                          67  See  the  Australian  Government  Indigenous  Policy  and  Programs.  http://www.australia.gov.au/about-­‐government/government-­‐and-­‐parliament/indigenous-­‐policy-­‐and-­‐programs  See  also  Indigenous  Art  Code  at  Aboriginal  Art  Online.  http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/resources/code.php  As  well,  see  Austlii  Alternative  Law  Journal.  Indigenous  Art.  http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AltLawJl/2004/39.html    

45    

we wished to let our stories be known. As I’ve mentioned, this was more than evident

in the 90s as opportunities began to arise for me in relation to communication about my

people and culture to interested audiences overseas.

By mid-year 1991, Lehny’s contract to rent the gallery came to an end and I jumped

on the plane to Germany to launch Peter’s project album, ‘Kookaburra Flute

dreaming’, and perform in four consecutive gigs around Frankfurt, Germany. It was

really a small project to small crowds but it gave me a taste of what it could be like in

Europe touring and playing to crowds. I then returned to Sydney to the gallery, which

had shifted to a new location in Darling Harbour. During my time working at the

Rocks I had also met Malcolm Jagamarra, who was running his own gallery in the

Rocks centre. Malcolm was another man who was my classifactory skin father so we

got along as we were from a very similar cultural block from the Western Desert, he

being a Walpiri man and I a Wongatha man. This friendship and relationship with

Malcolm was an interesting one as he was becoming rather well known in the high art

world for his paintings. I often sat with Malcolm over the next few years whilst he

painted and he taught me stories that our father son skin group shared. Communication/miscommunication This was in stark contrast, the rise of the becoming Aboriginal, to another period of

history in Australia, which begins with a change in mood about Aboriginal art in the

50s. It related to the developing need for a national identity apart from the European

one inherited by most Australians. Here one must assess the work of Margaret

Preston and her attitude towards the Aboriginal communities whose motifs had

‘inspired’ her art vision so grandly.68 Again, it would seem Preston interpreted

Indigenous culture and art, almost seeing herself as a conduit for Europeanising it to

create an aesthetic. In retrospect, her ethnocentricity is blindingly obvious. Again,

this desire to create an impact with the motifs did not appear to have any sense of

reciprocity towards the communities or any ethical responsibility about its

representation in art form. It was purely aesthetic Howard Morphy writes of

Preston’s attitude to the appropriation of Indigenous motifs for her own artistic

benefit. He states Preston did not bother about what the government policy of the day

believed or what Indigenous people believed in the way of tradition, myth and ritual.                                                                                                                          68  Edwards,  D.  &  Peel,  R.,  (2005)  Margaret  Preston:  Catalogue  raisonné  of  paintings,  monotypes  and  ceramics,  Sydney,  Art  Gallery  of  New  South  Wales,  p.173  

46    

Preston did not believe this was the (artist) decorator’s affair69. Preston felt

mythology and symbolism were the province of anthropologists, not artists or home

decoration experts. She advised her readers to abandon any interest in the

significance and any concern about appropriation of Aboriginal designs.70 Preston’s development as an artist and her misappropriation of Aboriginal motifs,

joined together at random and without any real understanding of the cultural context of

the works, did create an impact within Australia and an awareness of Indigenous

culture existing within the modern nation. But her works also helped to railroad

Aboriginal art and its impact to another emerging Australian industry – that of the

emerging fledgling tourism industry and the relegation of Aboriginal art to little more

than trinkets, to be bought and sold in the form of tea-towels and fake Aboriginal

boomerangs.71 Once again, the lack of authenticity led to the continued appropriation

of Indigenous culture within the realm of the ‘other’, the primitive aesthetic, with no

real regard for the real cultural depth within the nations that existed prior to the

founding of modern Australia. The fraud created another ‘asset’ industry, this time

further removed from the authenticity of community and the ethical importance of

reciprocity. This is particularly a matter of concern as we look at all of the Indonesian

imports that sell in most tourist shops and fashionable places such as The Rocks and

Circular Quay. These fake Aboriginal artefacts, boomerangs and dijeridus are sold as

authentic. Aboriginal people have limited say as to who buys and sells this fake

merchandise. It is basically people getting rich on the cultural appropriation of

different First Nations peoples art and intellectual property rights.

                                                                                                                         69  Morphy,  H.,  (2008)  Becoming  Art:  Exploring  Cross-­‐cultural  Categories,  Sydney,  UNSW  Press  70  Wilson-­‐Anastasios  delves  into  this  issue  in  her  work.    71  Kleinert  talks  of  this  misappropriation  of  Indigenous  culture  for  the  fiscal  benefit  of  an  emerging  Australian  economy.    

47    

Figure 10: DISCORDANT JUMBLE : Gecko and Aboriginal motifs 1949 by Margaret Preston. Private Collection.

Indigenous curator Hetti Perkins has succinctly pointed out this issue and speaks with

some insight into the work of Margaret Preston. ‘To Aboriginal eyes it reads as a

scrambled orthography of vaguely familiar words, or a discordant symphony where

the notes don’t ring quite true. Preston’s passionate attempts, while well intentioned,

were doomed to fail ultimately because they are meaningless to Aboriginal people –

not unlike the contemporaneous government policy of assimilation.’72

This highlights how this sense of developing national identity stemming from the

observations of early anthropologists and utilised by artists, does everything to assert

ownership of Indigenous motifs without the reciprocal understanding of how the

motifs came about and who they belonged to. Prof.. Myers further endorses this

when he refers to the attitudes of art philanthropist and collector Margaret Carnegie,

                                                                                                                         72  Edwards,  D.  (2005)  Margaret  Preston  p.10  

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in a case study about collecting Aboriginal art in Australia73. According to Myers

Carnegie describes Aboriginal art as ‘the paintings are mystical spiritual deriving as

they do from the very land we live in and are nurtured by. They are the heritage of

every Australian of whatever ethnic background or skin colour. Until they are

acknowledged in that way, we will lack a full understanding of their significance.’

Myers also poses the question whether it is possible to transfer cultural knowledge

between generations, as well as through different art mediums. 74. Of course the flip-side of the coin has always been an understanding of Indigenous

culture that acknowledges the uniqueness of it and the request for Europeans to ‘look

outside the square’ in terms of its interpretation and appropriation. The artist Ainslie

Roberts and ethnologist Charles P. Mountford point this out succinctly when they

place interpretation squarely back into the culture of Indigenous communities. Yet

even they cannot see through the lense of which they interpret Indigenous art. The

arrogance is obvious in the assumptions about Indigenous cultures and stories across

Australia, collecting numerous stories, which Mountford interprets as: ‘… common in

the folk tales of all primitive peoples.’ 75 Roberts is yet another non-indigenous artist

whose attitude to the ‘other’ meant misappropriation of culture and stories which were

accepted with great acclaim across Australia and abroad.

                                                                                                                         73  Myers,  F.  (2005)    Collecting  Aboriginal  art  in  the  Australian  nation:  Two  case  studies.  Visual  Anthropology  Review,  21(1-­‐2),  p123  74  Myers,  F.  R.  (2005).  Collecting  Aboriginal  Art  in  the  Australian  Nation.    75  Roberts,  A.,  &  Mountford,  C.  (1984)  The  Dawn  of  Time:  Australian  Aboriginal  Myths  in  Paintings,  Adelaide:  Rigby  p22  

49    

Figure 11: INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIMITIVE: ‘Fire’ by Ainslie Roberts. Acquired by Chrysler Australia Limited. 1968.

It is incredible how this impact of Aboriginal art has been achieved so rapidly in the

last 30 odd years? Darren Jorgenson reinforces there is a model which is in itself

ethno-centric and never challenged. He argues convincingly that the canon of what

is seen as authentic Aboriginal art is indeed too limited given the cultural depth and

breadth of Indigenous communities in Australia . He states: ‘ The earliest Papanya

Tula works are ‘standard’ by which subsequent aboriginal art is measured. They are

the communities which bought the high art market around aboriginal art into play

and Papanya Tula remains the precedent for the art centre model that remains in

place today.’76 But it is obvious this can limit the diversity of art representation

within the various nations across Australia to an accepted style. This in turn has

seen the success of some communities whose work is seen as ‘authentic’ while

other communities are not recognized at all as having any impact as Aboriginal

artists. This means there is still an invisibility aspect to Indigenous art from some

communities across Australia and Aboriginal yet Aboriginal people have always

known they have a voice and a representation. In an interview with Susan Chenery

for the Saturday Paper Adrian Newstead states: ‘What Aboriginal people really want

is relationships with the outside world on an equal footing.’77 Newstead also

questions whether the ‘golden moment’ has passed for Aboriginal art but this is a

hypothesis given the continued interest in it. He goes onto explain from his                                                                                                                          76  Jorgenson,  D  (2011)  Bagging  Aboriginal  Art.  P40  77  Chenery,  S  (2015)  ‘Art  Dealer  Adrian  Newstead’s  remote  control’  

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experience art is also about the transference of cultural knowledge and expression,

which is generational within community. ‘If you ask Aboriginal people why they

paint, money is about the fifth thing on the list. Keeping culture alive, the pride they

get from their interaction with white people after years of being dismissed and

ignored … the opportunity to travel and have culture meetings across the country, the

positive effect it has on their children, as well as earning money in communities that

have no enterprise opportunity – these are all factors.’ It has also led to the

misappropriation of certain Aboriginal styles by non-Indigenous and Indigenous

artists and organizations in an attempt to gain status for their works. In an

interview with Daniel Browning on ABC AWAYE! Program, Australian

Indigenous art curator Djon Mundine also questions the pigeon-holing that

occurs with Indigenous art in Australia because it has a negative effect on how

Indigenous people form their identity as artists and communicate with

Australian society. Mundine asserts Aboriginal identity is as much about

coming to terms with the trauma of colonisation as well as respecting both

contemporary and traditional Indigenous art as vehicles by which identity can

be formed and used to communicate to Australian society. He interprets

Aboriginal art history within six phases to explain how Aboriginal people are

regaining more control over their own cultural expression.78

Personally from my own experience, I have always found more freedom, interest

and support for Aboriginal people and their culture overseas compared to

Australia. There is a lot of talk about policies and what is the best way forward

but there is still a long tradition of lack of awareness and misinformation, even

downright prejudice within Australia about Aboriginal people. For Australian

mainstream, there is often also a visible stereotype of what Aboriginal people are,

where the real is invisible to public preconception. For example, my experiences

in Australia as an Aboriginal artist and musician often correlated to busking on the

streets because we had more control over our artistic content and delivery, to

being in performances orchestrated to make Aboriginal people all look the same,

painted up and wearing a narga, for the benefit solely of appeasing people’s

                                                                                                                         78  Browning,  D.  (2013)  Djon  Mundine  on  21  years  of  Aboriginal  Art.  AWAYE!  Australian  Broadcasting  Corporation.  Retrieved  September  26,  2016.  http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/djon-­‐mundine-­‐21-­‐years-­‐of-­‐aboriginal-­‐art/4881588  

51    

preconceptions and misconceptions of who we are as a people. Following such

performances, people would throw on their jeans and contemporary clothes and

head to the pub or café and have a bit of a laugh about dancin’ up for people,

giving them what they wanted in order to be paid. People don’t realise we don’t

have to dress up in traditional clothing to have knowledge in our heads and hearts.

But it is a tradition that has been set within the developing Australian culture

where Aboriginal people are conceived as the “other” and the “primitive” but we

always saw it as the joke is on Europeans for being so ignorant. Travelling and

working in Europe opened my eyes to just how provincial Australia can be.

In 1993, the Year of Indigenous Peoples from across the globe, I started touring

professionally with the German flautist Peter Fassbender, the man who had seen

me busking in Canberra and had asked me to be on his CD. Peter contacted me

and we both decided to give it more of a push this time. Peter employed someone

professionally to arrange a six week tour of Germany for us, doing the festival

circuit. When I landed in Germany and we were entering the front door of

Fassbender’s apartment, the phone rang. The Australian consular in Den Haag

asked if it was possible to come and do a gig ASAP for a visitor. It was really

interesting touring with Fassbender because people had never heard of this

combination of didj and flute. They had certainly never heard the didj solo. Being

the types of festivals they were, which were quite community oriented, I had a

break half way through and had a question and answer session and I would also

allow people to come on stage and look at my didjeridu’s as people had never seen

the instrument and up close. The response to it was fantastic. One of the first

German words I understood without reading a dictionary was: ‘Das is

Wunderschon’, which means: ‘That is wonderful!’

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Figure 12: COLLABORATION: German flautist Peter Fassbender and wife Gabi were part of my first collaboration in Europe in 1993. People were fascinated by my Aboriginality and the musical instrument, the didjeridu. The reason people knew I was going to be in the country was probably due to the

fact that Fassbender had contacted the consular looking for help for me as an

Aboriginal person in Germany. So I went to Den Haag within a couple of days to

play didj at a consular function. After my six-week tour with Fassbender, I

returned to Holland as some of the people I had met during the embassy

performance had said they would host me to come and do some work there.

Support was given to me by Mr Peter Madden, from gallery Boomerang on the

Baum Straat, in the Jordan, Amsterdam and Henry from Coffee shop Siberi. They

hosted me and I did some workshops at the gallery and Peter Madden then got me

a gig at Ruigoord. Peter and Henry were members of the Amsterdam balloon

company, and they got me a gig to play didjeridu at the Ruigoord Festival as part

53    

of the company’s tribute to Aboriginal people in 1993 International Year of

Indigenous People. Also at this festival was Joe Gaie, Tiddas, Kev Carmody,

Lionel Foggarty, Pat Torres. So now I was meeting the people I had met in the

earlier days in Melbourne and now here we were all together in Europe. It was

such a great feeling and a great feeling to be heard as Aboriginal people! It was

such a fantastic feeling to be black, a musician and be paid a real wage! It was

great to see the wonder on people’s faces and the excitement and the welcome-

ness and friendliness. It was liberating. To grow up in Australia with its history

and the social conditioning of its citizens to not understand or appreciate

Aboriginal people where we are often seen as a problem and definitely treated as

second class … to be working in Europe and have people fascinated by our culture

was liberating.

I also found it quite interesting that some old Dutch blokes had come up to me and

shown me boomerangs they had collected in Australia when they migrated with

their parents after the second world war. Here they were 50 years later showing

me in the 90s, boomerangs. There was a discourse going on. This was a time I

could discover my ‘other self’ because I had grown up with a Dutch mother,

grandfather, aunties, uncles, cousins, who were also displaced from their cultural

homelands in Australia. They were also forced to speak English in the public

space of Australia. However, I was able to visit my Dutch relatives in Holland and

visit the town and house where my mother was born and where my grandfather

had helped work in the resistance hiding Jewish people from the Germans.

To meet my biological Dutch family was an amazing feeling. I wasn’t looked at as

an Aborigine, or as an Australian. I was looked at as their Dutch grandchild from

the brother that left home. This was quite an emotional time to have all these

white people around me giving me love because they are family and the colour of

my skin meant nothing. I was their family. It was a fantastic year for me. This

acceptance by my family in Holland was so liberating! I quickly discovered that

the Dutch that my mum had read to me in the books in our house in Western

Australia as kids growing up was quite old fashioned and the ‘Klein Bitje’ (little

bit) of Dutch that I could remember my mum teaching as a child, people found

hilarious and said I talked so old and the language I was speaking was a dialect

54    

called Tukkers from Enscade. This gave me a sense of pride because here I was,

viewed as a Wongatha person in Wongatha country, viewed as a “half-caste”

Aborigine in Australia and now I was recognized by other Dutch citizens as being

a Tukkers person because of the region where my language came from. It wasn’t

the colour of my skin that made me but my language, which was so similar to my

dad’s side of the family. There was a sense of belonging but not instigated by me

but from other people telling me from this other country, Holland, where I was

residing. Comments were numerous but many centred around the idea that a Dutch

Aborigine residing in Holland was very, very cool.

Figure 13: LIBERATING EXPERIENCE: My Dutch family from left Aunty Annie Slaa, myself, Oma Din and Opa Tas, my Opa Rik’s brother.

Fringe Dwellers

Is it ethical for stakeholders to continue to control what is Art in the becoming

Indigenous of art and contain it within a modern contemporary western art

movement? I would like to reflect here on how my own experience as an Indigenous

artist with more than 20 years’ experience exhibiting within Australia and abroad,

has allowed me to straddle three worlds, once again focusing on contemporary

academic issues from an Indigenous perspective.

55    

I found it interesting getting work at the Australian Consulate and DFAT both in

Holland and Germany. The Consular in Europe were helping make Aboriginal people

visible in comparison to Australia where funding was going to aboriginal communities

while other funding was being cut or redirected and going to other areas. Here was a

Government department, Foreign Affairs using Aboriginal culture as a way of

promoting Australia in the wider international community whilst we remained largely

invisible at home. It was interesting because in the late 80s and early 90s the Aboriginal

art movement emerged and it was interesting how it progressed in relation to Aboriginal

rights.

Aboriginal culture began to be represented through festivals. My rise to popularity

started when I performed at the opening of the Stemmen van de Aarde de wereld van

inheemse volken held at the Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam in 1993. I was part of the

opening performance where I played didjeridu and Dutch Minister Pronk opened it.

Figure 14: HIGHLY VISIBLE: Such was the interest in my Aboriginality, many people attended the Stemmen van de Aarde de wereld van inheemse volken opening ceremony in 1993. Here, Dutch minister Pronk tries to play my didjeridu.

It was incredible to represent the people from First Nations in Australia and my mob

especially, my family and my grandparents. It felt like a great achievement and

something I did which was cultural and I represented my people to the best of my

ability. I felt proud that I was able to do that. The mood of the world seemed different

then because of this positive acceptance of different cultures. It was a world agenda that

we are all different but there was an acceptance. People respected the difference in

music. People liked the different rhythms and how that related to their own music and

there was a feeling of collaboration between people and this can be witnessed in the fact

56    

that not only after my collaboration with Fassbender in Germany, I went on to produce

my two other albums. The first was in 1997, seven years later and the second album

occurred in 2000. It was the mood that helped discussion grow about music and

collaborations to occur. Even before that after the Beurs, doors opened like domino pins

falling over. I just kept getting more invites. After touring six weeks with Fassbender, I

went back to Holland and gig after gig just started happening for me. I ended up staying

in Europe until almost Christmas of that year. There had been aboriginal people in

Europe here and there but 1993 brought a lot of musicians and artists who went to

Europe. Every European country has their own First People stories but they were also

interested in our stories. It was quite mad to bump into a friend in Berlin from regional

Victoria.

Gigs included performances at the Australian Consulate, Bonn Germany, Den Haag,

Netherlands, Burs von Bulager and for Dutch Minister Pronk, Ruigoord Festival.

At the same time as my music was being appreciated in Europe, in 1994 I started

painting with Malcom Jagamarra, Clifford Possum and Walangrai Karntawarra

Tjakamarra.

In the Australian summer of 1993/4 after returning from a very successful European

tour I met up with an old time friend Malcolm Jagamarra from Walpiri people in

Sydney. Malcolm asked me to come and play some didjeridu as part of a project that he

was doing with his recently formed company, Jagamarra Productions. I worked with

Jagamarra productions over the next five months as a didjeridu player and was lucky

enough to also meet other senior western desert artists like Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarra

and Walangari Tjakamarra, Turkey Tolsen Tjupurrula. It was through these western

desert men that I was asked to sit and watch them paint and eventually was asked if I

wanted to paint. They gave me stories about my tjukurrpa according to my skin. These

they said were quite common for people of my skin name to paint. I thought this was

interesting because a couple of the old men actually knew my father and knew his skin

so that verified to them who I was. This allowed them to transfer knowledge I would

have received when I was hanging around with my own countrymen. But that wasn’t to

mean I didn’t have to make a few cups of tea for the old men because I was the

youngest man in the whole group so seniority certainly played a part. Also, there was

57    

quite a strict adherence to cultural protocol mixed with a lot of humility and humour

amongst the group. This was because everyone knew who we were and who were our

families from the Western Desert. Some of the old men knew who my grandfather and

dad were so they were respectful to me because of cultural protocols related to our

society and laws. Humility is a cultural protocol because it is a respect for law and

culture. It is a civil respect. My old people always told me civility costs you nothing.

But that didn’t mean we didn’t use what was available to us to achieve our results.

There were mobile phones around so we could keep in communication and because of

the times there were a lot of people from the western desert who knew their culture but

could speak English well. We all kind of knew who we were as the desert community

because we were hanging out like ex-pats in Sydney, on a land that is not our own

country. This is that space which was special for us to meet and talk. At the time I was

working with Jagamarra Productions, Global Colours was also collaborating to develop

a paint that would lift western desert into the fine art arena. Not only understanding how

the painting could work and being ethically produced so it was non-toxic, but also it

could be watered to create a formula that would work with a particular style utilised by

particular western desert artists associated with Jagamarra Productions. The paint that

ended up being developed by the resident scientists at Global Colours was called the

Tjukurrpa range flow formula which was designed to have properties in the paint that

gave a certain look and longevity to the final piece. This paint range has been on the

market for more than a decade and I still use this company’s paints as I understand the

range.

I had to cut short my work with Malcolm though because I had prior obligations back in

Europe and had also scored a gig with an Australian jazz band which gave me a ticket to

go back to Europe. With this band I travelled as far north as a city Oulu, Finland,

approximately 1000km north of Helsinki. I had never been so north! It was really

interesting to meet the people there and see the northern European buildings which have

different colours and styles. To fly into the landscape of Helsinki was the blue of the sea

as a background and all the little green dots are the islands as you come closer to the

land but as you came closer to the land the landscape changed from blue with green dots

to green with blue dots because of the amount of water in lakes upon the land. The land

says a lot about the people and their ancient stories which they were aware of. It was

interesting to look at the road signs similar in shape to Australia, yet with a reindeer or a

moose, complete with antlers!

58    

Working with this jazz band I usually had a five-minute solo spot where I played my

instrument and after my solo with the band we would hang around a few hours before

moving on. We enjoyed a few beers and I was presented with a hat to keep warm in

winter with -40 degree in winter. It was pink, white, black and grey and had three tassels

on the top. I asked what the tassels were about and they stated in this area there is only

three ways to go, south, east or west! This was a great experience for me to learn

something of the First Nations, so far north!

After Finland we moved onto Holland where we worked at the North Sea Jazz Festival

in which I believe I may have been the first Aboriginal performer from Australia but

most definitely from my area as far as I know. The North Sea Jazz Festival has been

going since 1976 and has roughly more than 300 artists every year and in 2015 they had

1000 musicians, 13 different stages and between 65,000 – 75,000 people every day at

the three-day festival. This was the biggest festival I had ever participated or played at

in my life. My contract with the jazz band that I was working with gave me a five-

minute solo for a forty-minute gig and a ten-minute solo for a 90 minute gig. During my

solo I can only presume that Herbie Hancock was in the audience because back stage

later that evening I noticed this African American guy making his way towards the band

I was with and he pushed passed the other members and walked straight up to me and

introduced himself by saying: ‘Hi, I’m Herbie Hancock, how can you breath like that!’

For those of you who are not jazz educated, Herbie Hancock is the bomb in the jazz

world. He is a true icon of modern music with a career spanning five decades and 14

grammy awards. There are few in the music who have had more influence on acoustic,

electronic jazz and R&B.

When Herbie spoke with me I was basically tripped out. Herbie was my idol as a young

man I loved his jazz. He had a song called ‘Rockit’ which was my first piece of vinyl

that I bought. It was the Future Shock album, track number 7 and I showed Herbie my

interpretation of the rhythm that he played. This was some of my inspiration for

developing my own style that wasn’t traditional Yolngu style, trying to fuse it with

electronic jazz, even as a youth. I put my vinyl on and recorded it to tape so I didn’t

scratch the record. Then I rewound the tape to practice by development style, again and

again and again. Herbie was surprised that a black guy from Australia was mixing this

59    

ancient old woodwind with electronic jazz. This was probably one of the most inspiring

moments of my life up until then. Listening to jazz music was something that I think I

got from my family on both sides. Mum’s family used to listen to jazz as well being

from Europe. I can remember a few summers, mum’s brother would bring out a stereo

system and music and go all afternoon and evening through to midnight and everyone

would be out dancing even the neighbours used to come over. I enjoyed it as a kid and

having this instrument I just played along. It wasn’t a traditional instrument in our

culture so I was free of any restraints related to the instrument. My first lessons as a

didjeridu player came about because dad had a friend who used to come down from

Arnhem Land occasionally and he would give me some instruction. This non-traditional

‘space’, which I created and participated in with my instrument, was a valuable space

for me to occupy when I went to Europe and America and played didjeridu for people

from different countries and cultures. So much so that it helped me when I used to take

didjeridu workshops, something that was growing in popularity at festivals as

Europeans began to have a thirst for acquiring and playing the didjeridu as an

instrument. It was this space, which allowed me to communicate with people from

varying and different cultures about how to play the didjeridu, by thinking about their

own cultural context and applying that to the technique of the didjeridu. There was no

point pretending to be a traditional Yolgnu because it was a physical and emotional

impossibility for them as it was for me. Likewise, I had people who began to play their

didjeridus by thinking about the country in which they lived. Most had no idea what a

kangaroo might sound like, or a kookaburra, except from documentaries on television.

A lot were not likely to come to Australia. So I had some students who would sound

cows in their music or owls and other animals related to their everyday life. It was a

non-threatening space we could all share and explore and enjoy without criticism. Yes,

it did sound funny to hear a cow sound come out of a didjeridu but it was better than

having some guy think he could pretend he was an Aboriginal from Arnhem Land. By

the mid-90s, the instrument had become so popular that in Vienna, Austria, there were

rumours of more than a thousand members playing in the Vienna didjeridu club. That’s

how fast the curiosity in the instrument grew and the interest in Aboriginal cultures of

Australia. Later by 2010, I began to notice that the European didjeridu players had

seemingly created something of a hierarchy of didj players and sadly some of those

European players began to see themselves, such as a didj guru or elder and it seemed

like the interest and respect for the First people, the Aboriginal people who were the

60    

owners of the instrument, had been forgotten. What a surprising twist for the first few of

us who just took our didjes to Europe and began to play, just for fun. We played also

because we knew we could also educate people about our mob and people were

receptive. The positive of this is that there are quite a lot of groups in Europe who are

also concerned about Aboriginal culture and the issues Aboriginal people face to retain

their culture and cultural integrity, which is essentially expressed in our art and stories.

61    

Chapter 4: Visible / invisible I remember being invited to a soiree in New York at the academic Fred Myers house

after an exhibition at the Australian Embassy in 1998. At that time he asked me some

questions about my Indigenous identity as well as spending some time talking about his

experience in Australia and in traditional community. It was some years later I came

across his article in which he uses me as an anecdote about the current debate as to

whether Indigenous Australians can transfer knowledge through various mediums and

across generations. To be honest I was astounded to see Myers had referred to the

discussion with me without my prior consent. Nevertheless, it would seem my presence

in New York help raise the discussion of cultural knowledge and its transference.

Figure 15: CONSULAR CATALOGUE: New York academic and anthropologist Fred Myers came to this exhibition for Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Australian Consular General, New York, in October 1998.

62    

Walya Ngaamadiki

As a Wongatha man from the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, I have always

grown up with Indigenous culture and view the emerging academic debate as

something of a phenomena in itself.

Palya Wangkanyi

My life often involves communication with my extended Aboriginal family, both

within the traditional ‘bush’ community and urban society as well. Indeed, there has

always been a fluency between these two Indigenous cultures. Even if the

anthropologists were unable to understand or communicate its importance, we knew

it ourselves. Our ‘old people’ always knew invasion would bring change and they

too created ways to engage between the two cultures in order to survive and retain as

much cultural heritage as possible. Our law maintains and reinforces Aboriginal

group solidarity and cultural identity in the face of pressures towards change exerted

by agents of the politically dominant Australian-European culture. Anthropologist

Robert Tonkinson found the greatest strength to resist colonial pressures for the

Aboriginal elders was in their religious law, which is part of their traditional culture.

Tonkinson in his book ‘The Jigalong Mob’ writes of the victory of desert people in

their efforts to counter and survive Australian-European political domination over

their communities.79

                                                                                                                         79  Tonkinson,  R.  (1974)  The  Jigalong  Mob:  Aboriginal  Victor  of  the  Desert  Crusade.  Philippines:  Cummins  Publishing  Company  Inc.  

63    

Figure 16 : OLD AND NEW: Myself with Joe Geia (left) performing at Ruiqoord Festival, Holland, in 1993.

Tjuta ngurra

Already, I was growing up with two worlds as I dealt with life as a young Aboriginal

man in a colonized state which imposed its rules and regulations on both my urban and

traditional community relatives. I am not alone in this as many well-known artists and

academics, like Marcia Langton, Hetti Perkins, Djon Mundine, also talk of this

experience of being Indigenous. For example, Langton talks of her family’s survival at

the hands of the squatters in which they were part of the backbone of the land yet

received no economic gain from their contribution80. However, I also have a third

world that comes from my mother’s heritage as a Dutch migrant arriving in Australia

following the war. I always knew there was different ways to do things apart from that

measured out by the Australian authorities and representatives as I heard other

languages spoken in my own childhood home and experienced, sometimes humorously

and now anecdotally, the different approaches to lifestyle represented by my Dutch

grandparents. Later, as an adult, I would experience this third world first hand when I

went to Europe as an Indigenous artist and musician. This is why I wish to focus my

own personal experience and review it with reference to literature as I watched the

developing impact of Australian Aboriginal culture across the globe.

                                                                                                                         80  Langton,  M.  (1998).  Burning  Questions:  Emerging  environmental  issues  for  Indigenous  peoples  in  northern  Australia.  Darwin,  NT:  Centre  for  Indigenous  Natural  and  Cultural  Resource  Management,  Northern  Territory  University  

64    

In 1995 I continued touring Europe and met Kofi Ayivor from the band Osabisa, who I

began to collaborate with. Kofi was recording some music at a place called Studio

Lunar in Amsterdam and I happened to be in the studio at the same time on the same

day. And I went over and introduced myself to him and he said he could remember

meeting some Aboriginal people at a festival in Perth. It was qiute interesting to meet

Kofi on this occasion as a young man because in the 70s, I had met Kofi whilst in the

band Osabisa who were touring Australia and were playing a Pacific Island Festival in

Perth. I can remember my father playing Osabisa music all throughout my childhood

through my 70s. I can always remember an album in my house as a child. I was

mesmerised because here was this full on African music, which was so vibrant and alive

and they had this horn section and I think as a didjeridu player I thought wow, you

could really do something with that. And I think now that was probably the inspiration

for what I did as a player and I probably got some of my rhythm from listening to

Osabisa and playing along with didj – especially the Welcome Home album, which was

a favourite of mine. At the meeting in Amsterdam he asked what I was doing and I

showed him my instrument and he said: lets jam! I have been friends with him ever

since and was only talking to him the other day. That’s me in the third space playing

didj, in my mother’s country, playing an instrument that comes from another area of

Aboriginal Australia and jamming with a guy who is from Gama, who is considered a

master drummer in the ewe tradition, which is known for its polyrythmns. Kofi grew up

in Denu on the East Coast of Ghana. We were just friends. In my tours in Europe he was

the man from Ghana that I met as a child and I became friends with him as a man, an

adult. And we were able to create a fusion of his west African drumming tradition with

my contemporary Yidaki playing.

In 1995, I was also doing a school tour with Juenesses Musicales through Belgium in

which we told stories to children through pre and primary school. We had music and art

lessons with the middle school ages and then a talk about Aboriginal people Aboriginal

culture and history in Australia to senior students. It was received well and gave me an

insight into the structure of how this other place in the world utilised it resources for

education and tried to give the children the best possible examples of the variety of

music and cultures around the globe.

65    

Figure 17: CULTURAL RIDE: I gained a lot being able to transverse country and have my Aboriginality celebrated, something very different to the usual stereotypes about Aboriginality I experienced when home in Australia.

It was a quiet year really because it was the first time I went to Vienna to have a small

exhibition at Hilton. I had been with Malcolm Jagamarra in the earlier part of the year. I

had stayed with Jagamarra mob for a good seven months before to Vienna. That’s when

I got really confident as an artist because I sold all my fifteen pieces at that exhibition in

June. And then I went to California and did some work with G’day Australia program

run by DFAT. As a consequence I also went to the Boston Hilton and Texas as part of a

travelling solo exhibition and didjeridu performances with G’day Australia.

One of the standout things that happen to me at the Boston Hilton was on the night of

the opening of the exhibition. I had left the exhibition area to go out to a smoking space

for a cigarette, when one of the hotel security asked me if I had given away any of my

art work and I said: ‘no, they are all for sale. ‘ I did give away two at the beginning but

they had already been purchased prior to the event and I knew those two paintings had

gone. Security asked me to accompany them and they took me to a room and they had

this American woman and police there and they asked me if I had given this painting to

her and I said: ‘no’. She argued with me. I may have met her in a crowd but I couldn’t

remember and the upshot was she was charged with stealing a painting of mine. It was

quite liberating as a person, just a person, to have a policeman on my side when

someone stole something from me but to be treated like any other person, not like how I

was used to being treated as an Aboriginal person in Australia.

66    

In Australia, we are all aware of the long history, the shocking record of us Indigenous

people being the most highly incarcerated people per capita on the planet as well as

victims of Death in Custody - which led to a Roy al Commission because of the

alarming death rates in Australian prisons.

Travelling and seeing the world has been such a liberating experience not just because

you see so much but also how people view me as a person and treat me. In Australia the

average imprisonment rate for Aboriginal people is more than 13 times greater than the

non-indigenous persons. In 2014 in the last census, 2043 people were incarcerated per

100,000 compared to 144 per 100,000 non-indigenous despite the fact that we only

make up about one per cent of the population81. It would not be an uncommon

conversation to say to another Aboriginal person, you know, I was pulled up by police

when I was going to get some milk at the corner store because the cops reckon I look

like someone they’re looking for. We’d all agree they have a problem with profiling

Aboriginal people for misdemeanors they have not done.

By 1996 I was in Europe by February and I embarked on a whirlwind tour with

Aboriginal artist Walangari Karntawarra, where we landed in Europe and performed at a

festival at the House of World Cultures, Berlin. We gave a cultural talk about

Aboriginal art and culture and whilst we were doing this we had a camera set up so that

when we were doing a sand painting on the stage floor it was filmed and projected

instantaneously onto a large screen within the venue. This allowed people to understand

what we were talking about. We later facilitated the production of a canvas in which

Walangari and myself and a few of the other resident workers in the establishment that

were helping us, put all our handprints over it. This was a symbolic gesture of all of us

who worked on this project together. After this festival Walangari and myself went to

Vienna where we played some music in the local clubs. Then after our time in Vienna

we caught a train across Europe from Vienna to Paris to where Walangari was having an

exhibition and we also performed music in a couple of cafes of people we met. We got

to see the sights of Paris travelling in a CV2 Citroen whose doors were as wobbly as a

                                                                                                                         81  These  statistics  are  taken  from  the  Australian  Bureau  of  Statistics,  2014.  http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4517.0~2014~Main%20Features~Imprisonment%20rates~10009    

67    

canvas water bag. When quizzed about the road rules of Paris the petite young Parisian

woman assured us that nobody adheres to the road rules in Paris except you do not hit

bicyclists and you don’t hit the car in front of you. Needless to say it seemed like a free

for all, especially when driving around the Arc de Triomphe.

I can’t remember the name of the nightclub in Paris but the brother of the woman who

was Walangari’s gallery host, had shares in this three storey venue. There was food and

entertainment in the bottom, a bar in the middle level at street level and then a bar on the

top where they had some jazz guys playing. So me and Walangari played in the cellar

venue. Walangari played electric guitar and I played didj. We had rehearsed and done

stuff like this before and people loved it because it was a kind of a musicians come and

get up on stage night. It wasn’t an organised gig but a kind of an informal come and

show us what you have. Everyone who came and performed got a free meal so that’s

why it was popular with musicians. So we got on stage and did what we did. I suppose

you could call it Aboriginal country rock or didjeridu rock and roll and it was so

different to what the Parisians had heard that the guys who owned the venue were

telling us later in the evening that the cellar was completely jammed packed when we

were performing and the bar on the other two levels had basically left their venues to

come and watch me and Walangari do our twenty minute set. Im sure this could be one

of the reasons why Walangari’s first solo exhibition may have taken off well. This is

before the had opened so we were really seen as avant-garde. We were there at the

forefront of this burgeoning avant-garde art movement and we were there at the time

when it was really taking off around the world. I was only a young artist but it was a

little later that my art took off. I was primarily a didj player at that stage and Walangari

and I were collaborating together, supporting each other. It is also interesting because

Walangari is Jagamarra, like a classifactory father, and here we were in Europe

collaborating on contemporary Aboriginal art. We were pushing it. Little was I to know

what would burgeon in the next five years.

It was a great year also because I had a chance to see Eastern Europe. In the European

summer of ‘96 I was in love and living in Prague with, Jocelyn, now my wife and

companion of more than 20 years. We had a great time. I showed Jocelyn my haunts in

Amsterdam after I picked her up from Frankfurt then we made our way to Prague,

where we had accommodation arranged for us. It was funny being in the East of Europe

68    

and especially Ostrava, north-east because a lot of people thought I was a Gypsy

because of my dark complexion and long dark hair. On more than one occasion I was

chased out of shops with people yelling, ‘no Gypsy’. Women would clutch their hand

bags when they saw me in the streets. It also worked on a different level too I suppose

because I was never mugged in Europe. I was young, fit and strong and they must of

wondered what the hell I was carrying with this long thin heavy something slung over

my shoulder. Even my Czech born self-appointed manager had trouble convincing his

former friends that I was not a Gypsy but an Aborigine from Australia. It was only when

I pulled out my didjeridu and played for them they were still suspicious, saying this was

another Gypsy instrument. This was a completely different reaction to other previous

journey’s and how I was received. I guess it was because Czech Republic had been

closed for so long and only just opened to the West and here I was deemed a decadent

westerner Gypsy. It was the only country I have been to where you had to have a visa to

leave, even though the wall had come down and it had opened itself to the West. Even

married couples who slept in the same bed in a motel room would be charged at two

different rates, one at the Western price and one at the local price for a Czech citizen.

Figure 18: UNIQUE SIGHT: Busking on the Karlovaska Bridge, Prague, 1996, brought mixed reactions from many who had never seen or heard of the instrument before.

69    

Nevertheless, it was really interesting for me being in this ancient old town that had a

myriad of stories from such a long time ago and here was I from an ancient culture from

my side of the world travelling through this ancient city. It was a cultural crossroads.

Me the other in the third person I felt like a human being travelling through life in the

ancient world. I was travelling and trading my skills as an artist and musician as I went

through this ancient trading place. It was liberating because of the visibility it gave me

as an artist from an ancient culture on the other side of the world.

So I guess it was unusual to see me sitting on the Karlovaska (Charles) bridge playing

didjeridu. People would just stop and stare at me playing because they had never seen

anything like it before. Through my self-appointed manager, I was told he had organised

an exhibition of my art in a hotel many kilometres away in Ostrava. Ostrava was an old

mining town in the north-east of the country. The exhibition was at the Imperial Hotel,

Ostrava. Our accommodation was in an old ski lodge in the mountains. Unfortunately,

my self-appointed Czech management and I were not on the same page about how my

skills as an artist and musician were going to be rewarded. I found out I was sharing an

exhibition with a man who was introduced as ‘John Lennon’s cousin’ who was residing

in Spain and was presenting his collection of art works which I gathered were prints on

T-shirts vacuum packed in what could only be described as meat packages. Apparently

this was the avant-garde way of doing things in this town at that time but as the Czech’s

would say: ‘Don’t quote me on it.’

70    

Figure 19: TRADING MY SKILLS: Painting for the exhibition in Ostrava, Czech Republic, I was very motivated to paint, living in a country that had only just moved from a communist system. It found this old outdated suitcase in the attic of our apartment and thought it would make a great exhibit as a travelling musician and artist.

Figure 20: OSTRAVA EXHIBITION FLYER: Exhibiting in Ostrava, Czech Republic in 1996. At the same time I was introduced to a wonderful group of popular Ostrava young and

sometimes drunken Czech musicians exploring their Punk-Rock ambitions called Katka

& Pistolnici, which was amazing because they looked like Goths – but drank like red-

necks. One bloke I called ‘gullet’ I swear was a mouth on the end of a bottle with no

neck and who seemed to have a bottle permanently stuck to his lips. He got so drunk in

our recording session, we had to stop. Meanwhile, the lead singer looked like an

71    

Eastern-block version of Bon Jovi and the gullet delivered death metal like lyrics. It was

an eye-opening cultural experience. The band is still around although most members

have changed - but I’m not sure the recording with my didj ever got off the ground82.

Figure 21: MEDIA FASCINATION: I was featured in numerous media outlets while I toured Europe, including a gig with Gloria Estafan on the Grosse Preis, a Dutch show.

While based in Prague for the summer, I also travelled to several festivals. There was a

festival in Heidelberg where I met with Yamatji artist Mark Atkins. We had been

collaborating a little together because I had this idea for a world music album. My

friend, German flautist Peter Fassbender, who I had previously collaborated with on an

album, was helping me find a record contract - which he was successful in securing for

me in the following year. Meanwhile, I met Mark in Heidelberg and we performed

                                                                                                                         82  See  http://bandzone.cz/katkapistolnici.  It  would  appear  the  lead  singer  is  still  the  same  person  although  other  members  are  not  the  same.    

72    

together as two didj players on stage. We were the headline act and the reaction of the

audience was incredible. I don’t think anyone had ever seen two didj players on stage

performing without other instruments to accompany them before. This was always a

Prof.eam of mine as I had often seen didj used as an accompaniment to other

instruments that were the up-front instruments on stage – never the other way around.

The crowd went wild. There were several encores because people refused to leave the

venue and continued to clap and yell out and stamp their feet83.

Figure 22: DOUBLE DIDJ - UP FRONT AND CENTRE: Bringing the didjeridu up front and centre worked and the audience went wild at the Heidelberg festival in 1996. This footage is rare as no one had digital cameras or iPhones to record back then.

Suddenly I knew what I was thinking about the didj and its fusion with world music and

my influences from jazz were going to work. Being able to meet and collaborate with

other first nations artists as well as Western artists, allowed a musical dialogue to occur

which was based on rhythm rather than rhetoric. It was a space that fitted my three

world’s experience. It was an exciting time because there was a lot of discussion about

world music and fusing different influences together from around the globe and I was

able to be there at the time when it was only just starting to take off. It was a creative

space and a positive dialogue which allowed the emergence of something completely

                                                                                                                         83  There  is  a  You  Tube  performance  in  Heidelberg  accessible  at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98rf9zNQtpA    

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new in a musical form. To be able to contribute as a didj player was an incredible

feeling, knowing my instrument, which was little known about but which now so many

people wanted to know about and learn, was having such an incredible influence on

Europeans. Upon reflection, I see history repeating itself as the power and beauty of

Aboriginal art and music takes a hold on some Europeans who in their pursuit of

claiming uniqueness, forge their identity in relation to Aboriginal culture but never

understand the importance of reciprocity. It was not that we didn’t try and teach our

students reciprocity – it’s just that for many it was a lip service they exclaimed in

pursuit of a pathway they thought would allow them to rise above the masses and claim

a status a few rungs higher on the stairs of society, to find their own niche and

eventually make money and status from it.

From Heidelberg I travelled to Vienna to see a young Austrian entrepreneur who was

interested in promoting Aboriginal art and music. From there we travelled across the

Austrian and Swiss Alps to Bern in Switzerland. I had a friend in Bern who I still

communicate with to this day. He is a Swiss guy who is into didjeridu and who had also

visited Australia and had been playing didjeridu for more than two decades. This was

unusual as he had travelled to Australia in the late 60s early 70s with his wife on his

great adventure. His name is Willi Grimm and Jocelyn and I stayed at his house.

It was very interesting to meet a guy like this. I first met Willi with Alan Dargin in

1993. Willi Grimm had basically been playing didj solo in Switzerland for decades. So

here was this man who had come and visited our space and then taken our instrument

over there. He mixed it up with another wind instrument that also requires the breathing

action of circular breathing when he worked with Gerard Widmer playing a Fujara,

which is from Central Slovakia, Eastern Europe. I think the Swiss have a certain

fascination with the didjeridu because of their own wind instrument, the alphorn. Maybe

it’s the commonality of a wind instrument but the distances between the birth place of

both instruments and the very different climates in which they were conceived – from

tropical Arnhem Land and through the deserts in trading routes – to the extreme cliff

faces and snowfields of Central Europe. The thing I like about Willi Grimm is that he

has been around for so long and he plays the instrument for his contentment and he likes

to share that with other people, what he gets from it. You can feel that he puts in a lot of

his energy and a lot of his emotion about how he is feeling about such things as life. I’m

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not a mind reader so I can’t understand exactly what he is playing it for but you can

sense that he is playing from a very earthy organic experience for him. The fact that he

has teamed up with Gerard, especially in the land of the alp horn, is really interesting to

see this ancient Australian wind instrument being played by a native from a land of

another wind instrument that also uses overtones of another wind instrument that

Gerard, also plays with an instrument from Slovakia which makes it an interesting space

for these things to come together.

The reason I was in Switzerland was also because I had been invited to one of the first

didjeridu festivals in Switzerland before the advent of Swizzeridoo. A lot of Australians

probably don’t realise how didjeridu was becoming popular overseas about that time.

For example, about that time there were anecdotal stories of at least 5000 members of

the didjeridu club in Vienna, Austria. It is true that Alan Dargin (dec) was one of the

first people to take the instrument to Europe. It is also true that Alan and I were able to

collaborate together on projects in the early days and educate people about the

instrument. From these early appearances, other didjeridu players came from Australia

and some European players began to make a name for themselves, as I have mentioned

before. So Inter-larken and other festivals including Swizzeridoo became a kind of

meeting place every summer for didjeridu players from all over the place.

There was a kind of spin off that happened with the transfer of the didj across

continents, although it probably occurred as some Australian players from Australia

inferred the didj had healing powers. So at this festival at Inter-larken there was an off-

shoot of people who attended with the belief they would be healed by the instrument

because of its vibrations. I guess it’s harmless to see someone trying to heal their dog

from cancer by waving the instrument over them and playing. All I could see was the

dog’s ears were dropped and they looked like they were in considerable pain, whether

from the awkward playing of a new didj player or because they really had cancer. It was

another question however to see something that felt like a side-show to me as people

flocked to a round tent to watch members of the audience come forward to be healed by

lying on a wooden pallet and having the Prof.one of didjeridu played over their body,

with the accompaniment of the players other hand waving around in the air as if

pretending to conduct an orchestra. It had never been mine or Alan Dargin’s intention to

bring this kind of interpretation of the instrument abroad. We were playing because it

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was exciting to fuse the music with other instruments from around the world and bring

something of our cultural knowledge into the world arena. The aesthetic of the didjeridu

had somehow been reinterpreted and transferred into an ethic in the form of ‘healing

powers’ by some Europeans, however misguided this seemed to be. It is an example of

how mis-interpretation and mis-representation can also move forward to somehow

miscommunicate what was originally an aesthetic.

Another discussion which had quite a few Europeans pondering was whether women

should play the didjeridu. People argued that the instrument was for men only in

traditional Aboriginal culture and therefore women should not play out of respect. But it

is also true that many Europeans would never travel to Australia and in fact, the context

of the instrument had changed being within a European context like the Swiss Alps. As

I have mentioned before, I couldn’t tell people to play a kookaburra or kangaroo

hopping when they had never seen one in real life, so I told them to play what they

knew like the sound of a cow or a chook or a goose. People had to be real about how

much cultural appropriation they could allow themselves with the instrument and as I

have said, it was our intention only to play contemporary didjeridu, although it was nice

to see people had respect for our cultural ways.

This was confirmed to me when the boss for Yidaki came to Europe at that time. From

Arnhem Land, David Blanasi came over and he expressed to me that he thought it was

good what I was doing, playing this contemporary style of didjeridu, as I played it aware

that it was not an instrument from Western Desert culture traditionally. He said from a

traditional point of view, he had no qualms about women outside Aboriginal culture

playing, because they were like little children. They didn’t know anything about the

culture. And certainly what they were playing had no connotation from having any

knowledge from Aboriginal tradition – they were just playing a piece of wood.

Towards the end of the year I had an exhibition at the Creditanstalt bank in Vienna,

Austria, in November 1996. It was a group exhibition and the feedback I got from my

art was amazing. After hanging the art in the bank a couple of days prior to the

exhibition opening, I came in one morning to see five red stickers on my art works and

asked who had bought them since the exhibition wasn’t even open yet. The information

clerk told me that it was the bank manager that came and bought them. I sold all fifteen

of my paintings. It was a powerful motivation for me to continue practicing my art.

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Figure 78: EXHIBITION PROMO: This exhibition in Austria was another positive affirmation where I could work and move freely without dealing with stereotypes which had hampered the progress of many Aboriginal Australians in their own country.

Again, this was before the Musee du Quai Branly had opened in Paris so Aboriginal art

was only just beginning to have a profile in Europe. I think also the presence of

didjeridu in Europe raised the profile of Aboriginal people and their presence in

Australia which also got people interested in our culture and our art.

By the summer of 1997 I was living in Coogee, Sydney, with Jocelyn and catching up

with many of my old acquaintances.

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Figure 24: CULTURAL CATCH-UP: It was always my plan to be home for summer so I could always connect with my culture. Sitting with Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra.

78    

Figure 25: OLD ACQUAINTANCES: I was invisible to the arts world in Australia but visible in my Aboriginal world by hanging out with my friends, mentors and contemporaries. Here, Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra and I sit together in my flat in Coogee catching up. Western Desert by the sea.

I was also busking at the Haymarket in Sydney. We were very popular there with the

tourists and we had a spot, which the Chinese shop attendants used to keep for me by

placing a bin over the spot near the entrance of the Haymarket. I had always planned to

come home to Australia and just be myself because I found there was always an

invisible tag around being Aboriginal in this country as there was no real appreciation

for Indigenous culture in the formal sense of employed work. I made more money

busking on the streets where people showed their appreciation with gold coin donations.

I guess also in the lead up to the 2000 Olympics more people were visiting Australia

and Sydney and it was great fun to talk with people whose country I had been to and

speak some of their language back to them. By February I was enrolled at Eora in an

Indigenous arts program and had to laugh when one of the lecturers introduced himself

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by telling us to be real about our career expectations and that he didn’t think that any of

us would ever get a record contract because he’d been in the industry for 20 odd years

and hadn’t cracked one. I told him that I didn’t believe him and he asked me if I had any

proof and I said I just received a cheque for $20,000 US to produce an album for a

German record label. In an industry full of egos he didn’t seem to like me much after

that.

Figure 26: FUSION: With my years of experience overseas as a didjeridu player I began to conceptualise a world music band with didj at the foremost of the music. I was really excited about landing my first chance to fuse what I had been thinking through a respected German World Music label.

It was an exciting prospect to think about putting my album together. I went on to

produce the first of two albums in 1997 under the project name of Ankala with Mark

Atkins and numerous other musicians that I had hired for the project. The idea was to

have didjeridu as the most prominent feature in the music and to show how successful

didj can be fused with other musical instruments to create a new style in the genre of

world music. The first album was called ‘Ankala, Rhythms from the Outer Core’, and

while the album was released in Australia the company who managed it folded. This

seemed to fit with my profile as invisible whilst I was in Australia. Most people thought

it was questionable what kind of album it was. Outside of Australia the album was

released by Network Medium and in fact the album did well. One of the songs on the

album was later picked up by Mercedes in Europe for one of its adverts. The first album

was recorded here in Australia because Network wanted to test the waters but the

second album was recorded in Germany at Network Medien because the director,

Christian Scholtz, was so impressed with the sales of the album and how mad the didj

could be and how it could work and I had this idea about the didj being foremost upfront

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and other instruments backing - and it came through. Peter Fassbender who I did my

first album with actually got me the contact to do this project. It was a low budget but

carefully thought out project. With the album came a tour of the band in Europe in 1997.

That same year I did a performance for Pioneer, Hollywood, California through Two

Headed Monster production company, California. The significance of this was how

visible the didjeridu became and Aboriginal culture from Australia. It was also the first

advert to promote Pioneer going digital as everyone was still on VHS and the advert

was promoting DVD. The advert had me playing didjeridu on the hills of California to

mimic the desert of Australia.

Figure 27: INTERNATIONAL AWARENESS: I was the first Aboriginal man from the Western Desert to be on one of the first Pioneer ads for digital DVD. It felt great to be able to raise awareness of Aboriginal Australia through cinemas in the States.

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Figure 28: RECIPROCITY: It was wonderful also to be treated with such respect from people as I travelled across the globe. People were interested in my Aboriginality and saw it as a positive and significant cultural contribution to the global dilemma in an age where increasingly evidence showed the Western world was struggling, amongst other things, with issues of climate change. Many people were amazed at the longevity of Aboriginal culture and its continual survival, regardless of the impact of colonization over the last two hundred years.

In 1998 I was again another interesting year as I was invited to be artist-in-residence at

Wicked Sticks Gallery, Clarion Music, San Francisco. It was a fun time because I had

an apartment to stay in the building because the gallery and music store was on the

ground and first floor so I had an apartment on the top floor with rooftop access. It was

great to relax in San Francisco after work and I met a lot of interesting Chinese people

through Clara Tsu, the owner of Clarion. I resided for a month painting and doing

workshops and I had an exhibition at the end of my stay. I also toured my band Ankala

that year through Germany, Holland, Austria and the Czech Republic. It was a busy

year because I was commissioned by Sydney Children’s Choir to paint a shirt

recognizable as being contemporary Aboriginal whilst representing Sydney Children’s

Choir on tour to Singapore. As well, I was invited to tour with G’day Australia in the

US playing didjeridu. I also had my art exhibited in LA, California and Palm Springs.

We also went to Texas. All these experiences were good because I found people were

really interested in my culture as an Aboriginal Australian and there was a lot of respect

for where I came from.

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Figure 29: VISIBLE ABROAD: Here at the Robert Steele gallery, New York, with the G’day Australia crew. I was always able to get work overseas but never on my return to Australia.

Figure 30: IMPACT NOW: Work in both Europe and the United States of America continued to grow as did the interest in Aboriginal culture, art and music. This flyer advertised my presence for art and didjeridu workshops culminating in a musical performance and art exhibition at Wicket Sticks Gallery, Clarion Music, in San Francisco.

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In 1999, coming back from Europe and the States, I got a casual job in sales selling

didjeridus at a weekend market at the Sydney Rocks. I worked for an Australian guy

with Irish heritage who had been a collector and dealer of Aboriginal art for numerous

decades. His wheeling and dealing in the arts was from his own personal love of

Aboriginal art and also he knew he could make money out of it. He felt he could then

support some of his Aboriginal mates on communities where he used to go and work. It

was really interesting as he, like many other dealers, thought my English was too good

for me to have come from the Western Desert. At that time, much of the conversation in

Sydney was found to be like that in terms of who was traditional, urban, authentic or are

these real or rubbish paintings – are they genuine or not. Even though I had sat down

with Tolsen, Possum and Jagamarra … the dealers wouldn’t buy my art. I think there

was also a sense in which these type of people in the arts thought they could manipulate

the aboriginal art market. I had many conversations with my contemporaries about who

was pushing what and why in the arts market and there was a belief the stuff made by

tribal people was more authentic than the stuff being produced by the urban Aboriginal

people.

I noticed also he had none in his collection. I recall the guy I worked for in the Rocks

telling me of incidences where dealers including himself, had helped certain artists

fiscally and in a pecuniary way so they could sit down in a quiet location, usually a big

tin shed on a block of land and sometimes locked with supplies brought in like canvas,

paint, food, grog and they sat there without any humbug and painted, sometimes for

weeks and people didn’t know where they were. The dealers were the ones deciding

what paintings were good aesthetically but after a time the story was taken out of it as

people were just painting visually spectacular stuff. Artists realised their stories could

stay hidden because the art market wasn’t as worried about the depth of the stories in the

paintings. For example, I know of one prominent painter who had to run away for her

own personal dramas, selling paintings cheaply to survive. All the stakeholders got

angry with her because they said by her selling them cheaply it was depreciating the

prices that they had built up and the reputation of what her canvases were worth so she

kind of got dropped by all these galleries who stopped buying her work, claiming they

had the best period of her work and the current paintings were not worth that much.

The Olympics was just around the corner in 2000 and so I was spending some time at

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home in the mastering phase of my second album ‘Didj Blows the Games’ to be

released the following year. I was really excited about my album as I had met some

amazing people and was so excited to have been commissioned to produce on a second

album with the record label. My idea of a fusion of music from different cultures could

be achieved because of the understanding of culture and rhythm being prevalent in all

the musicians that I had met. Some of the musicians that were on the label I had met

through funny and unpredictable ways such as Kofi Ayivor and Fassbender. Francois

Castiello and Bruno Girard were a couple of Romani guys that I had met at a festival

and who really liked my music and they had also told me that they were on Network’s

label. I said wow, that’s cool, let’s get the label to get you to work on the next album.

Figure 31: SECOND ANKALA ALBUM: The success of the first album meant Network Medium was keen to create a second album. Although the album was never really received in Australia because of distribution problems, it was very visible abroad and successful because of its up front presence of two didjeridu players leading the group of world artists, many famous in their own genre both in their home country and abroad. The invisible tag seemed to be present again as many in Australia didn’t believe what achievements had occurred overseas.

Another time I was staying in New York at a YMCA near Central Park and I was

walking around and looking at different places to go because it was summer. I saw a

pool hall and there was nice jazz coming out of there so I went there and started playing

pool. After a while I met a couple of guys and struck conversation with some locals. It

turned out they were also musicians having a night off and we got talking about music

and one of the guys told me who he was but I didn’t know who he was … one of

thousands of unknown musicians around the world who sits in bars and plays pool on

the nights they are not fortunate enough to be gigging. He said he was pretty good at his

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saxophone and I said wow joked with him and we swapped contacts. I kind of joked at

the end of the evening and said: “I’ll get my people to call your people,” and we

laughed as we walked out with me thinking this is probably the last time I will see or

hear from this bloke ever again! Later when I got back to Germany I talked with my

record label owner, Christian, and told him about whom I had met in New York and he

said: “My goodness, I know who that bloke is and you have his contact?” He said he

had been trying to find out where that bloke was for ages. And so my people did contact

his people. Even though I didn’t see him again he was able to record a digital sample

over an underlying score that was eventually used on my second album. His name is

David Murray, the New York saxophonist.

There was an impressive line-up on my album. Guest artists included: Dom Um Romao

(Brazil, percussions); Kofi Ayivor (Ghana, Djembe); Shankar Lal (India, Tabla); David

Murray (U.S.A., Tenor saxophone); Peter Fassbender (Germany, flute), Christiane

Niemann (Germany, vocals) Francois Castiello (France, Accordion); Bruno Girard

(France, violin).

In 2000, the album was released and a smaller core of the band performed just two days

out for the launch of the Olympics at the Sydney Torch Relay, Parramatta for the

Sydney Olympics Festival. The album also coincided with the release of Network

Medien’s 20th anniversary album, which had artists’ tracks from various bands

including Ankala and the World Orchestra track entitled ‘journey’. It was exciting times

because so many tourists were coming to Australia and experiencing how Indigenous

Australians lived and felt about their culture. There were Aboriginal performances

everywhere with buskers down Circular Quay but also many media representatives who

were interested in Australian politics and how Aboriginal people had been treated since

invasion. Protest 2000 attracted the attention of the world media and my partner Jocelyn

was one of many who, as a journalist, wrote numerous media releases, which put the

protest in the spotlight of multi-media across the globe. I remember Jocelyn hooking me

up with live interviews through radio stations in Asia and in articles for newspapers like

Agence France Presse, who had a journalist follow us. There were also other

opportunities for Aboriginal people, which were culturally based, like the display of

Aboriginal clothing designs and photo opportunities on the harbour with the boat Tribal

Warrior carrying the Indigenous models to Fort Denison for a photo shoot. People were

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just generally interested in all the aspects of being Aboriginal in contemporary Australia

and it added a lot to the fabric of the games.

One of the funniest memories of 2000 was when we playing at the Torch Relay at

Parramatta because in the lineup the band was put about sixth. My very astute Chinese

friend who was playing violin in the lineup of Ankala, got word we were going to be

fifth or six on the line-up and wasn’t happy with this. He manufactured a fax to himself

from his brother ‘Bill’ who translated from Mandarin a wonderful story about how

Ankala should be at the beginning of the music because Aboriginal culture was like the

phoenix rising from the ashes and the Olympic flame passing through was symbolic

from his Chinese culture and the rising of the phoenix all coincided. We sent a fax to

Parramatta Council where my partner had suggested Ankala because she was the media

officer at the time. When she received the fax from Tim, which was in Chinese, she

promptly took it the the organiser who she told us later, couldn’t sleep because she was

so ‘freaked out’ about the responsibility of whether Ankala should go first. She felt she

needed to put the line-up first because she felt ethically it was the right thing to do. At

this time Parramatta Council was also trying to create a Dreaming Festival along the

river and had invited the South Coast dancers Doonooch dancers and Bobbi McLeod to

perform at the festival. It was an exciting time to be heard as Aboriginal people and it

was an exciting time also that many non-Indigenous people felt obliged to really think

about their ethical priorities, especially while the world was watching.

In 2001 I did a workshop at the Spinks festival, Belgium, with Alan Dargin and then

after Spinks Festival I toured a scaled down Ankala through Germany and Slovenia. I

remember it was a funny experience because my partner and I had bought a house in the

highlands back from Sydney and we were expecting our first child. It was snowing

where Jocelyn was but for me I would ring her after being swimming all day in the

Mediterranean. We performed at the Turn Festival, Slovenia. We also went to a little

festival in Prno where we stayed at the radio station overlooking the city onto the

harbour. People loved didjeridu in these areas and since then a lot of didjeridu has

grown out of this region of Europe.

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On return to Australia I was busy preparing our house for the impending birth of our

child. It was always strange to return to Australia because most people in the small

country town we lived in thought I was spinning a yarn when I told them what I had

done in my career. They just couldn’t fathom that it was possible for an ‘Abo’ to do all

the things I had done. In fact, most the Aboriginal people in the town where we lived

didn’t talk about their Aboriginality. It was a strange experience not just for me but also

for my wife as both of us had never lived in a regional NSW country town and the

racism was prevalent. People would cross the road when they saw either myself or my

wife. Even though my wife became the Managing Editor of the local newspaper, she

was treated with an obvious lack of respect, even distain. We used to laugh to each other

that rumors around town must have been that I was an axe-murderer recently released

from goal and she had been a poll-dancer!

Never mind, my wife had the attitude of get even not mad, so she managed to lift the lid

on a couple of local scandals which gave her some satisfaction and made some locals

think about their attitudes. She also began to write poetry, something she had done as a

child but now was a way of documenting the attitudes of locals. I guess we were both

shocked because we had met in the inner-city of Sydney which is so much more

cosmopolitan. At least in the city, there are other like-minded people we could talk with.

In the country we were isolated and only reliant on each other. In fact, we spent quite a

bit of time in Canberra where I would busk. I had created a compilation of a few of my

songs and released them on my own steam and many weekends we would head down

the dusty track from the town we lived in to Canberra, about an hour 15 away, to busk

and catch up socially with people. Our other escape was the south coast, where we could

catch up with people who had more of an understanding of Aboriginal Australia and

could collaborate.

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Figure 32: CREATIVE SPACE: Escape from the country town we lived in to the South Coast of NSW was a frequent event. I was able to collaborate with local surfers and the Indigenous community. There were a few significant projects in the area at the time and one was the support of Indigenous surfers. I was asked to create a design for a long board for one of the local surfers which was a release from negative attitudes stereotypes of Aboriginal people.

By 2003 my daughter was just over a year old and I was an at home father whilst my

wife worked as the managing editor of the newspaper. I renovated the house while

babysitting. It was a good time to take some time out to reflect upon my music and art

and future directions. However, there was a lot of interest in me returning to Europe so

in 2004 with my wife and daughter we went for a six-week working holiday abroad so I

could keep my hand in the trade. I was a guest Yidaki player at festivals in Germany

(Berlin), Holland (Amsterdam) and Italy (Pinerolo). I also had an exhibition in Milan,

Italy. It was a fun thing to do as a family. It was interesting to see the spread of

didjeridu and people, even though they really didn’t know how to put on an art

exhibition, it was kind of ad hoc and organic so it was refreshing. It was kind of bring

your art, stretch it out, display it and if people liked it they’d buy it. It was refreshing

because it was the first time I had done that because usually at larger exhibitions there is

protocol and rules about the display of work as well as weeks of planning.

89    

Returning to my house with my family in Australia, I was beginning to think about my

future and my opportunities. I was beginning to think about getting more formal

qualifications because a lot of people didn’t believe me when I came back to Australia

that I had done as much as I had done, consistently, year after year, for so many years. I

decided I needed something more substantial if I was going to survive in Australia,

where respect for art and music is not a major form of industry – let alone if you are

Indigenous artists and musicians. The flurry of interest in Indigenous art had declined

once the Olympics had moved its show somewhere else although there were still tourists

coming to Australia. There was still a massive high-end art movement as online buyers

were able to purchase works direct from dealers. Also, galleries around the globe were

decentralizing their gaze to incorporate work from remote artists in Australia. Interest in

creating permanent gallery sites for Indigenous Australian art also increased to be

realized in such standing structures like Musee the Quay Branlee and others previously

mentioned.

However, living away from the cities and in regional Australia I found the old

stereotypes of what it meant to be Aboriginal were still very prevalent in the main

stream. I began to talk with my wife and think about future options. I decided to enrol in

a Graduate Certificate in Arts Management at the Victoria College of the Arts,

Melbourne University. Going back to study was an interesting process because when I

applied they were looking at people who already had an undergraduate but when I came

to the interview, I showed them my portfolio and they gave me Recognised Prior

Learning (RPL) because they could see I had more experience than a three-year

undergraduate. This inspired me to do my best in this one year course and it was a good

opportunity for me to mingle with other young Aboriginal artists who were doing things

and collaborate with people in contemporary arts world plus it was very enjoyable. I

think it also pushed me into looking at different style in my Aboriginal art by getting out

of one genre. I became a bit more free minded about my practice and a bit loser so I

could get a bit more narrative out of what I was doing. But this also led me to become

something of a minimalist with what I was doing, with my line work. I took my

traditional line work from Western Desert, which is part of my cultural background as

my muse, which I could use in a contemporary way to portray things. I began to use a

different palette and I began to show things in my palette like the colour of different

90    

flowers and rocks and different light from different times in my country. I even had

some of my friends say to me who are familiar with my geographic location of my

country that I have really portrayed the colours of my country and its energy.

However, Europe was still calling and by 2006 my family and I decided to take another

working holiday for fun. I did more gigs at festivals in Germany, Holland, France and

Italy.

Figure 33: TRANSFERENCE: My daughter Ningali playing at Le Reve de l’Aborigene Dans le respect de la nature et de l’humain, a didjeridu festival in France where I worked. I guess it was a unique experience for us as a family to take a break and be in a space where Aboriginal culture was embraced in the main stream, although we had to travel thousands of kilometers to celebrate it and participate both as a guest and a collaborator. Another festival we attended was the Inter-Celtique Festival, L’Orient. France. This

latter festival was interesting because there were Celtic people from all different parts of

the world. One of the Celtic Anglo Australians asked me as a Dutch Aboriginal with a

Scottish family name, what I was doing at a Celtic festival. I told him that Celtic people

had married into Aboriginal families such as the Forrest from the Firth of Forth, who

had migrated to the island that is now known as Australia. These families had married

into the sovereign peoples of both the coastal and interior nations. This is where I got

91    

my Scottish surname Forrest, whom I believe could have been Celts. I told this man

because of this inter-marriage we were now part of the Celtic world because the Celtic

world had come into our families and married our families. And also, it should be

celebrated that the survival of both cultures was being celebrated in another land that

also had Celtic migrations to another culture. I was asked by the director of the

Australian contingent if I would like to participate in the musicians march along the

streets of L’Orient and could I lead the section for the younger non-traditional Celtic

music that incorporated both worlds of music. To go on this parade I painted up half of

my body and wore shorts and shoes and as I walked along I noticed some of the band

leaders had this big long stick looking thing that they were spinning around. I thought

wow, my didjeridu was light enough to do this so as I was walking with my comrades

dancing behind me, I twirled my yidaki around and then I’d stop it and played it, giving

it toots with my voice. People loved it. It was a really, really, really exhilarating

experience to do this, what seemed like an ancient tradition of all the musicians

marching through the streets announcing their arrival and all the people in the streets

and people hanging out the windows of their houses, cheering us on. It was a carnival

atmosphere. When I returned to Australia, several people told me they had seen this

spinning of my didjeridu in the world news on SBS.

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Figure 34: L’ORIENT: I did several different types of performances at L’Orient in the main auditorium as well as as the leader in the Australian contingent of the Celtic band and with John Williamson in the auditorium.

I also played didjeridu with John Williamson in an auditorium in L’Orient. I had been

asked to play by Warren Fahey who had asked me to the festival84. He invited me on

stage to work with all of the contemporary young Celtic Australian musicians, which

included John Williamson. I opened this festival as the opening act with two Indigenous

young men who were my dancers for the performance. I had a didjeridu solo during

that performance. One of the family highlights was being asked to come and meet the

Governor of the L’Orient at his Chateau. The Govenor held a garden party for 20 of his

favourite acts he had seen from the festival to come and have a private song and perform

at his garden party. Lots of people laughed because my daughter who was in attendance

loved seeing the dancing and had to get up at every act, including mime and dance. She                                                                                                                          84  John  Williamson  is  a  famous  Australian  folk  singer  revered  by  many  for  his  localised    ballads  as  an  Australian.  He  voiced  against  environmental  destruction  of  Australian  bush  like  woodchipping.  Warren  Fahey  was  the  founding  director,  CEO  and  manager  of  Larrkin  records,  which  was  quite  a  large  indie  label  in  Australia.      

93    

was the delight of all the people from all the different groups present from around the

world. On return to Australia my partner and I got married. It was such a great wedding

because it was more like a party, which is what we wanted. We had some friends of

mine play, world music band, Arabesque, and all the people who attended from both

sides of the family and our friends, danced, no matter what age group. There was no

formal seating so everyone could mix and mingle and that was the beauty of it, that

everyone just relaxed and enjoyed the evening.

In 2007 I was convinced I should continue to pursue my academic studies. I graduated

from Melbourne University with First Class Honors for 50 percent of my degree and

second-class honors in the first charter. I was very proud of my achievements and for

the first time I felt it was like I could honestly say I knew what I was talking because of

my results. I wasn’t wrong and I did have an opinion and my opinion was valid. It

showed I had learnt something from my elders who had told me things and also through

my experience of travelling the world and being the musician and painter and exploring

these different spaces in the world where I could exist. I wasn’t just this Aboriginal man

without a ‘qualified opinion’ and it felt liberating. This led me to applying to go to

Sydney University to do a Masters in Art Curation, where even though I didn’t get the

honors marks from my previous degree, I achieved a credit average. I had a gap year

after my Masters was achieved and then I decided to jump in at the deep end when I saw

an advertisement from Charles Sturt University offering a position whereby working at

the university whilst researching my PhD. For one reason or another even though I was

successful in the application, they reneged on the position and offered me a place with

their PhD program.

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Figure 35: QUALIFIED OPINION: After my daughter was born I knew I would spend more time in Australia but I also knew my opinion was not respected as an Aboriginal man because many times I had come home from Europe and it was like I had an “invisible tag” when I talked about being a Wongi man in the 21st century world. I began to study and graduated here at Sydney University with a MA in curating.

I still was keeping my hand in as a performer but I was increasingly moving toward art

as my major form of expression. In 2006 I met up with John Williamson again at the

G20 summit where we performed together at the Melbourne MCG in the opening

ceremony. That year I was also asked to be in a group exhibition of Indigenous artists at

Melbourne University’s Wilin Centre, where I was flown down for the opening. The last

few years I have been studying towards my PhD completion and have been producing a

body of works for an exhibition as well.

This is a truly personal story about the impact of Indigenous Aboriginal art within

Australia and abroad and the dialogue, which now has surfaced around its impact and

direction. I am doing this study to find and explore my own history within contemporary

Australian Aboriginal art to understand how it was ignored, used, denied and finally

accepted to only start further dialogue as to whether the art is traditional or urban,

authentic or not. It is a story of ancient cultural practice adapted to a modern world of

material differences through the horrors of forced removals as we see schools of

Aboriginal children painting for their overlords at Carrolup with the paintings to be

bought and taken to Europe. It is also a story of how the art is viewed and from whose

perspective as well as the issue of reciprocity as we view the many case studies and

anecdotal stories of carpet bagging and government policy to the exposure of fraudulent

artists seeking rewards and profits from the misappropriation of works. It is also a

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personal journey, as I view and weave my own experiences as an Aboriginal artist and

musician with more than 20 years practical experience, with my own academic

development both as an art curator and now with my doctored reflection. It is a story

about the ‘three worlds’ in which I grew up and traversed as I journeyed between

traditional and urban Indigenous communities and mainstream Australian society, to

Europe and America with my artistic endeavours. It is about the transmutation of

Indigenous cultures, witnessed in my own life experience, within a contemporary

Indigenous context, connected to ancestors and their stories, which is also my heritage.

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Chapter 5: CONCLUSION

Significance of the study I believe that the significance of this study is that as a Wongutha person from the

Western Desert I am living and breathing the history of Aboriginal art in contemporary

Australia. Through my artistic and musical engagement globally I have presented my

version of the Aboriginal contemporary arts and how my practice shows that Aboriginal

people whilst maintaining the continuity of culture are engaging with the world and as a

result making a culture. I am a Wongatha man, who grew up with my communities.

Through my Wongi ancestry I claim my heritage and my country (i.e. maintaining the

continuity of culture). Through my relationship with my mother’s European country

(Nederlands) I claim Dutch heritage and I have spent many years working as an

Aboriginal artist and musician in Europe and the USA (i.e. engaging with the world). I

am a 21st century digital citizen (i.e. making a culture) who has experienced first-hand

the three worlds of Aboriginal culture, first those who are my family living on country;

second in contemporary Australian society as my father encouraged me to gain

education and employment opportunities in a large city; and third as a young man,

through my global journeys. I continue to practice in the interplay of these three worlds

and my experiences have given me an understanding of the dialogic between the

representations and misrepresentations formulated by non-Aboriginal people observing

Aboriginal culture and Indigenous Australians observing non-indigenous Australians

(and in my case Europeans as well). As the poster below – Crossing Border Festival –

illustrates the significance of my study resides in the story I have told of continually

crossing borders; borders that are simultaneously visible and/or invisible, aesthetic

and/or ethical, communicated and/or miscommunicated; borders that can be celebrated

and/or commiserated; but borders that my research depicts as a multi-faceted and multi-

dimensional journey into and from other worlds.

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Figure 36: STARK CONTRAST: In stark contrast people were fascinated by my Aboriginality in Europe and I performed at many invite only festivals to the great delight of the audiences. The Crossing Borders Literary Festival (flyer above) invited me to come and read poetry in 1994. This was the actual promotional poster for the event.

98    

Figure 37: GLOBAL IMPACT: Here I am painting ‘Brolgas Dancing’ for an exhibition in Ostrova, Czech Republic. 1996.

Visible/Invisible The project in my research was to explore my career in relationship and reflection

to the contemporary Aboriginal arts scene from the years from the late 80s to the

present day. By looking at the arts movement and its burgeoning popularity

through the late 80s and further, I have attempted to illustrate how this helped me

and other Aboriginal artists get work as a continuation and extension of our

culture. This was shown by me using the didjeridu as a contemporary performing

artist and led me to question whether reflection on personal cultural knowledge

can serve as a vehicle for a contemporary Aboriginal artist to engage with the

contemporary arts world? I believe that my research has answered my question in

the affirmative – it is possible to see the becoming visibility of Aboriginality in

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the becoming Aboriginality of Indigenous art. As a result the circumferences of

my three worlds shapes me as I shape them in a continuous loop of making and

remaking of concepts, cultures and customs.

Practice-led research There is a body of considerable literature on the relationship between practice and

research. At one end of the spectrum of this research by observing architects at work

Donald Schön85 identified the reflective practitioner as a type of researcher and the

process of reflective practice has become an influential rationale for why practice

can be research. At the other end of this research/practice literature, and a decade

later, Christopher Fraying86 reversed the observation when he identified three

trajectories for research – into, through and for – art and design, and now Frayling’s

terms are cited frequently to describe why research can be a creative practice.

Somewhat differently to Schön’s practitioner of a discipline and Frayling’s

directions of research, my life as a Western Desert Aboriginal artist and musician

has caused the method of my research to be a multi-faceted reflection on a multi-

dimensional practice. I have had to situate my research in relation to the developing

Global Indigenous art market that has emerged in the last thirty years – despite, in

defiance of, and around which – I have narrated my reflection of this experience as

living in “three worlds”; one, as a man whose identity has emerged within traditional

and contemporary Western Desert Aboriginal frames; two, as interaction with

Australian society and that of my mother’s European heritage; and three, as an arts

professional working both in Europe and the USA. Via my research I have then set

out to illustrate, via a new body of work, my reflections on my experience as an

Aboriginal artist and musician and depict the multi-dimensions than my practice.

Even though I have no qualifications in a western art school, I have been fortunate to

grow up knowing the likes of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarra, Malcolm Jagamarra,

Turkey Tolson, Tjuparulla and was fortunate enough for these men to have shown

me stories and helped me develop my own artistic style to portray the stories that I

have in common with these men and other men of the same skins. Likewise, my

                                                                                                                         85  Schön,  D.    86  Frayling,  C.    

100    

experience as a musician giving didjeridu workshops and performances across the

globe, as well as creating and performing in the world music band ‘Ankala’ in

Europe, has left me with an indelible stamp of how people perceive Indigenous

Australians and how they interpret what we have to say into their worlds. For

example, often in my didjeridu workshops I would tell students to make the sound of

their own animals in their country, like cows, rather than try and emulate the sounds

of Australia and my country in their work. I also have gained insight through my

performance experience as an artist and musician, into the transference of

Indigenous culture between generations. My practical experience helps me

gesticulate how contemporary Western Desert arts can portray a reflection of

personal cultural knowledge. My exhibitions also reinforce my experience of this. I

have exhibited at the Museum de Volkerkunder, the Hilton Hotel chain in the United

States of America, Australian Consular General, New York, as well as in various

private galleries in Europe, like Hilton Hotel, Vienna, Hundert Wasser Haus, Vienna

and the Imperial Hotel, Ostrava, Czech republic. Music in performance is also a

legitimate form of cultural expression in Western Desert culture as is art. I have been

a guest artist on several albums, including German flautist Peter Fassbender’s

‘Kookaburra Flute Prof.eaming’. I have also created two of my own world music

albums by my band, Ankala, which were released by German world music label,

Network Medien, in 1996 and 2000. In 2004 I released a compilation album of

music from my previous CDs.

Using my formal curating skills and my professional experience in the arts, my

project addresses the exegesis and is presented in a multi-media format. I have

layered my worlds with my works to make visible how the conflicting forces in the

becoming of Aboriginal art and identity are reflected not simply internally, as

described by Schön’s reflective practitioner, but externally in continuous

confrontation with indigenous invisibilty.

In addition to my review of the literature my research has been mostly

autobiographical reflections and observations as a Western Desert Aboriginal person

who has experienced the Aboriginal arts revolution. This methodology has allowed

for the creation of new and fresh primary source material to be utilized, therefore I

am presenting my research in a dialogic combination of 50% exegesis and 50%

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exhibition. It is important to add that the contextual framework sits within the

contemporary dialogue of the impact of Indigenous art but refers to antiquity with

respect to what Indigenous people have always practiced and known.

Framework for the production of my artwork As I stated at the outset of this text it is important to consider my thesis within the

framework of particular research conditions and contexts – in the contradictory contexts

of the becoming art of being Aboriginal seen in works of non-Aboriginal artists (such as

Preston and Durack), and the becoming of the Aboriginal art narrative seen from

anthropologists (such as Prof.. Meyers), to art to a global market. My research reflects

on my becoming an Aboriginal artist from the Western Desert seen from my three

worlds and I have questioned the becoming art of being Aboriginal this context of

indigenous and non-indigenous counter observations. The production of the artworks

that form half of this research was guided by the same table that framed the exegesis and

it is reproduced below. I used this table as a guide to generate new paintings and decide

which existing artworks I would include in the exhibition. Each artwork is then

exhibited as part of my ‘one and three worlds’, a phrase I explain below. The artwork is

exhibited alongside a photograph of the same work, plus a lengthy wall text describing

the principle behind the artwork – that is which dichotomy in my thesis it is

representative of, or in some cases purposely misrepresentative of. Included in this

exhibition but not described by this table are my recordings. They are outside the table

as they are elements of what is known as world music, which is a sizeable topic outside

the range of this reflection. Even though I have told so much of my story as I developed

as an international musician it was the becoming global of Aboriginal Art that caused

most of the friction, captured in my encounter with Prof. Meyers, that sparked my desire

to embark on this research project.

102    

Western Desert Urban Artist Visible/Invisible Produce a painting that

shows to a person from the Western Desert multiple stories yet the main figurative and title of the story would only suggest one theme.

Living as a Western Desert man in urban society, how would my art show the visible/invisible aspect of the painting to an urban audience?

I have produced a painting ‘Wanambi Kutjarra’ which figuratively represents the story of the two rainbow serpents yet iconography hidden within the painting is visible to those who know what the actual meaning is. This shows you can paint something visible/invisible to an audience who doesn’t have the understanding yet be visible to those who understand.

Ethic/Aesthetic Produce an artwork of something that belongs culturally from my country and paint it in a way that is contemporary and modern.

Combine elements of both Western, European urban worlds to produce a piece of work that displays something about my culture but would appeal to an urban market.

I have created a surfboard that has a story and symbolic representation of the Kalkurla (bush banana) that uses vibrant modern colours and a flowing motion that aesthetically works with the product.

Communication/ Miscommunication

From a Western Desert our paintings have always been a story of communication and the consequences of miscommunication.

In an urban European setting I have chosen an artist whom I believe in her communication she was miscommunicating Aboriginal culture.

I take the art that I am looking at and jumble it so the art is not anything to do with what it was originally communicating.

Representation/ Misrepresentation

Produce a piece that describes and shows this from a Western Desert perspective.

Is there any painting that you could find in a collection that you could supply a copy of that shows this misrepresentation as representing Aboriginal art.

Create a work which shows how this is possible.

Method Understanding cultural protocols of what is allowable in an open and public manner so not to offend any of my community members.

Use whatever resources available be they photos, prints, stills from movies or any media form to create a piece of art.

Understanding cultural protocols whilst using available resources to create a piece of art that won’t be culturally offensive to my people at home.

Table 2: My Three Worlds: painting

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Looking at this information above there are many more and different examples that have

inspired my research and reflection. I used this material to produce the body of work in

my exhibition to get across the point of what I am saying in my text. As a curator I have

edited both text and artworks to revolve around my story as one possible answer to the

questions cast some time ago after I discovered I had been ‘interviewed’ by Prof.

Meyers.

One and three worlds

From the perspective of my three worlds the resulting paintings become one and three

worlds. What I mean by that is first the Western Desert tradition is the original given to

me by my ancestors. The second of my one and three worlds is my urban/European

coming to me through a mixture of representation and misrepresentation and through

which I can only imitate the original. The third of my one and three worlds is me as the

artist where I acknowledge that I have been given knowledge that I must first imitate

before I can interpret so it is a world of imitation of imitation producing new original

stories and images to circulate back into traditional knowledge.

The one and three worlds is a paraphrase of Joseph Kosuth’s conceptual artwork – One

and three Chairs87– which when installed consists of any chair, a one-to-one

photographic print of that chair in the gallery/museum, and an authorised wall-text

dictionary definition of a chair. Kosuth’s idea itself plays with the Plato’s notion of

Mimesis as illustrated by ‘three beds’ in Book X of the Republic – the original bed is

given to us by God, an imitation of God’s version is done by the carpenter, and

imitating the imitation by the carpenter bed is a painting of a bed by the artist.88

I am not claiming originality in my concept for my research, nor am I claiming it is

traditional or a secret from my ancestors. As Prof. Meyers concludes the unsettling

business of my apparently questionable evidence;

“At this point, then, I have learned to recognize that the men who attended the

funeral of Jenyuweri’s grandfather can reasonably be understood as having been

‘‘warriors’’—bearers of social value, and to see in this resignification the everyday

                                                                                                                         87  For  a  description  of  this  project  refer  to  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art’s  website;  https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/joseph-­‐kosuth-­‐one-­‐and-­‐three-­‐chairs-­‐1965  88  Plato  (2013)  Republic,  (Ed.)  Chris  Emlyn-­‐Jones  &  William  Preddy,  Cambridge,  Loeb  Classical  Library,  Harvard  University  Press,  p401  

104    

work of culture.”89

My research project has been about the resignification of not just the everyday work of

culture as Prof. Meyers sees my story, but of my everyday work from the three worlds

lived and expressed in this exegesis and the accompanying artworks. Responding to

Prof.. Myers has taken me into new areas of scholarship and prompted a new body of

work as

I reflect on the becoming of Aboriginal art and my experienced from the inside (not as

an anthropologist), which led me to question the relationship between the aesthetics and

the ethics of this becoming. I have also questioned the becoming visibility of Aboriginal

art from the invisibility of Aboriginal people, which led to both misrepresentation and

miscommunication about both Aboriginal people and their art. In conclusion it should

be apparent that the experience of life as an Aboriginal person is one of constant search,

and therefore re-search; search for recognition and re-search for signification.

The significance of my research plus reflection represented in my paintings is a method

to illustrate a response to the fluid recognition to being Aboriginal inside its constant

becoming when seen from outside.

My wish is that my research conveys the impact of the becoming of the Aboriginal art

narrative that has created a dialogue about art and the humanities world-wide, and the

importance to have experienced this phenomena whilst also questioning, through

research, its affect. To participate in this artistic revolution I became a bearer of social

value, both a living and ancestral “warrior”, which is something I could not gain from

instruction or living solely on my ngurra (country) or even remaining in Australia – I

had to go and find that third space, becoming an Aboriginal visual and performing artist

in this post-colonial international third space.

                                                                                                                         89  Myers  (2004)  p265  

105    

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