CONTEMPORARY ART

OF AUSTRALIA & ASIA-PACIFIC

Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Quarterly
AUS $19.50 | NZ $19.50

waters
futures
__languages
INDIGENOUS
Kin Constellations
VISIT…
ONLINE EXHIBITION

View online at recesspresents.art

8 May
11 July

recess presents
Curated by Olivia Koh

Arts South Australia

n

Paul Maheke, Tout en sollicitant le soleil (cupola 1/2), 2012, single channel digital video.
pe

Image: Paul Maheke. Performer: Francis Beaumont Deslauriers

_o
@ace
 Our art fair will look
different this year
Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Foundation provides vibrant and
August 2020 exciting platforms for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
art and culture with a reputation for innovation, diversity and
cultural integrity.

In 2020, the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair will be presented

online, giving audiences the opportunity to interact and
purchase art from Australian Indigenous owned community
Art Centres.

For more information please visit:

www.daaf.com.au
Artwork: Michelle Woody, Ngiya Murrakupupuni, Natural ochres from Melville Island on canvas, 120x90cm. 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Jilamara Arts
Cover image:
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili painting Baratjala with recycled
print toner and earth pigments on stringybark. Image
courtesy of the artist and Buku Larrŋgay Mulka
Photo: David Wickens

Artlink is a quarterly themed magazine on

contemporary art and culture from Australia and
the Asia-Pacific. The opinions expressed are not
necessarily those of the editor or publisher. Artlink has
peer review status as an independent journal for critical
writing on the contemporary visual arts in compliance
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Artlink INDIGENOUS__Kin Constellations

Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Guest editors Léuli Eshrāghi and Kimberley Moulton
Executive Editor Eve Sullivan
Finance & Administration Manager Amanda Macri
Advertising & Communications Matthew Hill
Creative Director Marita Leuver, Leuver Design
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Issue 40:2__June 2020
INDIGENOUS
Kin Constellations
__languages
waters
futures
06___ Editorial 54___ A conversation with Perisak Juuso
Léuli Eshrāghi and Kimberley Moulton Irene Snarby

11___ Dindi Thangi Wudungi 62___ Making Inuit art in the moment
Brendan Kennedy asinnajaq

12___ Knowledge positions in Aotearoa and
Turtle Island art museums
Léuli Eshrāghi in conversation with
Kathleen Ash-Milby, Maia Nuku and Nigel Borell
24___ Yuki Kihara: New guises
Ioana Gordon-Smith
28___ Punāʻoa, Resources
Léuli Eshrāghi
30___ qšiqšimuʔ, many stars, many olivella
Sarah Biscarra Dilley
32___ palawa kani: Expressing the power of language
in art and the museum context
Zoe Rimmer and Theresa Sainty
66___ Jeremy Dutcher: Wolastoqiyik futurities
rudi aker
70___ Notes from Kahoʻolawe, Ka Paeʻāina o Hawaiʻi,
Moananuiākea
Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick and Josh Tengan
82___ Kin‑dling and other radical relationalities
Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet
90___ Sovereign Acts: In the wake
The Unbound Collective
96___ Looking for murnong
Lou Bennett and Romaine Moreton
101__ Review

36___ Jack Anselmi and Cynthia Hardie: Midden

Belinda Briggs

40___ Everything together: Partisan ecologies and painting

Clothilde Bullen

44___ Weaving memory, living embodiment

Freja Carmichael
More reviews and
48___ Reconnecting the Yaghan community to
online archive at
cultural belongings: 90 years on
Rebecca Carland artlink.com.au
 Kin Constellations
__languages
waters
futures

Dungala (Murray) River

Courtesy Museums Victoria
Photo: Tiffany Garvie

6 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020


In this edition of Artlink, we consider
Ancestral materiality, intellectual
traditions and expressions spanning
the great oceans, skies and lands
connecting the kin and Country of
First Peoples from around the world.
We see the artistic, economic and
cultural paradigms as a reflection
on life and death, on black holes
and shining stars illuminated as
constellations in the night skies from
the times of our Ancestors and traced
in the footprints made on the lands
we travel. In so doing, we ardently
love and connect with our kin,
known and not-yet-known, human
and beyond-human, recognising
commonalities and differences as we
fight for the continuation of cultural
practices. Extending outwards from
Australia, we consider Ancestral
memory, temporality and being
through languages, waters and futures
that are living and expansive.
In a world where many things are
changing, care for Country, care for
body, and care for creativity is what
will keep us going. When we planted
the seed for Artlink Indigenous, Kin
Constellations, it was our connections
to kin across the world, demonstrated
through our diversity, strength and
languages as First Peoples, that we
wanted to highlight. In the midst of
COVID-19, life as we know it has
changed forever. Across the world
we all have an equal goal to survive
in health, be generous and caring in
the present time of great unknowns,
fears and anxieties but also possible
futures as an improvement on what
we can currently imagine. The forced
isolation of the world has allowed us
time for reflection on how we live,
work, consume and treat ourselves.
Hannah Brontë, a Yaegel and Wakka
Wakka artist based in Brisbane posted
the following text-based work on her
Instagram (the meeting place, cooking
channel, art gallery, library, museum
and Saturday club in Corona times):
“Now that
You are
Trapped
On Planet
You
Do you
Like the
Eco system”
This is a prescient reminder that
sometimes we let capitalist life get
in the way of connecting to our
deepest being and consciousness.
The expansive globetrotter life can
be “reduced” to our neighbourhood
in a matter of weeks, teaching us
Editorial
to once more tread lightly and with
gratitude. Has the world become so
disembodied, so dissociated, from
itself—and by extension the worlds of
First Peoples—that we can’t sit with
ourselves in the moment, and truly
appreciate what we have become, and
what distance we must traverse to
return to the balanced, Earth-centred
worlds of our Ancestors? How can we
move forward in a more grounded,
simpler, healthier way? What kind
of new caring political order can we
create to ensure that those working
in essential services such as health,
education, food, knowledge and
cultural life are appreciated, and the
benefits better distributed, as we move
to a sustainable low-growth economy,
not reliant on the excesses of consumer
capitalism, anthropocentricism
and the fossil‑fuel industries that
have brought our civilisation to
the brink of utter collapse?
Now is a time in which creative
constellations that rotate and interrelate
can provide dynamic spaces for relief
and healing; escaping into an artwork
or being moved by a text can be the
highlight or saviour of the day or night.
The ways we consume and digest have
shifted and are slowing down, so that
we are reading more, talking, painting,
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 7
Editorial
crafting, drawing, moving and using
our creativity and our capacity for
genuine care with purpose. The
many forms of cultural expression
have also shifted to extensive digital
experiences, with the availability of
the internet—a luxury, we appreciate,
is not so readily accessible to the
majority of peoples on this Earth.
The relational experience of
viewing film, sitting with text or
meditating on visual art through a
screen will never replace the tangibility
of space—of being in the presence of a
performer, a storyteller, a master artist
or a poet reading their own work at a
writers’ festival. But it is the digital
constellation where our connections
are evolving into a new era of art and
making; for First Nations peoples,
our cultures and practices on these
platforms are integral to forging on.
Considering continuities and
futurities: all of us begin in the womb
nurtured by our mothers, and from this
life force we grow; with the first gasp
of air taken, our journey into this world
derives from thousands of Ancestors
before us. We carry this blood memory
of Kin—inherited and chosen, of
hxstories and knowing our lands, our
waters, through to our last exhale, until
it is time to go back to the earth—our
8 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
spirit carried in the memories of others
and the ground we once walked.
Profiled in this edition of Artlink,
the Unbound Collective ends their
Sovereign Acts series with moving
realisations and reflections on grieving
and healing states of being and
knowing, building on the significant
visionary work they have achieved
in returning love and dignity to
Ancestors whose incomplete memory
sits unsettled in Australian colonial
archives and museum collections. With
Lou Bennett and Romaine Moreton,
we learn to see, feel, touch and smell
the murnong‑growing regions of
“south-eastern Australia” via the quest
for a Rematriation of language and
Country. With new-found reverence for
this very special of Ancestor plants and
the continuing Indigenous historical
texts held within the land itself
we come to consider how Western
structures of “colonial coding” relating
to Country can be dismantled.
Delving with care into the wahi
pana, storied landscapes, of the sacred
island Kahoʻolawe with Kanaka ʻŌiwi
custodians and artists Josh Tengan
and Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick
impart renewed understanding of
the Indigenous ceremonies, celestial
navigation and knowledge systems
that surpass militourist control to
connect the Hawaiian Islands to
Tahiti, Te Ika a Māui, and further,
beyond the present US occupation.
Struggles for Indigenous lands
and lives reach us from Sápmi in
“northern Europe” in the generous
portrait by Irene Snarby of pioneering
senior Sámi artist and Duodji master
Perisak Juuso whose cultural memory
of Sámi territories, languages
and seasonal mobility inform his
numerous artistic innovations.
In a transcontinental interview,
Kathleen Ash-Milby, Maia Nuku
and Nigel Borell gift us stories
of learning and experiences that
have transformed their practices as
Indigenous curators working in major
art museums in Turtle Island and
Aotearoa. Zoe Rimmer and Theresa
Sainty poetically explore the indelible
relationship to Country and culture
of Pakana art‑making practices and
palawa kani language, detailing
stories of creation Ancestors and
the new generations now speaking
language. In Karu’kinka, across the
Great Ocean from lutruwita, Rebecca
Carland recounts the incredible
journey of cultural reconnection she
and Camila Marambio have fostered
between Yaghan communities in
 Editorial

Murnong plant
Courtesy Museums Victoria
Photo: Heath Warwick

Santiago, Chile, and their Ancestral

belongings long-dormant in Museums
Victoria Collections in Melbourne.
We are thrilled to share further
reflections on compelling practices
that include language work, humour,
suburbia, and the Indigenous
renaissance in song‑ and image‑
making, with Inuit artists Darcie
Berhardt and Kablusiak profiled
by asinnajaq, Polaris 2019 Award
winner Wolastoqey singer-composer,
Jeremy Dutcher, profiled by rudi
aker, and Japanese–Sāmoan artist
Yuki Kihara, representing Aotearoa
at the Venice Biennale in 2021,
profiled by Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Visual and spoken sovereignty
is shared by Brendan Kennedy,
connecting Mother Earth and who skilfully work clay into poetic Walker. Clothilde Bullen’s beautiful
language in a song and an exuberant ceramic forms that honour the shell profile on senior Madarrpa artist
painting with messages of care and middens and the cultural knowledges Noŋgirrŋa Marawili and Mangalili
warning. Shell‑sharing exchanges held in Woka (land). Freja Carmichael artist Naminapu Maymuru-White
and ceremonies underlying Sarah in turn tells a powerful hxstory of conveys the importance of continuing
Biscarra Dilley’s work from yak Indigenous fibre knowledges and Yolŋu moiety- and place-derived
tityu tityu yak tiłhini territory in careful tending to territories spanning responsibilities for hxstories,
turn refuse waves of colonial the shores of the Great Ocean, through highlighting their continued innovation
dispossession in “central California,” ungaire, buckie rush, black palm and of visual languages depicting storied
a sovereignty also never ceded. red cedar, with Bundjalung artist places in both painters’ œuvres.
Belinda Briggs takes us on a Kylie Caldwell, Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, Since the early start to the
journey further upstream on Dungala, Stó:lō, Irish, Métis, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, devastating bushfire season across
with lauded Yorta Yorta artists Jack Swiss artist T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Australia, we have moved in
Anselmi and Aunty Cynthia Hardie, Wyss, and Kuku Yalinji artist Delissa calamitous waves from floods

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 9

Editorial
to disease, from unjust deaths in
custody to judicial and political
collusion with tax‑evading fossil
fuel corporations, particularly on
Wangan and Jagalingou Country by
Adani, and in Wet’suwet’en sovereign
territories by Coastal Gaslink. In
this protracted indoor isolation time,
Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet
bring vignettes from recent fireside
gatherings on Lenapehoking territory,
where they share kinstillatory methods
of connection and world-making,
including food, story, drumming
beneath the starlit sky, and that key
purificatory Indigenous practice in
so many cultures—fire. Now, more
than ever, we can shift alliances back
to Earth‑centred worlds that have
been suppressed or dormant, and yet
offer vital Indigenous sovereignty,
as worlds of balance and reciprocity,
waiting to be nurtured once more.
We invite you to sit with the
generous voices, hxstories and
knowledges shared in each of the
commissioned texts. We hope
you, like us, take much solace and
inspiration to tread lighter and care
more deeply for these—our cherished
practices—of creativity, ceremony,
being on land and living our ways,
beyond the devastating colonial
10 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
realities, to prepare for the challenges
ahead for all living beings on our
planet. Multiple recent publications
that we recognise, and that provide
welcome perspective and momentum
for the necessary rebalancing of
our societies, include: Becoming
Our Future: Global Indigenous
Curatorial Practice (2020), edited
by Julie Nagam, Carly Lane and
Megan Tamati‑Quennel; Sovereign
Words: Indigenous Art, Curation and
Criticism (2018), edited by Katya
García-Antón; and the artist book
NIRIN NGAAY (2020), handmade
by printmakers Trent Walters and
Stuart Geddes, and edited by Brook
Andrew and Jessyca Hutchens for
the 22nd Biennale of Sydney.
Our cultures as First Peoples are
inherent, not a choice—no more so
than our first breath of air. We do not
decide to “be” Indigenous peoples,
we cannot choose to connect to the
lands and waters we are responsible
for, or our languages that encompass
and enable our being in relationship
with all of creation. In the cities or
the bush—on concrete and atolls,
the tundras and prairies, that vast
chasm between the stars and the
dirt, the in-between is all of us—the
relational space of kinship is tangible,
thick in the air that surrounds us,
separates us and brings us together.
Rivers, rains and the Great
Ocean flow through our veins
keeping our hearts pumping and
our ceremonies possible, the great
mountains and plains, creeks and
sand hills of Country make strong our
bones, and keep supple and porous
our skin, so that the winds and our
smoking ceremonies can permeate
to cleanse our souls and hold us,
grounded where we are, and where
we need to go in the futures already
designed by our Ancestors before us.
Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan artist,
curator, NIRIN: 22nd Biennale of Sydney
commissioned artist, and Horizon/Indigenous
Futures postdoctoral fellow at Concordia
University, Montreal, whose display territories
centre Indigenous bodies, languages and
knowledges.
Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta curator,
writer and Senior Curator, South-Eastern
Aboriginal Collections at Museums Victoria,
Melbourne, who works with knowledges,
histories and futures at the intersection of
historical and contemporary art and making.
Brendan Kennedy
Dindi Thangi Wudungi
I am of the Tati Tati, Latji Latji, Wadi Wadi, Mutti Pulki Pulki Bapurra thangurra matha delki
Mutti, Yitha Yitha and Nari Nari peoples of the Murray (Old Mother Earth is not happy)
River, Murrumbidgee River, Lachlan River, Edwards Song by Brendan Kennedy in
River and Wakool River Country in Australia. Mutti Mutti Language
I continue to practice and share my Ancestral
peoples connection to Mother Earth through my art, Pulki Pulki Bapurra thangurra matha
songs, dance, language, cultural heritage, customs, delki thangurra kulethwil kili kima
beliefs, spirituality and knowledges. I care for Country Very old our Mother Earth is not happy
and my people and I will remain on Country forever, our Earth is angry this here now
just as my Ancestral people always have since creation.
Bapurra thangurra wukatha kathai ngawingi
nga pukatha kirtapin karrawi wilangi
Our Mother Earth is giving the
hot sun and make big wind
Brendan Kennedy
Wangilatha Bapurra Thangurra, 2016
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Courtesy the artist and the Telstra National
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, 2016

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 11

Knowledge positions in Aotearoa
and Turtle Island art museums
Léuli Eshrāghi interviews
Indigenous curators Kathleen
Ash-Milby (Portland Art Museum),
Maia Nuku (Metropolitan Museum
of Art) and Nigel Borell (Auckland
Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki)
12 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Léuli Eshrāghi___Could you start by individually situating
yourselves in relation to your Ancestral territory, nation
and language, and where you now live and work? Who
do you count among your curatorial constellation of
leaders and mentors?
Kathleen Ash-Milby___I am Tódích’íi’nii (Bitter Water
Clan), born for Bilagáana (White) and a member of the
Navajo Nation. I am the Curator of Native American
Art at the Portland Art Museum, in Portland, Oregon,
where I have worked since July 2019. I am new to this
territory, the Ancestral homelands of the Willamette
Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah
and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya
who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of
Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities
who made their homes along the Columbia River.
I feel incredibly blessed to be one of a generation of
art curators, Native and non-Indigenous, who have been
part of a sea change in the representation of Native art,
especially contemporary Native art, in museums throughout
the United States. These colleagues include heather
ahtone, Paul Chaat Smith, Karen Kramer, John Lukavic,
Ryan Rice (who practiced in the US for several years),
Christina Burke, and more. We are all the beneficiaries
of mentorship and encouragement from scholars, senior
artists, and previous curators who believed in this work
when few people were paying attention in academia or the
museum field. For me, these inspiring folks include Jaune
Quick-to-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, James Luna, Lillian
Pitt, Jolene Rickard, W. Jackson Rushing, Ruth Phillips,
Janet Berlo, Margaret Archuleta, and Joanna Bigfeather.
Nigel Borell___My tribal affiliations are Ngāti Ranginui,
Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea, Te Rarawa and Ngāti
Apakura. My parents are from the Bay of Plenty region
of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, but they
moved to suburban Manurewa, south Auckland in the early
1970s where my siblings and I were raised. I still live in
Manurewa today, commuting daily to Auckland city and my
role as curator of Māori art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o
Tāmaki. I feel fortunate to include Megan Tamati-Quennell
and Ngahiraka Mason among the senior Māori curators that
have contributed to my own development offering advice
Virgil Ortiz
Clay Figure from Tourniquet Series, 2009
white clay slip, red clay slip, and black
(wild spinach) paint on Cochiti red clay
Collection, Portland Art Museum, Portland,
Oregon, purchased with funds provided by
Elizabeth Cole Butler Auction Proceeds
© Virgil Ortiz
and support and in later years working collaboratively
and collegially with them both has been special. I
think the greatest influence on my curatorial practice
has come from outside the field and found across the
wider sector of Māori cultural development. Working
under tohunga whakairo (master carver) Paki Harrison
and kowhaiwhai artist Peter Boyd in my early career
had a huge impact on my understanding of matauranga
Māori (Māori knowledge systems) and Māori art which
continues to influence my thinking and curating today.
Maia Nuku___My name is Maia Jessop Nuku and I am
of British and Māori descent. Torere is the Ancestral
home of our iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tai, in the eastern Bay of
Plenty on the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
We are descendants of Tōrerenuiārua and Manaakiao.
Our mountain is Kapuārangi and Wainui is our river.
Māori is our language. A major early influence for me
was my Māori grandmother Hera Kerr (née Mio) who
helped raise me in London where I was born. She laid
the groundwork for learning to honour distinct aspects of
myself and this multi-dimensionality plays out a lot for
me now in curatorial life as museum work is, in its very
nature, multifarious. One has to be agile, comfortable
even, shifting in and across thresholds and balancing
different aspects of yourself in the mahi (work).
I count many in my constellation of curatorial leaders
and mentors. I connected early on with artists Brett
Graham, John Pule and Sofia Tekela-Smith during my 20s
in Auckland, taking the opportunity to join them on visits
with the senior artist Selwyn Muru to Paris and London,
even Spain when they visited Europe. Each in their own
way inspired and encouraged my formative ideas in the
field. Reading the work of Maualaivao Albert Wendt,
Epeli Hauʻofa and Teresia Teaiwa was hugely influential
when I was starting out and I embraced the energy with
which they pushed the creative boundaries of scholarship
in exciting and dynamic directions. Their contributions
helped me to understand curatorial practice as a dynamic
and creative output in its own right. Since arriving at the
Met, Arapata Hakiwai (Kaihautū, Te Papa Tongarewa)
has been enormously supportive of my endeavours here.
Early on, we explored ways in which we might animate
the legacy of Te Maori between our two institutions.
14 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Te Maori was a landmark exhibition that the Met hosted
in New York in 1984 which set important new precedents
in terms of consultation and shared decision‑making
between museums and Indigenous communities. In many
ways, the work I am currently doing at the Met looks to
reinvigorate the portal that was opened by those kaumatua
(Elders) who travelled with our taonga (Ancestral art)
to New York 35 years ago. The collaborative model
established by Te Maori allows me to explore ways
in which an expansive curatorial practice can extend
the very notion of kaitiakitanga (custodianship) in
museums—one that sees taonga moving around the world
establishing relationships and nurturing alliances, in many
respects just as they were originally designed to do.
LE___Which practices do you most align with and feel
responsible to represent and frame in your museological
work? How far does this take you, in writing, curating
and supporting artists from your own Ancestral territory,
nation or language?
KAM___In my previous positions as the co-director of the
American Indian Community House Gallery and as an
associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of
the American Indian, both in New York City, I have focused
on the study and exhibition of Native art. I definitely have
a passion for contemporary Native art, especially artists
who push boundaries and work in modes and methods
that might initially be perceived as “non-traditional.”
Working directly with artists, writing about their work,
spending time with them in the studio getting to know their
process and thinking is exciting and fascinating. I love
being able to serve as a bridge for these artists, getting
their work into exhibitions and collections, and acting as
an advocate and interlocutor of sorts through my writing.
In my new position at the Portland Art Museum,
I now have much broader and diverse responsibilities.
These include the care, study, and exhibition of an entire
collection of Native American art from the western
hemisphere, including work created over hundreds of
years. These new challenges are simultaneously exciting,
stimulating and humbling. I have much to learn, but
I am honoured to be entrusted with stewarding the
legacy of this diverse collection, and I feel strongly
about the importance of advocacy and representation of
contemporary Native people in the care of this collection.
My background is in Native American art history,
which had a broad focus on the arts of North America.
Although there will always be a special place in my heart for
Navajo art and artists, I work with a much wider range of
artists. I do think the sensitivity and knowledge of my own
culture and practices do enhance my work. This field and
this work have too much depth and diversity, I will always
need to be learning which is both daunting and wonderful.
NB___I think most Indigenous art curators feel the weight
of trying to represent them all! Collection-wise, there is
some urgency to tell better and more fully the developments
in contemporary Māori art of the past twenty years
(including moving image and digital media developments,
which are often not well represented). Of course, these
directions can be very institution-specific. I am also
interested in collecting works that question the conventional
boundaries of institutional collection practices. We have
recently acquired some stunning Māori body adornment
and jewellery pieces and the artist has requested that these
pieces must be worn on the body; to be kept “warm,”
so not just static objects that are placed on the gallery
wall. This has been a fascinating exercise for collection
practices and represents some interesting paradigm shifts.
There are many artists’ contributions that need to
be urgently shared within our institutions and within the
national narrative. I also value that my area of expertise and
interest is in Māori art (both customary and contemporary),
which is also the focus of my curatorial work. For me
it’s not about trying to speak about/or on behalf of other
peoples’ histories and cultures without their input or
cultural authority, so this sometimes dictates the pace
of wider cross-Indigenous curatorial collaboration.
MN___I now live in New York where I am the Associate
Curator for Oceanic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. I look after a collection of some two thousand works
of art from Pacific islands and archipelagos that stretch
across a vast expanse of ocean spanning almost a third
of the globe. The outstanding mobility of Pacific peoples
over the course of centuries was the catalyst for the
flourishing of this kaleidoscopic range of cultures and art
traditions—some 20,000 islands and close to 1,800 different
cultures and language groups—all of whom share common
ancestry. Customary knowledge, rich oral traditions, the
genealogical landscape—these overarching conceptual ideas
are key aspects of Pacific culture that were, and continue
to be, channelled via the vehicle of art. Ultimately, I’m
interested in finding ways to creatively deploy these local
ontologies—that is, distinctly Pacific ways of knowing
and being in the world—so we can share these strategies
for life and create new avenues of understanding.
I am currently working on designs with architects
for new Oceania galleries to display our permanent
collection. It’s a huge and exciting project that will allow
us to reframe the collection for the first time in forty years.
My ambition is to inspire on a conceptual as well as a
visual level. Much of the work I do is grounded in this
approach: presenting Pacific art from the inside out—so
that Māori and Pacific worldviews are acknowledged
and celebrated by audiences who may have little or no
knowledge about the Pacific at all. This is strategic in the
sense that it guides visitors not only to a clearer appreciation
of the Pacific itself, it’s also an opportunity to present
people with an Indigenous template for better navigating
their own 21st-century lives in New York and beyond.
LE___What are some of the continuing ceremonial and
kinship-based practices in your communities that enable
you to work beyond a settler/colonised dichotomy?
KAM___One of the most essential things I have
learned over the years from my own community-based
experiences, both with my family and others, is that some
knowledge is not meant to be shared with everyone.
This is a contrast to Western philosophy that positions
knowledge as something that cannot be owned and
should not be restricted. I think this is something that I
initially resisted but have learned to value and respect
over time through the experience of ceremony and
learning from the Elders of various communities.
NB___I find many institutions today in Aotearoa are
practised at observing ceremonial protocol as they
pertain to the work of the art institution and Indigenous
cultures. I find the real challenge for institutions is in
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 15
Jahra Wasasala Rager performs
God-House (bure kalou) in Oceania galleries
at Met World Cultures Festival, 26 October
2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York. Photo: Dan Taulapapa McMullin
how they move beyond the “power of symbolism”—
which is often noted/serviced by engaging ceremony—to
see more tangible gains in how institutions understand
and share power in determining the work and
relationships with Māori and Māori communities.
MN___Broadly speaking, all Pacific art is a vehicle
to access story as a means to channel knowledge and
animate Ancestral connections. As soon as I arrived at the
museum, I hoped to find ways to animate the galleries,
to populate the space with Pacific voices. Yet one of the
challenges of looking after a collection is the static nature
of display. How do we convey to visitors the dynamic,
sensual repertoire of words, gesture and dance that were
originally conceived as an integral part but are now absent?
All of the collaborative projects I do with artists aim to
activate this aspect of our practice as Pacific peoples.
Last year, we commissioned a work from the fiercely
talented dancer and choreographer Jahra Wasasala Rager
(Viti/Aotearoa). God-House (bure kalou) (2019) was
inspired by one of my first exhibitions at the museum
ATEA: Nature & Divinity in Polynesia that featured
extraordinary 18th- and 19th-century Polynesian atua
(deities). Jahra used the opportunity to open up a dynamic
and critical space for her own voice in the galleries where
she could respond, in a visceral and deeply profound way,
to the Polynesian atua on display. Exposure to this kind
of distinctive practice is precisely the kind of extension of
boundaries that I am dedicated to promoting at the Met.
LE___What is something that you first thought about
curating that you no longer think about? In all the
various experiences/feats you have accomplished, have
your priorities shifted? And, if so, what are these?
KAM___When I first started working with contemporary
Native art, the mainstream institutions seemed impenetrable
and intimidating. Over time, as I became more experienced
and came into contact with different professional circles,
I realised that institutions are made up of ordinary people
who make decisions. In fact, it always startles me when my
exhibition team meets with an artist who appears nervous
or intimidated, because we are just people who want to
help them present their work in the best possible way to the
world. So now, when someone complains or criticises an
institution, I know that it is important to look more carefully
at who is controlling the decisions within that institution.
Is the problem coming from the board or from the staff? Is
there an old guard that is holding onto old ways? Who could
our allies be within that institution? Museums are dynamic.
Leadership changes and people can evolve in their thinking.
NB___I suppose there are two realities that hit home for me.
Curating is very much like having a conversation. It is about
sharing ideas that you hope others will find interesting and
will engage with. I no longer doubt that exhibition-making
is a live conversation about ideas with all sectors of the
community (even when we don’t think they are listening).
As curators we challenge thinking and can be challenged
about that thinking, so I see these all as conversations
about ideas and propositions that invite discussion. The
other learning is that being Māori in an art institution is a
political act and every exhibition you offer carries that no
matter what the subject or material. Being Māori in this
environment is political regardless of whether you realise
it or not and regardless of whether you accept it or not.
MN___I think museum curators often look to the collections
they look after as a repository from which to draw artworks
periodically for presentation in an exhibition. I see the
collection as inherently dynamic and have definitely moved
towards an understanding of the gallery itself as a place of
encounter. Shifting my perception of it as simply a place
where we present art from a particular region, I prefer to
approach it as a place to host in the manner that Pacific
people are accustomed to do. In this way it becomes a very
active, dynamic space: a place to encounter each other,
a place to dialogue, a place to confront difficult complex
histories. Relationships are of course key, and hosting Pacific
guests, artists and practitioners in the gallery is an opportunity
to revive these connections. I see curating as an opportunity
to revive and animate these relationships. In an important
sense, taonga were actually designed to leverage these kinds
of relationships so this aspect of curating speaks very much
to the original role and agency of the artworks themselves.
This active practice also impacts the institution itself: it can
push at the boundaries of the institution, forcing it to reassess
itself and become more self-reflective, which is crucial.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 17

From top:
Raven Chacon
Still Life, #3, 2015 (detail)
sound and light installation with text,
voice and translation by Melvatha Chee
Collection of the artist. Photo: John Kuczala
Kay WalkingStick and Kathleen Ash-Milby
reviewing exhibition plans with Exhibition
Designer, Dawn Neuendorffer, National
Museum of the American Indian, Washington,
DC, 2015. Photo courtesy K. Ash-Milby
18 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
LE___What would be your ideal framework for
Indigenous art practices and art histories? Do you
believe that we are moving towards a critical mass of
representation, and where do you look to for support
and resourcing in continuing your work as Indigenous
curators in Euro-American and Pākehā art institutions?
KAM___In an ideal world, Native art and history would be
interwoven into curriculum from primary school through
university. American history would be inseparable from
Native history, because it was always part of this country,
just ignored. Likewise, Native art should always be
included in the teaching of world art, both contemporary
and historical. If these foundations were in place in
our educational system, the absence or ghettoisation of
Native art in museums and other institutions would not
be tolerated because they would be obvious exclusions.
When I first began learning about and working with
Native art, there was an emphasis on the idea that Native
artists were left out of the mainstream discourse, and that
inclusion in mainstream museum exhibitions, collections or
publications was an end in itself. It is true that thirty years
ago most Native artists struggled to get attention from the
broader art community, but this idea in itself diminishes
the importance of the work that we do in community-based
galleries and museums with a cultural focus.
My attitude gradually shifted from framing Native artists
(and the curators who worked with them) as being victims of
an exclusionary system, to a strong belief that the mainstream
was missing out on extraordinary work and scholarship that
we were building through alternative venues and methods.
Today, Native artists have been recognised and included in
many of the major art biennials internationally, are appearing
in mainstream art publications like ArtNews and Art in
America and are actively being collected by major institutions.
This does not mean that this is on the scale that we
might want, or that it will continue in the long term, but I do
think that we should be proud of this progress and the many
advocates, writers, academics, and artists that have put in
the hard work to get us here. I’m optimistic, despite some
setbacks. There is a groundswell of young Indigenous
scholars and curators coming up behind us! I feel confident
that we will continue to make inroads while doing the work
we feel is important.
NB___Ultimately, I think the ideal framework is the one
where the Indigenous curator dictates what is important.
Māori often talk about the principle of tino rangatiratanga:
Māori self-determination and the freedom to realise
one’s potential and/or the potential of the collective. I
believe this Sovereign Act is the framework and allows
the Indigenous curator to realise a range of ideas,
concepts and agendas that they decide are important to
the institution and important to the communities that
they represent. Ironically, it’s also the institution’s gain
but it should always be the Indigenous curator’s gaze.
Critical mass is an interesting “idea” but perhaps
that’s all it is at this stage. For me it is important to see
my curatorial contribution outside of the “four walls”
of the gallery because it’s outside of the institution
that our communities, support systems, our mentors
and our greatest critics reside. The challenges of
institutional curating can be overwhelming, so I have
come to rely on the many voices and expert opinions
that I value from the wider Māori arts community.
MN___I see myself very much as a broker in these contested
spaces looking to expand the more conventionally accepted
canon of art to include art from Oceania. Creating access
is vital as a way to open up the collections to new voices.
The art of the Pacific is far less known in the United
States and on a practical level, there are extremely limited
opportunities to study Pacific and Indigenous art at all which
means less overall patronage and support which has a direct
impact on the resources available to us. This has a knock-on
effect in terms of what projects we can undertake, who
we can host, what we can actively acquire going forward.
An ideal framework for Indigenous art practice and art
history would include more gallery and exhibition space for
Indigenous art in US institutions—both to celebrate it on
its own terms and to allow a more connected conversation
with the global contemporary art dialogue. The parameters
have certainly shifted in cities like New York, Los Angeles,
Chicago and Miami to accommodate more global dialogue
but it would be great to create space for shows that embrace
the distinctly Indigenous narratives and frameworks for
understanding which Indigenous curators are advocating.
Whilst we have not reached anywhere near a critical
mass of representation, there is certainly a very real sense
of change and momentum gathering in the right direction.
I think that museums want to evolve and change—why
wouldn’t they? This is exciting terrain! But institutions
have perhaps not always understood how to change.
At the Met there is certainly an appetite to incorporate
diverse perspectives. The change is slow and steady, but
I find with each new project, the institution tilts centrally
on its axis, we build trust and all move forward. Our new
director, Max Hollein, has been enthusiastic in this regard
and worked recently with curators in our Department of
Modern and Contemporary Art to establish two major
new spaces in the museum for large-scale interventions by
contemporary artists that allow a critical interface with the
Met’s holdings. The first of these was the stellar work The
NewOnes, will free Us (2019–20) by Kenyan-American
artist Wangechi Mutu in the new Façade Commission,
and Cree artist Kent Monkman’s mistikôsiwak (Wooden
Boat People) in the Great Hall Commission (2019–20).
LE___What is the relationship between your art
institution and local/regional art schools? Do you
maintain relationships outside of these official links in
order to ensure pathways of knowledge and cultural
exchange between Indigenous artists, curators and arts
workers?
KAM___The Portland Art Museum as an institution has
prioritised art education for decades, during one period
even including an art school and studio on the museum
campus. The museum has a longstanding relationship with
the public school system, but has also worked to build
relationships with community partners to better understand
and serve as many people as possible. The Native American
community is part of this constituency, and I was very
encouraged when I was introduced to the Native American
Advisory Board as part of my job interview. It was evident
to me that the museum took its relationship with Native
people seriously, and this group has served as an important
link for me to new communities and relationships in my
position. I also have my own connections and relationships,
created over the course of my career, that I will continue to
build upon to make sure that I am serving the interests and
needs of Native people, artists and community members,
in maintaining access to their material in the museum. It is
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 19
going to be a continuing learning process for me and the
staff, but they have been willing partners in this work.
NB___I think that a measure of an art institution’s
success is how well they do or do not engage with their
stakeholders and various sectors. We have healthy and
consistent working relationships with most of the regional
art schools, but we could always do better and reach further.
MN___My department has a strong relationship with
institutions in the Pacific and I host an annual spring
internship for a Māori/Pacific scholar or practitioner and
1–2 visiting Research Fellows per year who come to
support me in my work. I maintain relationships outside
this official link amongst my own network which includes
Indigenous artists, performers, poets, writers, scholars,
curators and colleagues in museums and art galleries in
the Pacific, USA and Europe. As a global hub, people
are often passing through New York so it’s a great
way to continue to make connections and extend our
Pacific network that way. We extend our manaakitanga
(hospitality) and build kotahitanga (togetherness) here in
the city for our own Pacific whānau who are long-term
residents here in New York, so there is a constant dynamic
of cultural exchange with those who are visiting.
LE___Which project that you have realised do you feel
most proud of? Please share some of this achievement
with us, and how it may or may not anchor you in your
ongoing work?
KAM___I hate to choose favourites because I have worked
on so many projects with so many incredible artists, but
there are a few that I think of being especially meaningful.
The first exhibition I organised at the American Indian
Community House Gallery was a small group exhibition
titled, Mother Love: Native Women and the Land, in
2000. It was my first original exhibition and I was excited
but nervous. Luckily, I had chosen a group of artists in
various states of their career who were supportive and
even nurturing to me as a nascent curator. It gave me so
much confidence that I was capable of doing this work.
Likewise, the first exhibition I curated at the National
Museum of the American Indian, Off the Map: Landscape
20 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
in the Native Imagination in 2007 will also always have
a special place in my heart. I’m still close to many of the
artists and it was very foundational to my scholarship,
affirming my approach to exhibiting Native art in a way
that was creative, challenging and unexpected. On another
level, the publication for the exhibition was also my
first edited catalogue. One of the invited authors, Kate
Morris, a scholar and colleague from graduate school,
was an informal advisor and sounding board throughout
the editorial process. It really made me appreciate how
none of these things we produce are created alone. I’ve
enjoyed collaborating more formally on various projects,
including with Brenda L. Croft, Megan Tamati-Quennell,
and David Garneau, on Mind (the) Gap: International
Indigenous Art in Motion, at the Samstag Museum of
Art, Adelaide, in 2011, and more recently with David
Garneau as co-curator for my last exhibition at NMAI,
Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, in 2017.
Another unforgettable and important project was the
retrospective, Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist, at
NMAI in 2015, which I co-curated with David Penney. It
was such a privilege to be able to work closely with an artist
over several years to develop the exhibition and publication.
It deepened my understanding and appreciation of her work,
but it was also incredibly satisfying to know that the work
we were doing was filling a gap in the scholarship on an
iconic artist and helping to advance her recognition more
widely. All of these experiences have continued to reaffirm
the importance of our work in changing the arts landscape.
NB___This may sound cheesy but I’m proud of all of
them, proud and relieved to get to the finish line of every
project I work on! But most satisfied when I see Māori from
across all sectors of community—and not just the Māori
arts community—engaged in the exhibition or project we
present. To me that’s what success looks like: when a greater
representation of Māori can see themselves in the exhibition
project you present, then that’s a measure of success. It
reminds me that exhibition-making can be transformative.
MN___ATEA: Nature & Divinity in Polynesia (2018–19)
was a project that centred Indigenous perspectives to
explore the genealogical relationship between Polynesian
chiefs and their gods. The exhibition was grounded in a
From top:
Nigel Borell and members of Haerewa, the Māori art
advisory group to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, at the
opening of The Māori Portraits: Gottfried Lindauer’s New
Zealand, Young Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco, 2017.
Photo: Sarah Hillary

Nigel Borell, Curator Maori Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o

Tāmaki, at the opening of The Māori Portraits: Gottfried
Lindauer’s New Zealand, Young Fine Arts Museum, San
Francisco, 2017. Photo: Sarah Hillary. Courtesy Nigel Borell

powerful moment in Polynesian cosmology—when space

and light (ātea) flooded the dark ancestral night (te pō),
initiating a dynamic new era in which strings of islands
were vigorously birthed and the first generation of gods
was born. All the exhibitions I have conceived are part of
a broader curatorial project to frame Pacific art as far as
possible in its own terms. The current project to reimagine
and redesign our permanent galleries is another exciting
opportunity to present the unique conceptual landscape of
the Pacific to overseas audiences. Oceanic works of art are
materially and conceptually equipped to act as a useful lens
to talk about agency and efficacy and I think these kinds
of expansive narratives give us a unique opportunity to
give a far broader account of the active role of art—what
things can do. Encouraging these ideas to take root and
flourish in galleries far from home, in a place like New
York where they can inspire new audiences, is exciting.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 21


From top:
Closing protocols for ATEA: Nature and Divinity
in Polynesia exhibition, 27 October 2019, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Photo: Sophie Chalk
Tongan artist Benjamin Work and members of
the Polynesian community closing ATEA: Nature
and Divinity in Polynesia exhibition, 27 October
2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Photo: Sophie Chalk
22 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Our Pacific ancestors had the imagination to visualise,
and make tangible, deep (virtual) networks of Ancestral
relations. They remembered and recalled these networks
of relationships whenever they came together on formal
occasions; the act of reciting these connections draws the
genealogical connections from our past into the present.
They inscribed these lineages into the skin, plaited and
painted them into masks, and planted them into wood
as notches in carving. Meshing their values, ideas and
philosophies into the surfaces and intricate folds of things,
artists ensured these would be revealed well into the
future. I see all of this knowledge as embedded within
each individual work. It is this power in Pacific art that is
unleashed when we encounter these works. As curators, we
have an incredible opportunity to help people gain a sense
of these distinct qualities, to energise the eyes and minds
of those visitors for whom this art is new. An imaginative,
bold and confident display of the artworks can surely
challenge people’s perceptions of what it is to be born in
and of the Pacific. The sheer exuberance and energy of
the works demand that audiences sit up and pay attention
to what has, and is, going on in and around Oceania.
LE___The Canada-based Aboriginal Curatorial
Collective/Collectif des commissaires autochtones has
a campaign looking at curatorial care and cultural health
and safety to support Indigenous curators, artists and
arts workers all around the world. What knowledges,
protocols, or teachings do you bring into your curatorial
practice?
KAM___I believe that respect should be the foundation of
our curatorial practice as Indigenous curators. This includes
respect for the artists and cultures we work with, respect for
our co-workers in every aspect of our work, respect for the
art and cultural practices of the people we represent, and
respect for ourselves as individuals and to our Ancestors.
NB___Many, a lot of them, are mentioned in the above
responses.
MN___My curatorial practice is strongly informed by
what I consider the transformative potential of Indigenous
knowledge. Creating a space that allows for distinctively
Pacific ways of being flows out to guide all the activity
and protocol that takes place in the galleries. Interventions
in the gallery can specifically help audiences reflect and
perhaps even reconfigure an accepted narrative. The projects
with artists and practitioners are very effective in working
to jolt visitors out of their own reality into someone else’s
and help break down an overarching institutional voice to
present more complex, multivocal and inclusive histories.
Curatorial practice is a hugely rewarding and creative
experience. With the mahi (role) comes huge responsibility
of course and brokering these relationships so far away
from the Pacific has its own challenges. It can be tough,
even lonely at times, but I embrace it. I do feel like I belong
to many places and learning to navigate the complex
institutional dynamics of the museum to enliven audiences
to the wonders of Oceanic art keeps me motivated. For
those of us with blood-ties to the Pacific, who live and
work overseas, working as kaitiaki (custodians) taking care
of Pacific collections outside the region, the taonga act as
anchor points which connect us to home. They are a vital
link creating a connection to the whenua (land) which bring
us into an immediate and on‑going relation with each other.
“We sweat and cry salt tears, so that we know the
ocean is in us.” I remember being entirely captivated by
these words of Teresia Teaiwa during my first years of
studying Pacific art some 20 years ago. Encapsulating such
vastness in this apparently simple phrase, it reminds me
of the larger work at hand and how we might articulate
that in our own curatorial projects: the Pacific in its
most imaginative, unrestricted and expansive rendering.
The Pacific as it inheres in people, places, and time. The
Pacific of song and story, as it is spoken and danced. The
Pacific in art that keeps moving—that shifts in and out of
different worlds as it was indeed designed to do—all the
while accruing status, prestige and value (mana). The Pacific
as it inheres in the ongoing work of relationships between
people, art and museums that are dynamic and evolving, just
like the ocean within us. Ko au te moana. Te moana ko au.
Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan artist, curator, NIRIN: 22nd Biennale
of Sydney commissioned artist, and Horizon/Indigenous Futures
postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, Montreal.
Kathleen Ash-Milby is a member of the Navajo Nation and Curator
of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum. She previously
organised numerous exhibitions as Associate Curator at the
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York City
and Washington, DC.
Maia Nuku is a curator and researcher of Māori (Ngāi Tai) and British
descent, and Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for
Oceanic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Nigel Borell is a Pirirakau, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi,
Te Whakatōhea writer and Curator of Māori Art at
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 23
Yuki Kihara
New guises

Ioana Gordon-Smith

Yuki Kihara
See no evil, speak no evil (diptych), 2001
silkscreen on canvas, installation image
Collection of Waikato Museum
Te Whare Taonga o Waikato

24 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

In his landmark essay “Towards a new
Oceania,” Sāmoan writer Maualaivao
Albert Wendt implores an assumed,
well‑meaning Moana reader to refuse
the impulse to romanticise Oceanic
cultures. To do so, he argues, would
simply replicate false notions of
stasis. Instead, Wendt argues that “[a]
ny real understanding of ourselves
and our existing cultures calls for an
attempt to understand colonialism and
what it did and is still doing to us.”1
It is this investigative spirit
that drives the practice of Japanese–
Sāmoan artist Yuki Kihara. Kihara,
who lives and works in Sāmoa, is one
of Aotearoa New Zealand’s prominent
artists. Lauded as the first Pacific
Islander to hold a solo exhibition at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
Lenapehoking/New York, Kihara
has gained international acclaim
for her broad critique of historical
representation, its imposition of false
gender and cultural binaries, and its
echoes in the contemporary moment.
Her critically acclaimed, pay-per-view
performance and video installation,
Culture for Sale, for example, drew
heavily upon the 19th-century-German
entertainment form Völkerschau
(cultural performances staged in
human enclosures resembling animal
zoos) to consider the ongoing tourism
and hyper commodification of Sāmoan
culture, a self-aware project that
also implicated the art world and its
thirst for Indigenous performance.
Similarly, but working from a
different historical touchstone, the
photographic and silent video series
A Study of a Samoan Savage (2016)
drew direct parallels between motion
photography, early anthropometry
and contemporary sports science
to reiterate the ongoing, racist
measurement of the Pacific male body.
Underpinning colonial parades
and measurements of Pacific
bodies was a colonial desire for
an “authentic” performance of a
romanticised culture. Across many
of her projects, Kihara uses parody,
mimicry and appropriation to
subvert the colonial myth of a Pacific
paradise untouched by the long
arms of colonial empire. In her early
series Black Sunday (2001–02), for
instance, Kihara re-works historical
photographs and postcards that
perpetuated well-known stereotypes
of Pacific peoples: the noble
savage, regalia-clad individuals, the
bare-breasted women oblivious to the
voyeuristic gaze. Catering for foreign
desires, these images belie the fact
that by the time photography arrived
in Sāmoa, so too had Western dress.
Using a combination of collage and
digital photography, the figures in the
original images have been adorned
with bright pastel clothing and
make-up, placed against broad bands
of colour or spliced into sections
by vertical stripes resembling bars.
The Black Sunday works have often
been read as a literal re-dressing of
colonial stereotypes. They might also
be read as a deliberate toying with
the blur between fact and fiction.
Using overt image‑manipulation
techniques, Kihara clearly shows her
hand in re-constructing images. Her
approach might be likened to the way
in which internet meme culture uses
humour to rework existing images that
seem overly contrived to foreground
the staged nature of the original
image. The appropriation of an
existing image to create a subsequent
artwork further complicates the
question of authenticity. Which is the
“true” image—the original touristic
images or the doctored versions?
The answer might lie somewhere
between. The titling of each work
considers how both historical tropes
and contemporary rejoinders might
create new narratives befitting the
legacy of these intersecting Indigenous
and colonial contacts: the Dusky
Maiden, for example, becomes
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 25
“Distressed maiden” (arguably
distressed by the dusky maiden trope).
Archival photographs re‑appear
repeatedly across Kihara’s practice
as unreliable material up for grabs.
In her recent body of work Coconut
that grew from Concrete, 2017,
Kihara cut together images from
19th-century colonial photography
of Sāmoan people and places with
European paintings of aristocrats and
landscapes. The collages create a type
of trompe l’œil effect, in which the
two images create a single, seamless
composition. But the relationship
beyond uncanny similarities remains
ambiguous. Might the collages be
comparing the wealth of the European
aristocracy with the exploitation of
the Pacific? Or could it be that both
Indigenous and European women
shared a subjection to an objectifying
male gaze? Whatever the intent, the
pairings certainly feel provocative.
Icons of Western art history suddenly
seem knocked down, more trope
than genius. Three Tahiti(Sāmo)ans
[After Gauguin] (2017), for instance,
splices together Paul Gauguin’s
painting Three Tahitians (1899)
with a Thomas Andrew photograph
depicting an unnamed Sāmoan man
with a peʻa, a photograph believed
to have directly informed Gauguin’s
26 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
painting. Kihara’s excavation of
Gauguin’s source material exposes
the roots of Western paintings of the
Moana in colonial photography. Ioana Gordon-Smith is a Sāmoan arts writer
Like Black Sunday, Coconut based in Aotearoa New Zealand, Curator
that grew from Concrete points to the Māori Pacific at Pātaka Art + Museum and
desire for a pure, authentic culture previously inaugural Curator at Te Uru
that permeates throughout colonial Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, who works
imagery. In her re-appropriation closely with artists and arts communities.
of historical images, across both
photography and painting, Kihara A native of Sāmoa, Yuki Kihara is an
taints these original images with interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and
strategies that critique the very Sāmoan descent whose work seeks to
notion of authenticity. Each image challenge dominant and singular historical
in Coconut that grew from Concrete narratives through visual arts, dance, and
contains both the signature of the curatorial practice. Kihara will represent
appropriate European painting, and Aotereroa New Zealand at the 2021 Biennale
Kihara’s signature as author of the di Venezia, supported by the Arts Council of
appropriation. The doubled signatures New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and curated by
move towards a Duchampian gesture Natalie King.
that disturbs the binaries of original/
copy; authentic/fake. It might also
be read as part of Kihara’s ongoing
agenda to refuse to ignore Western
contact as now part of Sāmoa’s history
and present. As Charlize Leo, Miss
Sāmoa Faʻafafine (2017–18) observes,
“Paradise is no longer untouched.”2
1 Maualaivao Albert Wendt, “Towards a New Oceania”, Mana
Review: A South Pacific Journal of Language and Literature,
1976, 1(1), p. 50__2 Yuki Kihara, “First Impressions: Paul
Gauguin” in A Spiritual Journey, ed. Libby Hruska, Christina Opposite:
Hellmich, Victoria Gannon & Line Clausen Pedersen, De Yuki Kihara
Three Tahiit(Sāmo)ans [After Gaugin], 2017
Young-Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
2018, p.168. digital collage
Courtesy Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries,
Dunedin
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 27
Punāʻoa
Resources
Léuli Eshrāghi
In 2019 I composed a poster form multilingual guide in
Sāmoan, French and English called Punāʻoa o ʻupu mai
ʻo atumotu/Glossaire des archipels to represent currents
of thought and action in international Indigenous visual
cultures. I worked with my friend, celebrated Nêhiyâw
typographer and graphic designer Sébastien Aubin, to
render my learnings from a constellation of mentors,
knowledge keepers and sources during my doctoral
research into international Indigenous curatorial practice
into a poster form multilingual guide. The work draws on
extensive discussions, residencies, exhibitions, gatherings
throughout 2015–18 across the Great Ocean from
north‑eastern North America to south‑eastern Australia.
The international Te Whāinga: A Culture Lab on
Civility, organised by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific
American Center and Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga
Hira’s curators Adriel Luis, Dina Jezdic, Kālewa Correa,
Lawrence-Minh Bùi-Davis and Bree Manning took place
in October 2019 on reclaimed foreshore lands at Silo
Park, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, within Ngāti Whātua
ki Ōrākei territory. The Center has spearheaded Culture
Labs, an intimate sharing and learning residency and
exhibition format delving into issues of our time, across
the continental United States. Most recently, in ‘Ai Kai:
A Culture Lab on Convergence in July 2017 in Honolulu,
I toured an international curatorial project centred on
Indigenous genders, sexualities and ceremonial-political
structures, Pōuliuli (Faitautusi ma Fāʻaliga), first presented
at West Space earlier that year. Te Whāinga had at its core a
number of prominent and activist Aotearoa artists, designers
and curators, joined by a few from the continental United
States and Canada with ties to the Philippines, Solomon
Islands and elsewhere throughout the Great Ocean.
Three terms framed within this work that are
particularly relevant when thinking through negotiations
of the settler colonial structures of learning, creativity and
dissemination in a university, art museum or other formal
Western institutional context are the following: first, Faiga
iloa faʻakolonē, denoting the coloniality of knowledge as
epistemologically derived from empire-driven Western
28 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
European states and their breakaway colonies around the
world; second Tala faʻasolopito o faʻāliga, specifically
pertaining to the comprehensive, sequential display
histories of images, shadows, photographs, likenesses, as
opposed to circular genealogical time‑derived histories;
and third, Tautuanaga ʻo fa‘āliga ata, meaning a display
of images, likenesses, photographs and shadows organised
in service of collective wellbeing. As a contemporary
practice this work is based in Sāmoan cultural values
and histories, and the texts imprinted on bodies, lands,
waters, digital files and other formats are the latest
manifestation of genealogical matter and imperatives
that direct our actions into the times yet to come.
Punāʻoa o ʻupu mai ʻo atumotu / Glossaire des
archipels is an offering for this present moment of upheaval
into the times yet to come and already foreseen by the
Ancestors: Indigenous time is cyclical and ever-realised,
while Gregorian shame‑time with its attendant exploitative
regimes of plantations, churches, embodied shame,
intergenerational violence and trauma, and race-based
socio-political economy must meet its end for humanity to
access futurities. This guide was informed especially by
many discussions on precolonial and after-colonial Sāmoan
language, semantics and epistemology with stellar artist
Angela Tiatia, and scholars Lealiʻifano Albert Refiti and
Niko Pātū. In the shared spirit of communal learning and
living, the two large laminated works on display in late
October 2019 went on to have another life when I gifted them
to my fellow francophone cousin Nātia Tucker, and to mentor
Sāmoan and Tuvaluan artist friend Rosanna Raymond for the
Vā Moana/Pacific Spaces research lab at Te Wānanga Aronui
o Tāmaki Makau Rau / Auckland University of Technology.
Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan artist, curator, NIRIN: 22nd Biennale
of Sydney commissioned artist, and Horizon/Indigenous Futures
postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, Montreal, whose display
territories centre Indigenous bodies, languages and knowledges.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 29
qšiqšimuʔ, many stars, many olivella

Sarah Biscarra Dilley

Sarah Biscarra Dilley

ts iłini, 2020
stop motion animation
Courtesy the artist

30 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

kʔimitʸɨ, we are far away.
tsʔiqɨʔ, the tides are low.
qšimuʔ, like many words in tɨnɨsmuʔ tiłhinktitʸu, explains
a story rather than a fixed or singular vocabulary.1 Olivella
biplicata has a gorgeous shell, with colours that smoothly
transition from stark white to milky lavender to rich honey
golds, in combination or alone, along a softly curving
spire. A being reflecting spiritual wealth and a symbol of
exchange from our homelands spanning mountain ranges
east to nitspu nakota ktitʸu, south well beyond recently
imagined lines of occupying nations, and along margins
of the sea north to nitspu unangan ktitʸu, qšimuʔ grounds
yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini in a vast network of relation.2
yakʔitɨnɨsmuʔ wa yakʔitotomol, which echo the cadence,
vocabulary, and sewn-planks of many other nations, extend
these connections well across łpasini, the one ocean.3
imagining
distance
in
constellations
Most of my family is living in diaspora from our homelands
due to dispossession: matriarchal lands now submerged
by dammed rivers once glistening with rainbow trout,
enclosed with barbed wire to herd the cattle that replaced
us, or mediated entirely by military bases and removal
to private collections.4 Though privileged to be a visitor
at xučyun nitspu chochenyo ktitʸu, within the range of
extended neighbours, cousins, and kin, I make the four-hour
drive regularly to watch freshwater bloom in saltwater tides
and gather along beaches our family has had since time
immemorial. We have always been well-travelled people.
that tether us
to the spring
of who
we are
qšimuʔ also situates us within the mirror of the sky.
The word is also used to describe stars, each relation an
anchor in constellations of movement, navigation, shifting
tides, and shared ceremony. Indeed, it is this movement
that iterates across waters and continents that brings me
to this place again and again. Epeli Hauʻofa explained
in Our Sea of Islands that the “once boundless world”
was transformed into a mythology of confinement. This
extends to the edges of what is designated as “Pacific,”
or “Atlantic,” “Caribbean,” “Arctic,” or otherwise—
in yakʔitɨnɨsmuʔ, as in many of our languages, we
know it as one connected being. In all our rupture and
resilience, some have forgotten about the full expanse
of relatives on other shores. But like the tides that call
multitudes of stars to the softly churning surf at tsɨtxala,
yakitspułhitsʔišaʔ, our world is in continuous motion,
wa yatsnatšaqinɨsmuʔ tsʔisaqwa yakʔikɨnitʸaninitspuspu,
and this knowing makes our worlds whole.5
kʔitutyinaha, we are returning.
tsʔiłhini, the tides are full and high.
1 Renée Pualani Louis, author of Kanaka Hawaiʻi Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory
offered this understanding of ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi placenames in a conversation at University of California,
Davis on 24 October 2019__2 nitspu nakota ktitʸu (in the land/world of Nakota people) [Montana,
Alberta, and Saskatchewan] ; nitspu unangan ktitʸu (in the land/world of Unangan people, Tanam
Unangaa [Aleutian Islands, Alaska and Kamchatka Krai] ; yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (the people of
tiłhini, place of the full moon) [San Luis Obispo, California]__3 yakʔitɨnɨsmuʔ (our language) wa
yakʔitotomol (and our tomols). Tomols are sewn redwood plank canoes used throughout the Santa
Barbara Channels Islands and the southern stretch of Chumashan cultural areas in the Central Coast
of California in smuwič (the language of Santa Barbara region) and mitsqanaqa’an (the language of
Ventura region) speaking relations and cousins on Limu’w (Santa Cruz Island) and Wi’ma (Santa Rosa
Island)__4 Namely, the dam on the Nacimiento River (tributary of the north-flowing Salinas River in
Central California), Hearst Corporation, Camp Roberts National Guard Outpost, and the Phoebe A.
Hearst Museum of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley__5 tsɨtxala, place of the big red
ants (Cayucos, California), one of the author’s home villages.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley is a yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini artist, educator,
and PhD candidate in Native American Studies at the University of
California, Davis, whose written and visual texts connect extractive
industries, absent treaties, and enclosure to emphasise movement,
continuity, sovereignty and relation.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 31
palawa kani
Expressing the power of language
in art and the museum context
Zoe Rimmer and
Theresa Sainty
luna tunapri workshop 2011
Photo: Lucia Rossi
32 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Pakana, Tasmanian Aborigines, were
the first astronomers in lutruwita,
later known as Tasmania. We know
this because we have language words
describing the skies—in darkness
and light—that refer to the brightest
“stars” and the light and dark between
them; in fact, our story of creation tells
us that the first (black) man, Palawa,
was made by Muyini, who cut the
ground and made the rivers; and a
bright star in the sky, Rrumitina, who
gave Palawa joints.1 And we know
these stories because of language
revival. In Lutruwita, invasion and
colonisation was swift and violent.
Ancestral and intellectual traditions
have been severely impacted—
often to the extent of huge gaps in
knowledges. Some of those gaps
can be, and have been, narrowed,
and even closed due to Ancestral
memory and information resting in
the pages of manuscripts, journals and
correspondence of the colonisers.
Before colonisation there were
6–12 distinct languages spoken in
lutruwita.2 Now there is one language,
palawa kani. While not enough
remained of any single language
for that one language to be revived,
palawa kani includes words revived
from most of the original languages
once spoken across the island. After
state-wide community meetings in the
early 1990s, the Tasmanian Aboriginal
Centre (TAC)—the longest-running
Aboriginal community organisation
in the State—began to retrieve and
revive our language in the form of
palawa kani, work that the organisation
continues today. These community
gatherings provided guidance for the
development of the language program,
linguistic processes for a consistent
sound and spelling system (unlike
that of English), protocols around its
use and the protection of intellectual
property. Aboriginal people worked
with linguists to research the sounds
and grammatical features that occurred
in the original languages, to understand
the most reliable colonial records
and to determine an orthography.3
The work of language retrieval
is laborious, requiring rigorous
historical, linguistic, geographical and
archival research, and requires the
close comparison and interpretation of
numerous sources to ascertain cultural
context. In fact, the palawa kani
Language Retrieval Program could be
described as one extensive research
project, with many smaller research
projects informing it. From those
early beginnings, as a community
without a language, we are now a
community with two generations of
families who have grown up with the
opportunity to learn palawa kani. We
are a community who use our language
across a range of domains—from
ceremony and Welcomes to writing
songs and poetry, and delivering
speeches. Language revival and use
represents a pride in cultural identity,
place, practice and memory, and it
goes hand in hand with the revival and
strengthening of cultural practices.
After almost thirty years of working
through the reclamation of language
and the cultural knowledge that comes
with every word revived, we are now
embracing opportunities to share
language with the broader community.
Recognising the importance
of supporting Aboriginal cultural
revival and an imperative to right
some of the wrongs of the past, the
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
(TMAG) in nipaluna/Hobart, has
over the past twenty years focussed
on increasing Aboriginal voice within
the collections and exhibitions.
Essential to this has been the use
of palawa kani and a community
narrative that centres the museum’s
exhibitions on continuity and survival.
Linking cultural memory, community
knowledge, and language with the
colonial archives and collections
is now one of the museums most
important roles. Elders often remind
us that our knowledge is not lost but
resting; it is a deep responsibility to
reawaken it. Cultural revival is part of
our story. Utilising museum collections
and colonial archives in the process
of reawakening cultural memory
has enabled the Pakana community
to revive and strengthen cultural
practices such as canoe building,
basket making and shell stringing.
TMAG’s most recent touring
exhibition kanalaritja: An Unbroken
String is a culmination of the vision
of Pakana shell stringers determined
to pass on this ancient practice to a
new generation.4 Through six years
of cultural workshops, the exhibition
was developed from oral histories and
presented in the first-person as opposed
to an authoritative and removed
curatorial tone. Language, both palawa
kani and the colloquial language
of our “old fellas,” was integral
to empowering a Pakana‑centric
perspective and shifting the emphasis
from the collector, academic, historical
or curio valuer to one of honouring the
maker and the broader community and
culture to which it belongs. kanalaritja
transformed traditional museum
labels from describing necklaces
of “unknown” or “unprovenanced”
makers as necklaces “made by our
Ancestors.” Standardised museum
labels, when labelled in anonymity,
imply expertise and ownership belong
to the institution. In kanalaritja,
handwritten cards provide the maker’s
name (either known or Ancestor) with
shell types, recorded as known by the
stringers (“marina,” “penguin,” “black
crow” shell) rather than scientific
terminology, to place the necklace as
more than ethnographic artefact or art,
but as “Ancestral cultural treasures.”
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 33
Creating presence through language
was also a powerful component of
the 2020 Mona Foma festival’s kipli
paywuta lumi (food to sustain us/
food across time). Conceived as an
“on Country” installation by Kaurna
and Te Arawa artist James Tylor, to
celebrate Pakana architecture, food
and language, the project brought
together both local and interstate
Indigenous artists with the Pakana
community. Mona Foma audiences
walked Country along a track of ochre
painted trees to reach the lina bush
hut, an architecturally reimagined
traditional domed structure. A small
number of intimate ticketed events
presented guests with traditionally
prepared foods by Pakana catering
company, palawa kipli, whose menu
concept was based on the elemental
forces of fire, earth, water and wind.
The heartbeat of kipli paywuta
lumi was a 60‑minute sound piece
produced by Koori artist Anna Liebzeit
in collaboration with palawa kani
speakers. Capturing and combining
the unique sounds of the Cape Barren
Island fiddle played by Merinda Sainty,
Country and language, Liebzeit’s
hauntingly powerful soundtrack
vibrates through time and place,
creating a fluid narrative of Pakana
connection to the elements. In this
context palawa kani provides a way of
expressing a Pakana world view, a way
of connecting experience to Country.
34 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
The visual language of the cultural
landscape, the ochred trees, the lina,
and palawa kipli menu, come together
through the soundtrack of language to
simultaneously create an immersive
cultural experience for the senses and
a contemplative space for the spirit.
Based on our journey of revival
in Lutruwita, there is no doubt as to
the importance of language retrieval.
The confidence in welcoming
visitors to Country to advocate
for the protection of our cultural
heritage, to say once again the
proper names of places, and to see
them given prominence, and to state
our sovereign rights—in our own
language—honours the strength and
tenacity of our Elders and Ancestors.
Whether through palawa kani or our
voice expressed in English, language
helps us reclaim space, demands the
privileging of Pakana knowledges.
Language is our stories, songs,
knowledge—it holds and transmits
our life views. Language is power,
which is one of the reasons that the
disruption of language is a prominent
impact of the colonial project. As a
community marred by the myth of
extinction—piecing together Ancestral
memory, community knowledge
and archival records to reawaken
language and culture is a powerful act
of resistance. It is our hope that the
gift of our Ancestors continues to be
honoured—and spoken into the future.
kani milaythina-ti paywuta
manta; Pakana tunapri
milaythina-ti paywuta manta.
kani rrala; Pakana rrala war!
Language is in Country long
way, long time—forever. Pakana
knowledges come from
Country long way, long time—forever.
Strong language; strong people!
1 N.J.B. Plomley (ed), Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian
Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834,
2nd edition__2 Palawa Kani Sounds and Spelling, Tasmanian
Aboriginal Centre Inc. 1998; mina tunapri nina kani palawa
kani Dictionary, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Inc. 2019__3
ibid.__4 kanalaritja: An Unbroken String, Tasmanian Museum
and Art Gallery, toured nationally, December 2016 – April 2020:
kanalaritja.tmag.tas.gov.au
Zoe Rimmer is a pakana basket weaver,
beginner shell stringer, Senior Curator
of Indigenous Cultures at the Tasmanian
Museum and Art Gallery, and Senior
Indigenous Research Scholar at the University
of Tasmania focusing on repatriation and First
Nations museology.
Theresa Sainty is a Pakana woman, an
Aboriginal Linguistic Consultant for the
Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) with the
palawa kani Language Program and a Senior
Indigenous Research Scholar at the University
of Tasmania. Theresa is also a member of the
First Languages Australia (FLA) committee.
Clockwise from top:
Dulcie Greeno
stripy buttons, marina and rice shells
Launceston 2016
Purchased TMAG Foundation 2016
Photo: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Aunty Lola Greeno, Jeanette James, Aunty Corrie luna tunapri workshop
Fullard, Aunty Dulcie Greeno, Bronwyn McAnally Flinders Island 2011
luna tunapri workshop 2015 Photo: Lucia Rossi
Photo: Matthew Newton
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 35
Jack Anselmi and Cynthia Hardie
Midden
Belinda Briggs
Opposite:
Jack Anselmi and Cythia Hardie
Midden, 2016. Installation view,
Shepparton Art Museum.
Photo: Christian Capurro
Below:
Jack Anselmi and Cynthia Hardie,
collaborative winners of 2016
Indigenous Ceramic Art Award,
working on Midden, 2016,
in Gallery Kaiela studio
Photo: Belinda Briggs
36 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
For Yorta Yorta people, the land
and the world view in which they
live is an extension of themselves.
The land and water is the embodiment
of their identity and existence, as river
based people, passed on by the great
creation spirit Biami.
Wayne Atkinson
Through millennia, our movements
over woka (country/land) read like
choreography, a repetition and series
of sequences across the landscape as
the river falls, rises and floods. Bone
and mussel shell remnants are layered
in the Earth’s strata like musical notes
descending the bars on a sheet of
music. They denote a continual dance
of life, ceremony, gathering, and feasts
held on country, at one with the rhythm
and tune of the cycles and seasons.
Since baparra banarrak (long
ago), wala (water) remains core to
who we are and our survival. Middens
including earth ovens remain as
evidence of the life our Old People
led according to the cycles and
seasons, on and near sources of water.
Signs of ceremony, remnants of food
hunted and collected over thousands
of generations are everywhere in
the landscape: layers of earth, fish
bones, mussel shells and clay remind
us of where our Ancestors were,
and where we continue to walk.
Resting on the Kailtheban lands
of Yorta Yorta woka, the Aboriginal
art centre Kaiela Arts sits in the heart
of the expanding regional township
of Shepparton. Its name points to
Victoria’s longest river, Kaiela or
the Goulburn River, that flows just
behind the township and makes its
way toward Echuca where it meets the
Dungala (Murray River). The river and
the surrounding country that draws
life from it, is a constant source of
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 37
38 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
spiritual sustenance and inspiration for
artists. Their practices and works are
a means of expressing perspectives
on historic events, aspects of culture
or unheard stories that inform their
identities. Midden (2016) by Yorta
Yorta artists Jack Anselmi and Elder,
Aunty Cynthia Hardie, explores and
reimagines a significant cultural
heritage site that once existed along
the Kaiela before it was destroyed
through development works. Laboured
over three months, the artists engaged
with the reclamation of old knowledge
and practices to create a work that
illustrates cultural continuity.
Shortlisted as one among seven
exhibitors from across the country
to create a new body of work, the
duo were awarded the prize of the
Shepparton Art Museum’s (SAM)
2016 acquisitive Indigenous Ceramic
Award. At just below knee height and
made of buff raku, the sculptural form
comprises eight sizeable hand-built
segments that nestle together on a
bed of river-sand like ceramic grog.
The quiet presence of stunningly
rich terracotta‑coloured hand‑shaped
clay balls made with clay sourced
by Anselmi from the Kaiela sit
neatly at the foot of each of its ends.
Their addition highlights Ancestral
genius in using the clay balls as a
cooking aid to help regulate oven
temperatures. Fragments of white
porcelain bones and shells pressed
into the top and along the outside
walls reveal the food sourced from
the river and nearby plains. The
scattering of contrasting fine porcelain
continues to the sand’s edge, tempting
the viewer to take a closer look.
Of the installation, judges
commented “It is a statement
and testament of knowledge and
connection to country that weaves
the past into the present, gathering
communities, families and culture,
and leaving a legacy for the
future.” The artists’ vision to make
apparent a relatively unknown
and unremembered place serves
to assert familial connection to
woka, invoke conversation and
new connections that highlight the
cultural and heritage values.
A midden represented in an art
collection or featured in the natural
landscape provides advocacy for the
lives of Peoples based on river country.
The acquisition of Midden (2016) is
a powerful example of Yorta Yorta
cultural practice, realised through a
new medium that recalls, shares and
celebrates our kin and country. It’s
an important addition to the SAM
Collection, deepening its holdings
of ceramic works by Indigenous
ceramicists such as Thanakupi,
Vera Cooper, Janet Fieldhouse and
collectives such as Hermannsburg or
Ernabella Arts. This growing collection
expands the Museum’s capability to
take responsibility in remembering the
history of place. It also acknowledges
the ongoing Yorta Yorta connections
and sovereignty in respect to the
land upon which the Shepparton Art
Museum stands, and the continued
care for woka and cultural practice
that the community maintains.
Belinda Briggs is Yorta Yorta and Wamba
Wamba, and Curator at Shepparton Art
Museum, working closely on its Indigenous
Ceramic Award and community relationships
with Kaiela Arts and Rumbalara Football
Netball Club.
Opposite:
Dungala (Murray River)
just down from Maloga.
Photo: Belinda Briggs
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 39
Everything together
Partisan ecologies and painting
Clothilde Bullen
Opposite:
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili painting
Baratjala with recycled print toner
and earth pigments on stringybark
Image courtesy of the artist and
Buku Larrŋgay Mulka
Photo: David Wickens
40 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
When you travel to Yirrkala one of the first things you notice
is the lack of division between the waters of the Arafura Sea
and the vast blue sky. Indeed, the smooth, honey-coloured
shore seems to blend in effortlessly with the liquid of the
ocean as the water laps its edges. If you take the time to sit
in the shallow water just near the beach, away from lurking
crocodiles, it is warm and silky. Once immersed, you begin
to understand how it is possible to feel a part of something
much larger. Things slow down. Once I saw a mass of
butterflies move as a soft group across the top of me as I
sat in waist-deep water, and a stingray meandered past, not
concerned with the human in the water. The clear air acts like
a conduit. During times of tropical storms that lash the coast
and send stabs of water shearing up the rocks on the edges
and boundaries of this place it becomes electric, humming.
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili and Naminapu Maymuru-White
know this country intimately. They know its waterways,
its electrical currents and its stars. They are artists who
draw upon their kinship relations and their encyclopaedic
knowledge of the places and family systems to which they
belong and have responsibilities to. Noŋgirrŋa is a highly
respected senior in the Yirrkala community, knowledgeable
in two education systems. She is the daughter of the
Madarrpa warrior Mundukul (lightning snake) and
Bulunguwuy, a Gålpu woman. Noŋgirrŋa’s husband was
the painter Djutjadjutja Munungurr, who initially taught
Noŋgirrŋa the cross-hatching style so prevalent in the region
and involved his wife in painting his Djapu clan designs.
Mangalili woman Naminapu taught herself to paint,
observing her father and well-known uncle Narritjin
Maymuru creating miny’tji, sacred creation clan designs,
one of the first Yolŋu women to do so. As an artist with
skills in not only painting but carving, screenprinting,
weaving, linocuts and batik work, Naminapu also
completed teacher training and lived in Melbourne and
Darwin. Her first exhibition, alongside Banduk Marika,
was in Sydney in 1990. Importantly, Naminapu’s uncle
Narritjin was a key part of the historic adaptations by
Yolŋu Elders of encouraging previously restricted designs
to be revealed to the wider Australian community in the
Opposite:
Naminapu Maymuru-White with
her painting Milŋiyawuy or Milky Way
Image courtesy of the artist and
Buku Larrŋgay Mulka
Photo: David Wickens
pursuit of justice related to the land rights movement—
including the now famous Bark Petitions and the Yirrkala
Church Panels.1 Naminapu and Noŋgirrŋa have always
been code-switchers—people who understand how to
communicate and transmit in multiple, competing spheres.
Both artists are deeply knowledgeable about the ways in
which Yolŋu people exist and move between the domains
of land, sea and sky, both in their relationship to family
traditions of practice and broader political concerns.
The “organic geometry”2 of Noŋgirrŋa’s work is
evocative of the natural rhythms of the places in and
around Yirrkala, and in particular her own Madarrpa
country. Her work often references Yathikpa—a location
within Blue Mud Bay and an important saltwater locale
for Madarrpa people. In fact, Noŋgirrŋa’s own name
references the thick jungle found at this place.3 There is
a story that talks about Bäru the crocodile diving into the
sea here, his body aflame (a semiotic representative of
knowledge) becoming the centre from which fire spread
across the country and distributed learning to many clans.
Fire and water intrinsically bound together create wisdom,
without which all comprehension might cease to exist.
Naminapu often paints the Milky Way and other
constellations important to her clan and more broadly
the Yolŋu people. Naminapu has often painted the
Guwak men—Ancestral beings who travelled out to sea
from the Milngiya River, where they gave themselves
as offerings to become stars. They can be seen today
as the voids within the Milky Way, and this is depicted
by Naminapu in sometimes aesthetically literal ways
on ḻarrakitj poles and barks. But there is nothing literal
about the esoteric narrative embedded within. For both
artists, land, sea and sky are connected like parts of a
human body that cannot exist or work without the other.
For those who decontextualise land through the lens of
capitalism, the sky and the ocean can be an afterthought with
the exception perhaps for when it comes to the resale value of
a property with a view. But when the land begins to burn—
when there are bushfires so destructive and so intense that
their smoke obliterates a clear view of the sky—there begins
to grow the seed of realisation that there is an interconnection
between all things. When the planet’s sea levels rise because
the ice caps are melting due to climate change, and land is
gradually being taken over by the water, where do we hold
our stories? What happens to our repositories of knowledge?
If the temperature of seawater changes so much that fish,
seafood and other water-based resources, such as kelp,
cannot breed and subsequently die out, how do we talk
about the origin stories of how these things were made?
What happens to these oral histories without the living
touchstones of that narrative? How do we access our culture?
In Sydney right now, where I am writing this, the
night sky has not been visible for over three months due
to the intense, inescapable and “unprecedented” bushfires.
The ability to see the stars, to connect those constellations
and movements of the shifting aerial‑scape to what is
happening below is a way of facilitating the continuity
of Indigenous culture, to maintain a holistic sense of a
connected worldview that relies on these intersections and
overlapping junctions to survive. The degradation of our
country everywhere is a recolonisation of space. Noŋgirrŋa
and Naminapu speak about the critical importance of
maintaining and refreshing these connective tissues of
culture through artistic output. They are, in a very real
political sense, explaining to a broader audience the urgency
with which we need to change our thinking to reflect an
ecologically partisan view that encompasses Country and
kinship—the gamut of our human experience writ large in
mark-making from a place where land, sea and sky meet.
1 Artist information, Buku Larrŋgay-Mulka Centre, Yirrkala__2 Cara Pinchbeck, in Cara Pinchbeck
(ed.) Noŋgirrŋa Marawili: From my Heart and Mind, Art Gallery of NSW 2019, p. 13__3 ibid. p. 19.
Clothilde Bullen is a Wardandi (Nyoongar) and Badimaya (Yamatji)
woman with English/French heritage and is the Senior Curator of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 43
Weaving memory, living embodiment
Freja Carmichael
Above:
Sonja Carmichael
collecting Ungaire (swamp reed)
in Minjerribah, 2019
Photo courtesy Freja Carmichael
44 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Standing proudly in front of the
Gulayi women’s bag woven by my
mother and sister, Sonja and Elisa
Jane Carmichael, in the Australian
art collection of the Queensland Art
Gallery, I look back to my very first
experience with Quandamooka fibre
work. My significant engagement
with the Queensland Museum
collection reunited me with the bags
and baskets woven by the hands of
our Ancestors from the Ngugi clan
of Quandamooka and introduced me
to the work of other Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples from
near and afar. In the presence of these
spirited works I was reminded of the
expansive visual language, meaning
and innovation of artistic traditions
belonging to our First Nations
communities. Each woven basket
and bag, looped net and intricate
adornment or string work reverberates
with a strong sense of place and
shared stories of people and Country.
Whether old or new forms, First
Nations fibre practices are grounded
in histories and knowledges that run
deep and interconnect across the lands
and waters. Our many nations inherit
specific fibre traditions relative to
Ancestral, spiritual, environmental
and historical contexts, all of which
are interconnected with culture.
The common thread across these
distinct practices is their emergence
and living attachment to the lands.
Opposite:
Kylie Caldwell
For my Quandamooka Ancestors,
Buckie rush bag (detail) weaving was a way of life—ceremony,
buckie rush (wetland reed)
Photo courtesy the artist expression and exchange on Saltwater
Country. Ancestral learnings of the
sand, land and sea environments
and their materials underpinned the
making of our finely woven flat bags
of Ungaire—a freshwater reed that
grows in shades of pink and green on
Minjerribah. This fibre was skilfully
looped and knotted into a diagonal
woven pattern to create distinct
flat bags for carrying items such as
seafood, shellfish, plants and berries
as people travelled across Country.
My family’s woven bags in the
Queensland Art Gallery collection,
physically located in the building
alongside Ancestral works, embed the
intrinsic link between culture, people
and place. Like other communities,
our weaving traditions were impacted
by colonisation with the loss of with narratives of place are also from both nations retraced historical
homelands and attempted cultural explored for expressing what it and kinship relationships across the
erasure. For several generations, means to be Saltwater People today. lands by weaving together again.
weaving practices were interrupted. In the process of strengthening The Wake Up Time weavers
Over a decade ago, ways of knowing Quandamooka weaving practice, include the artist Kylie Caldwell
and physically engaging with weaving The Wake Up Time Weavers—a (Bundjalung). Her fibre practice
traditions were through Ancestral Bundjalung women’s collective located is informed by the wisdom of
material in museum collections. in Casino in the Northern Rivers Bundjalung Jargoon (Country) through
Their legacies alongside community region—visited Minjerribah in early her known understandings, deepened
memory guided a strong regeneration 2015. The group shared their weaving by lived experience. She sources,
of practice and knowledge. We are journey and experiences. As nearby gathers and weaves with the reeds,
again collecting reeds on Minjerribah nations, along the eastern coastal areas, referred to as buckie rush, that grow
and sensitively preparing the precious Quandamooka people and Bundjalung on her people’s lands. Her increasing
ungaire, taking care to only take the people share in similar fibre traditions. familiarity with this material drives a
required amount of fibres to ensure These parallels are documented by strong sense of customary techniques,
the ongoing growth of the reeds. historical flat bags in collections that relearnt from studying historical works
These filaments are transformed show related materials and techniques in collections. The legacy of previous
into new translations of Ancestral underscoring the physical links to generations is celebrated and continued
methods grown out of contemporary these areas and neighbouring regions. through basketry and sculptural
experiences of Country. Other The intergenerational exchange on forms that relate to Country and the
materials and techniques imbued Minjerribah with Elders and women functional objects used in the past.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 45

From left:
Delissa Walker preparing black palm
fibre in the Daintree rainforest, 2019
Photo: Freja Carmichael
Delissa Walker with her grandmother’s
Kankan, Daintree rainforest, 2019
Photo: Freja Carmichael
Further north, along the eastern
coastline, Delissa Walker (Kuku
Yalinji) continues the calling in her
fibre practice through her rainforest
Ancestral lands. Her ongoing making
of Kankan—basket from black
palm—is grounded in the insights
transmitted and carried across time,
connecting Ancestors, current weavers,
and future generations. From an early
age, her grandmother Wilma Walker,
an inspiring senior weaver, taught
Delissa how to collect, prepare and
weave the palm into the specialised
traditions of the rainforest. Alongside
her basketry work, she also explores
the possibilities of weaving black
palm fibre into other styles.
Fundamental to her practice, and
inherent to Aboriginal methodologies
of caring for Country, is nurturing
46 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
and preserving the environment. In
every black palm Delissa harvests,
she ensures life is given to another
by planting or caring for new growth.
Weaving with the materiality of the
land, and the processes and meanings
encompassed within these practices,
provides a deep sense of knowing
that she is continuing the proud work
of her grandmother and Ancestors.
Ancestral memory is embodied
in the living material that is harvested
and transformed by the hands
of First Nations people to give
expression. Like Ungaire, buckie
rush and black palm, across the
Great Ocean, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease
Wyss (Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, Stó:lō, Irish,
Métis, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Swiss) draws
strength from the aromatic red
cedar tree. Living on her unceded
Coastal Salish lands, Vancouver,
Wyss’s practice highlights the
expansive, living embodiment of
nature that is fibre work. She is an
ethno-botanist, community-engaged
gardener, interdisciplinary artist and
weaver working with traditional
Coastal Salish techniques in wool
and the cedar tree, a plant that has
ensured the survival of her people
for thousands of generations.
Her recent woven ceremonial
cape, titled Shḵwen̓ Wéw̓shḵem
Nexw7iy̓ay̓ulh (To Explore, To
Travel by Canoe) (2018) traced her
Ancestral lineages through the use
of materiality and techniques that
associated with her Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh
and Hawaiian territories. The warp
of the weaving comprised of stripped
and prepared red cedar bark and
the weft consisted of bands made
from twined coconut hull fibre,
wool and lau hala (pandanus leaf).
In late 2019, with a group of
other First Nations artists and curators,
I visited Wyss and her lands as part of
a collaborative First Nations curatorial
project resulting in Transits and
Returns at Vancouver Art Gallery. We
walked, listened and learned in her
recent participatory creation, Harmony
Garden, in X̱ wemelch’stn pen̓em̓áy,
the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh Nation’s Capilano
Reserve. This cared-for environment
was overflowing with abundant
plant life that carried historical and
cultural value representing plants
used for food, medicine, weaving
and pigment dying. Such a space
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss
Shḵwen̓ Wéw̓ shḵem Nexw7iy̓ay̓ulh
(To Explore, To Travel by Canoe) (detail), 2018
Lau hala, coconut hull fibre, seagrass, red cedar
bark, wool, abalone shell, mother of pearl buttons
Installation view, The Commute at the Institute of
Modern Art, 2018
Photo: Carl Warner

as the Harmony Garden reiterates the swamps, marshes and forests to

how knowledge and memory is
deeply imbued within the land.
This multi-layered wisdom of the
land is evidenced in Quandamooka
weaving practices and in the deft
fibre work of Kylie Caldwell, Delissa
Walker and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss.
This small but powerful sample of
First Nations fibre practices speaks
to how knowledge has risen from
be nurtured and sustained through
spiritual, cultural and physical
relationships with Country. In the same
way that weaving supports Ancestral
life and being, contemporary fibre
practices remain a vital means of
cultural continuity and connections
to place, to lineage and to belonging
for First Nations peoples.
Freja Carmichael is a Ngugi independent
curator, writer and arts worker, belonging to
the Quandamooka people, dedicating her
projects to the preservation and promotion
of First Nations fibre art and collaborative
curatorial approaches.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 47

Reconnecting the Yaghan
community to cultural belongings
90 years on

Rebecca Carland

The Ancestral waterways of the Yagan Usi in

Tierra del Fuego, 2019. Photo: Alberto Serrano

48 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

My name is Rebecca Carland. I am a senior curator at
Museums Victoria, based at Melbourne Museum. My work
centres on the history of the museum’s collections, how they
came to the museum, and their journey through time and
space. Like many museums established in the nineteenth
century, we care for vast First Nations collections, from
Australia and around the world. Increasingly, our work with
these collections occurs against a backdrop of profound
change in the museum’s approach to First Peoples’
authority. We are guided by a transformational principle
which seeks to place First Peoples’ living cultures and
histories at the core of our practice. Our current project, Lost
in Translation, sits at the intersection of this new paradigm
and the colonial legacy—collaborating with and giving
back to the Yaghan community of Chile, who continue
to practice their culture and connection to their lands.
In February 1929 the Australian Anthropologist Sir
Walter Baldwin Spencer and his fieldwork assistant Jean
Hamilton travelled to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost
tip of Chile. Having only recently retired as director of
the National Museum of Victoria (modern-day Melbourne
Museum), he and Hamilton were following in the
footsteps of Charles Darwin and their goal was to study
the Yaghan people, whom they dismissed as a “dying
race.”1 They maintained this view even as they worked,
lived and travelled with a number of Yaghan families,
across various waterways and islands. Ironically, five
months into their work, it was Spencer who was dead,
after suffering a heart attack in a snow‑covered hut.
Lost and alone, it was up to Hamilton to bury
Spencer and bring the fruit of their ill-fated expedition
home to Melbourne. Hamilton’s description of
the return journey through treacherous weather on
dangerous seas is harrowing. The collection she
transported back comprised hundreds of items—
photographs, baskets, tools, a large model canoe and
detailed notes on Yaghan kinships and language.
After Hamilton’s return, she worked with
anthropologists in Oxford to publish an account of
the expedition.2 A small collection of stone tools
and documentation was deposited at Pitt Rivers
Museum, Oxford during this time.3 She then delivered
the majority of the material to Museums Victoria,
where it remained untouched for 90 years.
The expedition and Spencer’s relationship with
Hamilton had long held my interest, but disciplinary
boundaries have excluded me from working with the
collection. I accepted this status quo until a mutual
colleague introduced me to the work of Camila
Marambio. Camila is an artist, curator and Director of
Ensayos, a nomadic interdisciplinary research program
that focuses on eco‑political issues in Tierra del Fuego.4
Camila knew little about the expedition and resulting
collection, and I knew nothing of the Yaghan, but over
many coffees and meetings, we shared our knowledge.
From Camila I learned that the Yaghan community,
having been excluded from their traditional waterways
and islands by successive industrial interests, now live
mainly in Ukika, Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island
in the Chilean Antarctic region. Her previous work with
the community alerted us to a yearning to physically
connect with objects made by their Ancestors, as well
as a desire to repair the gaps in cultural practice brought
about by colonial oppression. We saw an opportunity
to work directly with Yaghan Elders, to awaken the
collection here in Melbourne and to reconnect it to this
geographically and politically isolated community.
We began laying the groundwork for what would
become a joint project, Lost in Translation. Despite
our enthusiasm, it was still more than a year before we
were sanctioned to work with the collection. During
that time the museum was re‑evaluating and grappling
with its colonial legacy. A seminal turning point in
this re‑evaluation was the creation of a dedicated
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 49
Above:
Various stab [close-weave baskets] made
by Yamu Kauau and Kanuks, the wives
of Aia putilla schanaiensis [Domingo], and
a series of tools by unrecorded makers
collected from Navarino Island, May 1929.
Photo: Jon Augier, Museums Victoria
50 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Opposite:
Apa sa mourako, apa sa kunta. “We are Indigenous people
of the Yaghan Community in the extreme south of Chile.
We have inhabited this territory for more than 6,000 years,
these are the ancestral lands of the Yaghan, the Yagan Usi.”
David Alday, President, Yaghan Community surrounded by
kin. Navarino Island, August 2019. Photo: Alberto Serrano

First Peoples Department. This paradigm shift gave
us the space and authority we needed to proceed.
In December 2018 Camila went to Navarino
Island. Over a series of days, she met with the Yaghan
community including matriarch Christina Calderón,
affectionately known as Abuela (Grandmother). They
sipped tea, reconnected, and slowly Camila shared
with her and her extended family the images of the
collections in the Melbourne Museum and Pitt Rivers
Museums. The Yaghan community were incredulous.
They knew nothing of Spencer, the expedition or the
collection. Their interest was piqued but they were also
frustrated by the lack of information. Who made these
baskets? Who are these children in the photographs?
Where is this bow and arrow from? These are exactly
the questions Camila and I had when first accessing the
collection and now we had a mandate to address them.
From this first consultation we recognised that,
for the Yaghan community, the museum collection
is an important bridge between their past and their
future. But for it to be relevant, even useful, we first
had to decolonise the historical record. Guided by the
community’s needs we have sought out and interrogated
the documentation, including Spencer’s original field
notes, and radio and print interviews with Hamilton.
Perhaps the most valuable early step in unlocking the
record was digitising the original expedition narrative,
Spencer’s Last Journey. The Biodiversity Heritage
Library is hosting this work online which means it is
fully word searchable, enabling us to link people, places
and events. It is not an easy read. As a former fan of
Spencer’s feminist credentials, it has been eye-opening
to be exposed to the casual racism of his unedited and
unabridged jottings. Within the histories I most often
encounter, Spencer was a progressive ally to women trying
to crack into the scientific elite bubble in Melbourne and
the first to employ female academics at the University
of Melbourne. My gratitude at finding a feminist
champion in our institution’s history had stopped me
interrogating his achievements through other important
lenses—in particular, his approach to First Peoples.
The expedition narrative also reveals that Spencer
removed Ancestors’ remains from the middens on
Navarino. We did not realise this at the beginning of the
project because there was no record of the Ancestors at
either the Melbourne Museum or Pitt Rivers Museum.
The burden on the community of this historic injustice
is enormous. We continue to use our museum network
to seek out these Ancestors, and will continue to assist
the community in finding them with a view to bringing
them home. The irony that Spencer, responsible for
the removal of Ancestors in Australia and Yagan Usi,
is himself forever removed from his kin (buried in
Punta Arenas), is not lost on the project team.
The research has been painstaking, involving a
thorough overhaul of the way the collection is described
and documented to provide more contextually specific
information. Working with the community we have named
everyone in the expedition (where possible), identifying
dates, locations and previously unrecorded makers.
Collection managers, conservators and photographers
have accessed, assessed and digitised the collection.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 51
Among the 300-plus objects, the canoe model, baskets,
photographs and journal notes are the most important
items for the community, so we have focused on those
first. These objects provide a tangible connection to
their past—not so distant and yet so changed.
This cross‑cultural knowledge exchange also
embeds living Yaghan language into the collection for
the first time, highlighting the progress the museum has
made in recognising the needs of First Peoples. Our
act of resistance in preferencing Chilean Spanish over
Australian English in the collection database and the
online records also happened with little fanfare. The
community can now access information easily and feed
back updates and changes which, once captured in the
database, automatically update online overnight.
This project powerfully embodies the words of Mike
Jones: “When it comes to museum documentation this is
the real work of decolonisation—not to detach and rarefy,
but to embed and reconnect; not to dismantle the history
of empire, but to dismantle its privileged perspective; not
to de- but to re-contextualise. Otherwise, the information
we provide access to, physically and digitally, will
continue to reveal only a partial, one-dimensional view
of complex, entangled, multi-dimensional stories.”5
After all this work in addressing the errors and
omissions of historical museum practices and working with
the Yaghan community to make the collection culturally
safe, the community can now view the collection online,
and take their time to consider how and what it offers. We
are also working to deliver on the desire that first inspired
the project—to enable the Yaghan to physically connect
with their objects. As an example of this need, the keeper
of Yaghan watercraft tradition, maker and craftsman
Martín González Calderón, is frustrated by the lack of
detail in the photographs. As a craftsman, his hands need
to feel the materials and understand the construction.
Basket weavers and makers of shell necklaces are also
52 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
interested in accessing the collection in person. So now
our focus moves towards finding support for the Yaghan
makers to come to Australia and visit the collection. We
are negotiating with the Chilean government (Ministry
of International Affairs) and seeking funding here in
Australia, with the hope that in these globally challenging
times, this project can succeed in its ultimate goal of
connecting the Yaghan people with their heritage.
The National Library of Chile has expressed their
support for publishing a Spanish edition of the original
expedition narrative with a new introduction from our
team and a decolonising chapter from the community,
should we find funding for the translation. Our hope is
that this will unlock the expedition for South American
audiences and the authored chapter will raise the
profile of the Yaghan community across the region.
Projects such as this one move us past the white male
explorer narrative to signal a new relevance, guided by
the source community. We are seeking to mend the errors
and omissions of the past and redress the displacement of
First Peoples’ voices and knowledge in traditional museum
practices. The challenges are political, institutional and
environmental. The project has provided a crash‑course
in decolonisation and a remarkable mirror in which
to view this museum’s privilege. Museums Victoria
can’t claim that ours is the most detailed or extensive
collection of Yaghan material in the world, but that’s not
the point. The point is we are willing to provide access
to the community, respect their expertise and knowledge,
and create a safe space where the collection and the
museum become relevant within their living culture.
1 Various letters to anthropology colleagues and friends (Frazer, Balfour, etc) in the months leading
up to and during the expedition reference this as Spencer’s motivation for the trip. Museums Victoria
Spencer Collection __2 Spencer’s Last Journey: being the journal of an expedition to Tierra del Fuego
by the late Sir Baldwin Spencer with a memoir. Edited by R.R. Marett and T.K. Penniman, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1931__3 Rivers Museum accession lot 1930.65 and documentation dispersed within
the Spencer papers__4 Camila Marambio has previously worked with the Yaghan community in
2013–16 bringing them photographs taken by the explorer Charles Wellington Furlong found in the
Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College__5 Mike Jones, “Tristram Hunt and the de-
recontextualisation of museum artefact.” Context Junky, mikejonesonline.com, 08 August 2019.
Rebecca Carland is Senior Curator, History of Collections and Scientific The curators and community Elders are grateful for the extraordinary

Art at Museums Victoria, working with objects, images and specimens support of Alberto Serrano, Director, Museo Antropológico Martín

to explore narratives of discovery, Indigenous knowledge systems, Gusinde, Navarino, Chile.

colonial contact and notions of nature/conservation.

Yaghan Elders including President David Alday, Julia González,

Martín González Calderón and Veronica and Violeta Balfor are leading

this project, along with independent curator and Museums Victoria Camila Marambio, the first external curator to access the
collection of artefacts from the Yaghan community held in the
Honorary Associate, Camila Marambio, working with Rebecca Carland. Melbourne Museum for 90 years. Photo: Jacqui Shelton

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 53

A conversation with Perisak Juuso
Irene Snarby
Opposite:
Perisak Jusso in his home.
54 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
It was a cold morning in early
February when me and my husband
Dag set out from Tromsø, a town
located on the northern coast of
Norway. Before us was a journey
through Sápmi, through three
countries, before we finally arrived
at Perisak (Berissat) Juuso’s home
village, Mertajävri, in the northernmost
part of Sweden. Our trip brought heavy
snow covering almost all that we
could see, reindeer, moose and foxes
that suddenly jumped onto the road
in front of the car, and a breathtaking
sunset at about one o’clock, before
we finally found the house where hot
coffee and exciting stories awaited.
Perisak Juuso was born into a
family of reindeer herders in 1953.
For some years he lived the lifestyle
and profession of a reindeer herder,
with his own flock of reindeer, and
received an education, training to
become a licensed silversmith. Later
he specialised in design and studied
to be a teacher. Along with his formal
schooling, and by watching his parents
make all kinds of necessary things
for everyday life, he learnt important
lessons in knowledge and culture.
Northern Sámi do not traditionally
have separate terms for art and craft.
We use the common word, duodji, for
all visual, creative activity.1 Duodji is
often translated as Sámi handicraft,
which relates to the working process,
but the concept also contains deeper
aspects.2 Duodji reflects a holistic
view of life and culture. The concept
encompasses multiple practical, social
and spiritual activities, from the
gathering of materials to processes
involving Sámi epistemologies and
belief systems.3 Duodji encompasses
both the production of an item, and
the item itself.4 In his youth, Perisak
was especially eager to figure out the
whole working process from materials
to the finished product. He studied
how animals were slaughtered, and
how every part of them was used. He
learnt how to collect the right items
at the right time of the year, to follow
nature’s seasons. By studying and
engaging in these processes thoroughly
he gained knowledge passed on
from generation to generation, and
developed to become a master. It was
not an easy decision for him to give up
his reindeer, but two jobs was simply
too much. Perisak is now well‑known
for creating high quality duodji, and
he is well‑accustomed to collectors
constantly coming to visit in search
of treasures for their art collections.
He is an artist who is firmly planted in
Northern Sámi culture, and at the same
time lives in a vibrant art world where
the boundaries between tradition and
innovation are constantly stretched.
There has been much discussion about
what separates duodji and dáidda (the
Sámi word made in the 1970s for the
Western term of art) at various events
and in academia. This is not an article
about that. This is a conversation with
Perisak Juuso, which took a different
turn than expected. We were going
to talk about art, and so we did, but it
became just as much a conversation
about place—about the landscapes
that are part of us, about boundaries
and about oblivion. I myself have
a large Sámi family primarily on
the Norwegian side, through my
mother’s family, but we talked more
about the island town of Tromsø,
and the village my father’s family
originates from on the mainland, called
Stuoranjárgga in Sámi. Because here in
Mertajävri, many miles from the sea,
in the Könkämä area, in the Swedish
county of Kiruna, there are Sámi
descendants of those who were denied
the right of return to their homes in
the summer lands on the Norwegian
side, that they have also used since
time immemorial, due to restrictions
negotiated in 1919 by Sweden and
Norway, and implemented in 1923. In
Tromsø we were taught that they were
Swedish Sámi, but they did not even
speak Swedish, they spoke Sámi and
Norwegian. One of their descendents,
Elin Anna Labba, writes: “It was

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 55


From top:
A “Sjark” boat on the sea.
Horn knives in their sheaths.
56 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Tromsø’s own citizens they forcefully
displaced from the area.”5 It may
have been forgotten or minimised
by the Norwegian townsfolk, but not
by those who were forced to leave.
When we arrived, Perisak had
mounted a sculpture on the table and he
told us that this is a Sjark, a fishing boat
on the sea. The sculpture consists of two
parts. The main part is made from wood
and has an abstracted, hollowed boat
shape, almost like an oval bowl, in a
marvellous maroon colour. Attached to
the back of the boat is an ornamented,
triangular piece of moose antler. It
is precisely this small piece of horn
that gives the sculpture its meaning. It
represents a sail, says Perisak, which
is found on every sjark throughout
northern Norway. My husband Dag
suddenly became excited, he has been
fishing quite a lot at sea, and recognised
it as a mesan sail, which stabilises the
boat in side winds. He explained that
if you have the sail catching the wind,
you can save tremendously on fuel.
Perisak smiled and said it was good
to meet someone who knew this. He
mainly liked it for its beauty. But he is
concerned that all these small fishing
boats will disappear. He believes that
the big companies will take over all
fishing in northern Norway, the Arctic
Ocean and everywhere, and the small
boats will disappear in a few years.
The sjark is carved from a
čuolbmabáhkki, which directly
translates to problem burl, a special
burl that grows in clumps on birch
trees. This troublesome material
becomes beautiful when it is ready, but
is extremely hard and difficult to work
with. Perisak tells us that you have to
wait patiently in the drying process
as well. When you start forming the
piece you have to calculate how it
may shift in different directions, and
you have to save some materials in
order to adjust it into the shape you are
looking for. After carving, drying and
polishing, he lubricates the wood with
a mixture of dried birch bark that has
been powdered and boiled with water
until it has the colour and texture like
syrup. Then he starts with the next
object. It is the most effective and least
harmful to carve fresh wood by hand.
He basically only has dry materials in
storage, and relieves his tired hands
from working with machinery by
handling the wood in these ways.
Along with the boat sculpture are
two knives that came home to Perisak
from an exhibition at the Sámi Art
Festival in Alta only the day before.
The traditional shapes are called
gavvarisdohppa and njuolgodohppa,
named after how much the sheaths
are bent. The knives are made of
birch root, moose antlers, and damask
steel, the sheaths are made of antlers
and cowhide. Perisak likes to use
cowhide because it is stiff and hard.
They use the same hides on the
interior of expensive cars, like Rolls
Royce. He explains that reindeer hide
is usually softer, if you do not find a
large and old reindeer bull you can
use. The largest sheaths’ leather is
naturally dried, and probably tanned
with spruce. It is not stretched in
a factory, like the leather of the
smaller knife. It takes a lot of skin
to make this because it shrinks a lot,
and it is really hard to work with.
The birch root in the shaft has
a more marbled structure than the
čuolbmabáhkki. This kind of birch
root is quite difficult to find: Perisak
tells us, you must consider carefully
where you can dig. When you search
the slopes, and see that there is a
stem with a slight elevation before
the birch goes down into the field, it
can be worth a look. The small rise
is a kind of compensation of the root
that grows to stabilise the birch. They
cannot be found on the plains, and
it involves a lot of climbing. Perisak
says that there are many birch roots
by the fjords that are large, dense and
fine. We agree with him, knowing
the conditions in our home area in
Tromsø, with large birches that grow
out of the ground and bend up into
an arch. This is of course not new
to Perisak, as his family has had
summer lands in the fjords close by.
Our conversation turns over to
what has happened to the Sámi place
names in these areas. At the mainland
area in Tromsø, there is a big mountain
that the Sámi called Áddjitgáisa, the
father of Stuoranjárga.6 This name
is connected to myths, religion and
the function of the area. Perisak still
remembers the reindeer herders’
names, and in which area they had
their flocks, and why they had to
leave. It is common knowledge here.
Strangely this place did not get its old
name back when the villages around
Tromsø got signs with both Norwegian
and Sámi names. Instead, a new
unknown name, Snárdut, was given to
the place. It seems to be a Sámi-like
translation of the Norwegian name
Snarby, my father’s family name. The
old name that gave sense and meaning
to the area, and was connected to
the history of the place was ditched.
Perisak knows for sure that the new
Sámi name of the neighbouring
village is completely wrong. Its new
Sámi name is now Baikajohkka,
which translates to “Poop River”.
In Norwegian, the place is called
Skittenelv—“Dirty River”—As we
can see it is a poor and misunderstood
translation, probably from a much
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 57
older translation, that makes the people
who now live and work there feel
ashamed. We wonder how this could
happen. Why are we not allowed to
be proud of the Sámi names? Perisak
says it could be a lack of knowledge,
as few people know to what extent
Tromsø was Könkämä Sámi summer
land. All the areas around Tromsø
had Sámi names, but Norwegians
have suppressed this and now, when
they can’t find knowledge in sources
one click away on the internet, they
abandon the effort. Our laughter is
bittersweet when we conclude that
it must be someone in the south of
Norway making this mistake.
Perisak returns to his knives and
explains the importance of picking the
right antlers for the right purpose. It
takes ages to learn to read an antler.
You cannot read in a book how to
figure out the right shape. There are
also strict rules for how you can
work with the design. His area uses
the Könkämä traditional engraving.
This belongs to the Northern Sámi
tradition, not the Southern or Central
Sámi, which have different designs.
Perisak is concerned because many
duojárs (makers of duodji) nowadays
use various engravings and shapes
mixed together. It leads to confusion,
like mixing three languages together
and making an incorrect one. No one
58 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
understands each other because of
this mix. The shapes may be right, but
then the engraving is something else
entirely. I suggest that it might be the
duodji training institutes that provide
opportunities to experiment with
others’ designs. The teachers might
come from different areas. Perisak
agrees, but being a teacher himself
this really upsets him, he would never
encourage the mixing of traditional
designs from different areas, but,
it does not mean that you cannot
experiment within your own practice.
Perisak would not be the master he
is if he had not developed his own
distinct style. With deep respect for
his roots, and his Ancestors’ work, he
allows himself room for change. He
explains how, after making numerous
knives, he started to develop a new
kind of engraving, still based on the
Northern Sámi style. This traditional
style is often quite heavily decorated
and involves engraved flowers in
the middle of the sheath, and then it
continues with bands, and then there
may be some flowers again. But here
he has thrown the engraving into the
air, then caught it and placed a little
here and there. He picked away the
bands, stars and flowers, and what is
left are central protrusions that run
over the sheath all the way down to
the shaft. The engraving includes
small continuous triangles looking
like a mountain range, and the many
dots enhance the impression of a
landscape, like stars in the sky, a
heavenly vault. The many dots are
made to highlight this and create a
whole. He tells us that an architect
who admired his work said he had
created a postmodern engraving. Both
sides of the knives are decorated in
this special fashion that continues on
the shaft. Traditionally knives do not
have engraving that continues from
the sheath to the shaft, one simply
engraved the sheath. Perisak tells that
he will work on further dissolving
the patterns, to be only lines and dots
like on the top of one of the knives.
He is a great admirer of Indigenous
peoples’ way of producing images
and stories. He thinks that if this,
for instance, had been shown to an
Australian Aboriginal person he or she
would have understood it all; these
are the paths and tracks the Ancestors
used. I interrupt him, saying that as
an art historian I see a kind of Picasso
style in the pattern, Perisak replies
that Picasso was the first to take
Indigenous art and transform it in his
own images. The knives we look at
today still have a few of the traditional
patterns, like flowers and stars,
engraved with incredible precision.
One of the flowers is reminiscent of a
stohpu, from the drawings on ancient
holy drums that looked like houses
or buildings. Yes, it’s a roof, Perisak
agrees, a Japanese roof. When I make
bowls or skáhppu (boxes), I’m inspired
by Japanese roofing. Sometimes the
pattern is added to the antler in order
to hide an imperfection like a vein.
He shows me where he had to make
it on the knife, then he makes me
aware that the large antlers he has
used are actually quite difficult to find,
having saved these for almost thirty
years. Getting good stock takes a lot
of time, and is something a duojár
constantly works with. You do not
take any kind of antler. It is a bad
idea to use an item that is not fitted
to a knife. It must be dense, with as
little amount of porous marrow as
possible. Closest to the head and round
antlers are most often the hardest to
work with. The amount of marrow in
the horns says something about the
pasture condition in the spring, the less
marrow the better the pasture. Perisak
tells us about many of the different
names of the reindeer, depending
on how old they are, and how they
look, this is something a duojár must
know. Another important thing is that
you must never take the antler of a
female deer, he calls them vaja. They
lose their antlers in the summertime,
when they have calves, and return to
the same place the following year, to
feed on the old antlers to gain strength
before again giving birth. I realise that
this is exactly what is happening in
my home area, where new reindeer
from the Norwegian side give birth.
The knowledge was something the
elders explained; never touch the vaja
antlers because she needs it when she
comes back. It’s the only thing you
can’t touch, the rest you can take.
Antlers are after all just minerals,
often one can find piles of large
male deer horns, but never a vaja.
Perisak makes all the equipment
he needs for his engraving with
numerous different knives for different
uses. I really admire his precise work.
After many years of training he finds
this work easy. Fresh antlers are easy
to engrave, but he only works with old
and hard antlers. The most difficult part
is to create the right shape. Studying
the knives thoroughly I then ask if
he thinks his Ancestors would have
recognised these knives if they saw
them? “Yes,” he replies, “they would
recognise the shapes, but the engraving
... what the hell, are you drunk?!”
We then return to talking about
Tromsø. Perisak remembers the stuffed
polar bear in the main street. For his
family Tromsø was the city itself, From top:
the place of business and trade, that’s Horn knives.
The back of the horn knife sheaths.
where they bought everything and (Detail) The tip of one of the horn knives.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 59
Below:
Giant reindeer antler.
Opposite:
Moose with rakes.
he clearly remembers that as a child
he had never seen so many houses.
Just after the Second World War
his grandfather went to Tromsø and
bought four rolls of English cloth, to
sew the traditional Sámi costume gákti
for several generations of his family
and relatives. Perisak still has a gákti
of this cloth that his mother made
60 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
for him. In those days the reindeer
in his family’s herd were huge.
He tells us that before the war
you could recognise the reindeer,
without looking at the marks, and
you would know which family they
came from.7 Some families’ reindeer
had long bodies, others had dots and
special colours. It made recognising
them easy. After the war, the pasture
in Norway became even more
restricted, and everything changed. In
summer the herds were merged into
a collective, and the flocks changed,
they became more similar. Today,
it seems, no one does the breeding
work. It was a very advanced breeding
work. You saved what you wanted,
but it is all over now. Perisak believes
the nation states do not accept that
people have been here for thousands
of years, they just want access to the
land to build wind turbines, mine and
destroy the land in every way. He
thinks they destroy the fjords, and he
is concerned about the situation for the
Sea Sámi people. Many of them are
former reindeer herders who changed
their occupation to fishing. They
had relatives who took care of their
reindeer as well. It was convenient to
have someone fishing in the family,
then you also had fish, he says.
On the kitchen wall hangs an
object that amused both me and my
husband. It is a cranium of a moose
with orange rakes mounted on the
sides, instead of antlers. It is made as
a humorous greeting to his moose‑
hunter friends, but this also shows
how a Sámi duojár can make objects
that are not pure duodji, but moves
in a direction of art, dáidda. While
traditional duodji has rules to be
followed, the dáidda gives another sort
of freedom. To be able to play and sort
out alternative solutions. If he has to be
pushed to draw a line between duodji
and dáidda, he says, Perisak considers
duodji to be the real art, and from
there the pictures or dáidda evolved.
In his living room is another moose
cranium decorated with brushes. We
laugh when he tells us that he can brag
about having the moose with the most
tags. Just before we leave, Perisak
shows us a gigantic antler he has kept
for forty years in a separate room, it
comes from an old reindeer bull that
is about ten years old. I have never
seen anything like it. It’s from another
world and is so strange because such
large reindeers are no longer bred.
1 The verb is called duoddjon in Northern Sámi language, but
It was truly fascinating to be
Irene Snarby is a Sámi curator and Doctoral
I will stick to the word known as the product; duodji, as Sámi
grammar could easily confuse the non-Sámi-speaking reader
invited to Perisak’s home behind
Research Fellow in Art History at SARP:
__2 The duojár (maker of duodji) is for instance engaged to do

the scenes, to see the machines,
tools and all the burls and roots and
other items just waiting to become
art, in his studio. The sharing of
knowledge that we experienced
was truly generous, and the way
he cared for the old summer land
of Tromsø and Stuoranjárga was
the harvesting of materials in deep respect for nature. If they are The Sámi Art Research Project and WONA:
unlucky and spill some of the materials it is thought that things
Worlding Northern Art at UiT, The Arctic
could go wrong further in the process or probably in life__3 See
Maja Dunfjeld, Tjaalehttjimmie—Form og innhold i sørsamisk
University of Norway. She previously worked
ornamentikk, Designtrykk 2006; Gunvor Guttorm, Gunvor,
“Duodji- som begrep og som del av livet. Duodji—doaban ja
in the Sámi Museum RiddoDuottarMuseat’s
oassi eallimis,” GIERDU—Bevegelser i samisk kunstverden –
Sirdimat sámi duodje- ja dáiddamáilmmis, Irene Snarby and Eva Art Department, where she also contributed
Skotnes (eds), SKINN, RiddoDuottarMuseat, Foretningstrykk
to the Sámi Parliament’s Art Acquisitions
AS—Bodø, 2009__4 See Iver Jåks and Nils Jernsletten, “Samisk
kunst—samisk eller kunst?,” Börje Ekstöm (ed.), Sámi Dáidda, Committee.
Norrbotten Museum, Helsinki, 1981, p. 24__5 Quoted from Elin
Anna Labba, “Låt inte Arctic center bli Tromsös brutala sätt att
markera tvångsförflyttningarna,” Nordnosk Debatt, 20 October

touching. I only wished we had more
time. Seeing gigantic antlers that
are so rare today makes me realise
2019__6 See Stine Benedicte Sveen, “Muntlig tradisjon og This essay has been commissioned by Artlink
samiske stedsnavn på Stuoranjárga/Tromsø fastland,” published by
magazine in collaboration with Norwegian
UiT, The Arctic University of Norway: https:uit.no__7 A reindeer
mark is a unique cut in the ear of the animal. This cut belongs to
Crafts.
only one person that must be of Sámi heritage.

more than ever that I have seen so

little. I have only experienced a tiny
All photos courtesy of Irene Snarby.

little bit of this world. Our world.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 61

Making Inuit art in the moment

asinnajaq

62 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

Darcie Bernhardt As I find myself sitting down to write about the many
Cutting Caribou, 2018
oil on canvas mediums Inuit artists employ, I reflect upon the last ten years
Courtesy the artist
of my life. It is in these years that I have studied art and
began my career as an artist and curator. It is my delighted
joy to see what the minds of artists create; taking in the form
and the meaning of their work. I often wonder to myself
“What is Inuit art?” Take a moment to see if an image
pops up in your head when you hear the words “Inuit Art.”
Please keep whatever you pictured in mind as you read. For
myself, no matter what image I conjure up in a heartbeat, I
tell myself, whatever an Inuk makes is Inuit art. I know that
Inuit art is not a style or a look, it is a way of creating and
sharing that comes from a culture that has as many ways
of thinking as there are people. While it is simple to me,
there are so many forces outside of me that confuse this
concept in my mind. So, here we are dear reader, decades
after the brightly coloured prints and polished soapstone
carvings of Inuit artists have seeped deeply into the minds
of art lovers around the world. Together, if you agree, we
will take a little journey pondering what Inuit art is.
Because of our rich heritage and the implementation
of government programs to help promote the growth of
an art industry, Inuit artists have a huge marketplace for
their work. As a result of these efforts there are types of
art that are instantly recognisable as Inuit art, such as
colourful graphic prints and polished soapstone sculpture.
I spoke with two fellow Inuit artists, Darcie Bernhardt and
Kablusiak, about their relationships to Inuit culture and
the art world. While Darcie, Kablusiak and I all express
ourselves in unique ways, we continue to have similar
experiences in the art world and follow other artists who
have inspired us and made a name for Inuit art. The artists
before us have demonstrated that it is completely possible
for an Inuk to live life as an artist. But at times it feels that
to be an Inuk artist one must conform to a style or medium
of expression. This leaves artists with many things to be
worked through while we do our best to find our own voice.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 63

Sometimes I’m dismissive of Inuit who like to dream
and work in topics that are seemingly unrelated to our
culture. When it comes to the sewing of jackets in my
hometown, for example, when I first saw a Batman or
Habs1 logo on a parka I didn’t like it. I thought it was
tacky and didn’t understand why a kid would want it
on their jacket. I didn’t understand how it was relevant
to Inuit culture, and I thought that it should have some
relevance. But my understanding has changed. We
can take anything in our life and make it ours, and
we can live unabashedly in the time we occupy. Have
our Inuk culture—homemade jacket—and live in the
moment—loving Batman for example. Loving Batman
does not negate our inherent Inukness. Dismissing
Inuit that are into contemporary music, movies and
fashion is harmful to Inuit culture. It’s harmful in
many ways, because it puts limitations on it. This
begs the difficult question, “What makes an Inuk?.”
64 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Inspired to create works that “flip expectations” or are
“cheeky,” Kablusiak made a series of soapstone carvings
that demonstrate their unique experience and humour.
The series of carvings include a butt plug, a lighter, a
cigarette and a razor. These objects are either familiar to
Kablusiak’s everyday experience or seem to sit in a realm
outside of what is expected of Inuit art and Kablusiak
invites them to join the party. Apart from turning everyday
objects into art, the idea is to be honest about one’s
experience. Kablusiak has a voice that is their own and
chooses to exercise their right to that voice. But when it
comes to the sale of their art, they have the understanding
that if a work they are inspired to make doesn’t have
a quality that is understood as Inuit art, it will gather
dust and not sell. This reality calls into question the
importance of perceived Inukness versus the reality.
Darcie decided to pursue art as an act of doing—
trying to connect with and express experiences—because

it’s valuable to be telling one’s own story, and when it
comes to artwork, “my voice is my perspective.” Darcie
wants to make work that speaks to her experiences in
the past and present. Growing up, even now, there was
a feeling of not being Inuk enough. If you had less
skills with language for example. Conversely, as an
Inuk living in the south, attending gallery openings and
being in public, there is an expectation that you know
everything about all Inuit and Inuit culture, and that you
are there to share this knowledge. When it comes to the
prints and sculpture made my Inuit artists, Darcie had
the thought that even though the generation of artists
before us created work that has been so consumed by
the art world, that some of these beloved artists may
have been coerced into making artwork in a certain
style, they still succeeded in getting a message across.
They succeeded in making artwork that continues to
fuel our spirits. And no matter what medium artists like us
choose to use, we too will be working to get these messages
across. We have a different voice from those before us. But
we still pass on messages, some themes will come from
deep within, using knowledge passed on through generations
speaking to important topics like how to treat each other
and the environment around us. Some of the artwork will
demonstrate our love for Batman, and it will all be Inuit art.
We are lucky to have so many talented people making work
that keeps our stories alive, that works to help our social
network move through traumas and everyday experiences.
No matter if Inuit work in film, print or sculpture they
are making their voice heard and I am thankful for that.
The more unique perspectives we can hear, give us a
fuller and more nuanced understanding of the world.
1 Montreal’s National Hockey League team, Le Canadien, is commonly known as Les Habitants or
Habs, referring to the “pioneering” French settlers.
asinnajaq is an Inuk visual artist, filmmaker, writer and curator whose
practice is grounded in research and collaboration with peers, friends
and family. asinnajaq was previously part of the ISUMA Canadian
Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and winner of the 2020 Sobey Art
Award.
Darcie Bernhardt is a visual artist and curator from Tuktuuyaqtuq
(Tuktoyaktuk) in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and is currently based
in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Kablusiak is an Inuvialuk artist and emerging curator based in Alberta,
Canada.
From left:
Kablusiak Disposable Razor, 2018, soapstone carving
Courtesy the artist and Jarvis Hall Gallery
Kablusiak Butt Plug, 2018, soapstone carving
Courtesy the artist and Jarvis Hall Gallery
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 65
Jeremy Dutcher
Wolastoqiyik futurities
rudi aker
pesk, nis, nihi, new, nan … I count
my fingers in a language that lies
quietly in my tongue. I string
together the words I know to form
a linguistic constellation, of sorts.
Speaking mostly in English, while
peppering in the words that have
been witnessed by time far unknown
to my consciousness and which still
travel through the air today, I wait
intently for when the language might
grace me: at the kitchen table, on the
phone with my muhsum, a “qeyyy
nitap!!!!” in my Instagram DMs.
Wolastoqiyik are in name and
spirit: water people. We are defined
by and in continuous relation with
the water, the river Wolastoq. The
bountiful, generous river that has
sustained us from time immemorial,
as the main artery of our nation,
Wolastoq is our guide, the direction
and the pathway of and for our
mobilities. Our kin have always
gathered along this river, long before
and after uninvited settlers ravaged
our ways of living. We are still
here fighting against the currents
of colonisation and assimilation
to rediscover and reimagine our
knowledges, our culture, and our
language. Water, like language,
trickles, puddles, and is pulled in
and out by moons. Language, like
66 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
water, evaporates, ever-present—
escaping into another form.
In the Spring of 2018, Jeremy
Dutcher released Wolastoqiyik
Lintuwakonawa. Wolastoqiyik
Lintuwakonawa: Wolastoqiyik songs,
our songs. Jeremy has composed a
reinvigoration, a reconnection so
profound that nearly three years
later, the momentum continues to
propel him around the world to new
light and new audiences. Singing
in our language, Wolastoqey, the
album comprises eleven songs, all
of which he recovered from the
archives of the Canadian Museum of
History after heeding the direction
of our Elder, Maggie Paul. From
centuries-old wax cylinders, Jeremy,
a classically trained operatic tenor
and ethnomusicologist, transcribed
by ear the songs of our Ancestors.
The five years preceding
the release of Wolastoqiyik
Lintuwakonawa were full of
research, archival work, community
consultation, and recording. Then and
now, Jeremy maintains that this work
is no individual effort—the work is, in
its essence, decentralising singularity
towards collective abundance. His
concern in reanimating the relics
of our Ancestors supports, in turn,
the illuminating effort of finding
ourselves and our traditions in
colonial repositories. This rediscovery
contributes to a strong sense of
belonging and understanding amidst
the ongoing challenges of Indigenous
and distinctively Wolastoqey
sovereignty. “How many times can
you miss me?” We have been here,
we are here. To recover what settler
violence ruptured, we must assert
that the future of this language
lies in a perpetual dialogue with a
lineage of kin: those with us now,
nihkanipasihtit naka weckuwapasihtit.
When Jeremy and I are in
conversation together, we position
ourselves in relation to one another
through the ties that connect us from
our respective communities—Jeremy’s
kin in Neqotkuk, my own in Sitansisk,
my grandmother teaching his mother,
both of us ending up as visitors to
another territory. As he speaks of
Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, and
of his commitment to language
revival, we circle around ideas of
Wolastoqiyik futurities. We exchange
upon our resolve to build and
witness a future full of Wolastoqey
possibilities wherein exist more
speakers, true sovereignty, respect
for treaties, among many more
opportunities for our resurgence.
Jeremy posits that the undoing
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 67
68 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
of pasts and the decomplication of
presents must occur to reach a holistic
future. He considers his album to be
futuristic, lying in the nature of these
songs; where they come from and
where they are going. In one of his
most memorable moments to date,
upon winning the 2018 Polaris Music
Prize, in his acceptance speech, Jeremy
declares, “Canada. You are in the
midst of an Indigenous renaissance.
Are you ready to hear the truth that
needs to be told?” This quote spread
through Indian Country, creating a
momentous occasion of witnessing
kin addressing the nation‑state of
Canada, to make space for Indigenous
resilience, emergence, and survivance.
We carefully take time to address
those who are doing the work in our
communities, those who have access
to what they need to continue their
learning. Jeremy articulates this as
“the work happening around the
work.” Alongside what is being carried
out by Jeremy and our kin, we must
acknowledge the labour being tended
to by all members of our nations
extending outwards. Indigenous people
don’t exist in a vacuum—all our
relations create alliances extending
beyond nationhood, identity, and
geographies. While many Indigenous
nations are battling the threat of
language extinction, what will carry
us forward is the hope that even
now we are all participating in the
ways we can and know. His music
moves us to be more attentive to
what and who is around us and the
opportunities that we are presented
with. Every move counts—every time
this language is heard, it counts. We
must foreground actively listening
to our Elders when they speak our
languages and employ the words and
phrases we ourselves can recall.
Jeremy facilitates another
avenue of language learning by
using his Instagram to continue
this conversation directly with
our community, as he engages
various revitalisation practices.
@wolastoq_latuwewakon functions as
a resource for those wanting to learn
Wolastoqey—an easily available and
accessible platform for Wolastoqiyik
and non-Wolastoqiyik alike. Sharing
space and words with Jeremy brings
a wave of comfort that fills me with
a sincere sense of home. “We are
of this place.” His eyes are warm,
thoughtful, always moving—in the
way that you wanna squeeze him
because he reminds you of your cuzzin
who you haven’t seen in forever.
In all the contexts in which I
have been privileged to bear witness,
Jeremy is an unwavering force. He
opens up rooms with his music and his
voice, carrying a deep Ancestral magic,
flows into your ears, unburdening your
heart, and offering an acute sense of
hope as he synchronises new energy
into our Ancestors’ harmonies. Using
his talent, his power, his knowledge,
and his magnetism to bring more
visibility to our nation and language,
Jeremy is offering, in words and in
practice, the endless refrain: psiw-te
npomawsuwinuwok kiluwaw yut. As
I write this, we’ve just tipped past
mid‑winter—an essential time for
us to recognise both what has been
lost and found, a time for gratitude
and care. This is when we begin
to long for spring, for growth, and
abundance. We are looking down
the river … “We are at the precipice
of something … feels like it.”
rudi aker is a Wolastoqew auntie, artist, and
organiser from Sitansisk (Fredericton) and
is currently living, working, and studying on
Tiohtiake / Mooniyaang (Montreal).
All photos of Jeremy Dutcher are by
photographer Vanessa Heins, courtesy
the artist.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 69
Notes from Kahoʻolawe, Ka Paeʻāina
o Hawaiʻi, Moananuiākea

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick

and Josh Tengan

Ihumātao, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa.

A growing occupation by Māori, especially the
iwi of Māngere, and their allies to protect and
conserve the whenua from a high-cost housing
development planned by Fletcher Building.

70 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

In July 2019 we visited Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to attend
a week-long curatorial intensive, a collaboration between
Artspace Aotearoa and Independent Curators International
(ICI). Artists, writers and curators from throughout
Moananuiākea the Pacific and elsewhere gathered.
Arriving amidst a growing occupation, following
an eviction notice being served to, and the subsequent
arrests of, Ihumātao land protectors near the Auckland
International Airport in Māngere, we were reminded
that resistance efforts by Indigenous peoples—against
capitalism, globalism, and cultural imperialism—are
ongoing and commonplace throughout the Great Ocean.
The energy was palpable, inescapably influencing
our experiences and focus over the week.
As a concluding act, intensive participants were
invited to give a short public presentation on a project
in development. Our intention was to share thoughts
and feelings on a process-driven, community-oriented
endeavour. We had recently begun a curatorial project
rooted in the land, sea, and sky of Kahoʻolawe, the smallest
of the eight principle Hawaiian Islands, a piko o Ka
Paeʻāina o Hawaiʻi, a navel of the archipelago. Formerly
used as a US military testing and training site, the Island
is most significantly a kino lau, one of the many physical
manifestations of the god Kanaloa or Tangaroa, Taʻaroa,
Tagaloa, as he is known in other parts of the Moana.
Now it’s January 2020, Year of the Rat. Kanaloa
Kahoʻolawe has set us on new courses: to Mauna a Wākea,
Hawaiʻi moku, Mākua, Oʻahu, and back again. What
follows here is an incomplete story with multiple timelines,
an ensemble of fragments—notes, correspondences,
documents, personal reflections—picked up along the
way. It is our hope that this heterogeneous mixture of
materials will provide a sense of our ongoing efforts. Our
efforts to hold space and time, to encourage alternative
and unanticipated modes of production, circulation, and
reception to take place. If nothing else, this collaboration
represents our attempt to acknowledge the communities
that have supported and continue to support us while we
grapple with unsettling futures and defer fixed outcomes.
All the while, we stand ready for what is to come.
Situating ourselves: Who you? No hea mai ʻoe?
Josh Tengan___Aloha mai kākou. As visitors, we begin by
acknowledging the people of this place, ngā mana whenua
o Tāmaki Makaurau. We attended this curatorial intensive
to deepen connections to curators working in the Great
Ocean, especially our cousins in Aotearoa. We are grateful
to Artspace, ICI, and all of our peers and mentors who have
helped shape our time and thinking over the past week.
My name is Josh Tengan. My family comes from
Honolulu, Oʻahu; Kīhei on Maui; and Hāwī on Hawaiʻi
moku. I am of Kanaka Maoli, Ryukyuan, and Portuguese
descent. Through my knowledge succession as a curator,
I’ve had the privilege of learning from Ngahiraka
Mason who I first came to Aotearoa with in 2016 and
Nina Tonga who I worked under on the Honolulu
Biennial 2019, TO MAKE WRONG / RIGHT / NOW.
Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick___A warm welcome to
us all. My name is Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick. I am of
Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Cantonese, Sicilian, and German descent.
In Hawaiʻi nei, my ‘ohana extended family holds space on
Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Maui, Kahoʻolawe, and Hawaiʻi island.
I was also fortunate to be able to work with and learn from
Aunty Ngahiraka as an artist, curator, and community
member. Along with Artspace Aotearoa and ICI, she is
one of the currents that carried us both here today.
The project we will be discussing, initiated by
Josh and I with the support of Oʻahu-based non-profit
Puʻuhonua Society, emerged from the particularities of
place. Specifically, it centres on Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe
and is shaped through a series of three huakaʻi,
journeys or cultural field service trips, to the Island.
JT___The first huakaʻi, happening in September 2019,
includes Kānaka organisers, artists, writers, educators,
and documentarians. The two subsequent accesses to
occur in 2020 and 2021 include participants from across
Moananuiākea and abroad, as a means of building a
transnational network of relationships and strategic creative
alliances. Together, the huakaʻi support meaningful
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 71
dialogue and exchange between oceanic and archipelagic
communities in order to reinforce our ties to one another,
Kanaloa, Hawaiʻi, and Moananuiākea at large.
Kahoʻolawe: An incomplete history
JT___Following Japan’s attack on the U.S. at Puʻuloa
Wai Momi, Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Federal government
declared martial law in Hawaiʻi and seized the island of
Kahoʻolawe for extensive use as a weapons range for
live-fire testing and training operations. For the next five
decades the US Navy maintained control. Kahoʻolawe,
desecrated, an open wound, became known as “Target
Island.” One of the deepest visible scars that still
remains is a crater left at the former site of Operation
Sailor Hat. Named for a series of three tests conducted
in 1965 meant to simulate nuclear blasts, “Sailor Hat”
is evidence of irreversible impact—the explosions were
so violent that they cracked the Island’s water table.
DKB___In January of 1976, members of a community-
based, islands-wide grassroots organisation, now
known as the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, slipped
past U.S. Coast Guard patrols and “illegally occupied”
Target Island. The ʻOhana filed a civil suit in US
Federal District Court later that same year—Aluli
et al. v. Brown (Civ. No. 76-0380)—to protect
Kanaloa from further violence. These unprecedented
actions galvanised a cultural reawakening across the
archipelago, reshaping life in the years to come.
JT___In response to the ʻOhana’s direct action, and a
partial summary judgment in favour of Aluli et al., the
U.S. Navy signed an out of court settlement Consent
Decree and Order which recognised the ʻOhana’s
desire to be ke kahu o ka ʻāina and caretakers devoted
to protecting Kanaloa. Furthermore, the US Navy was
required to survey and preserve the Island’s remaining
historic sites; clear surface ordnance from 10,000 acres;
implement soil conservation and revegetation programs;
and allow the ʻOhana monthly access to the Island.
72 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
DKB___In May 1994, nearly four years after US President
George Bush’s Memorandum to discontinue use of
Kahoʻolawe as a weapons range, the title to the island was
transferred from the US Navy to the State of Hawaiʻi. In
the decade following, the US military continued to control
access to the island while they cleared the land and waters
of unexploded ordinances and hazardous materials and
conducted environmental restoration activities in an attempt
to return the island to a habitable base level. Four-hundred
million dollars was secured for clean‑up and remediation.
JT___In November 2003, control over access to the
island was transferred from the US Navy to the State
of Hawaiʻi. Today, the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve
Commission (KIRC) is responsible for managing
Kahoʻolawe until the island is transferred to a sovereign
Native Hawaiian entity. The KIRC recognises the
ʻOhana as the organisation which provides stewardship
for the island and its cultural and natural resources.
The two custodians of the island, one governmental
(KIRC) and the other grassroots (the ʻOhana), share
the responsibility of bringing life back to Kanaloa.
DKB___It has been nearly three decades since live-
fire testing and training operations were halted on
Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe. Given that many of the injustices
committed on Hawaiʻi and its peoples during the 20th
century continue to be experienced today, it is crucial
to understand our role within this larger history of
resistance. We continue a process of healing today,
knowing that there is always more work to do and more
aloha to give to one another and our beloved ʻāina.
JT___The current title of this project, I OLA KANALOA
(Life to Kanaloa), is sourced from the ʻOhana’s strategic
plan for Kahoʻolawe through 2026, which marks half
a century of unwavering aloha ʻāina.1 Following the
ʻOhana’s direction, we invite participants to listen to nā
leo o Kanaloa and to imagine rooted speculative futures
for Kahoʻolawe. How do we engage a place responsibly
as curators working in/with/and through communities?
Mākiki, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi.
Excerpts from email correspondence,
Kahoʻolawe / An Invitation 2019

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 73

Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Reformatted excerpt from
ASSUMPTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF
RISK AND RELEASE OF LIABILITY AGREEMENT

74 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

Pre-Arrival: Mauna Alert, in solidarity keep us updated if there are any changes on your end. [Call or]
Text anytime: Drew (808) xxx–xxxx or Josh (808) xxx–xxxx.
Sep 7, 2019, 6:20 PM
Momi Wheeler < ... > Me ka pono,
PKO Huakaʻi Sept 12–15, 2019 DKB + JT

Aloha kākou:)
Going to Kahoʻolawe
As we all know, a Mauna Alert has gone out regarding the
potential unjustified invasion by the State. In discussion By boat the island appeared
with our PKO kua and Puʻuhonua Society on whether pale and purple under a milky sky.
or not this huakaʻi should continue .... we all agreed on Whale known blue ocean
the importance of this upcoming huakaʻi ʻo Kanaloa quilted with waves,
moku, ʻonipaʻa kākou. As ʻanake Maile expressed, “We we swim ashore in the morning rain.
hold steady, in solidarity, and continue our efforts to Olivine crystals jewel the beach.
translate what’s happening [on the Mauna and across We are not the first.
the paeʻāina] through our Maoli perspective.” Dusty-backed scorpions in the garden,
[...] rats and feral cats stare
If for some reason, you are unable to attend at the last minute, out of their night
please contact me ASAP email: < ... > / cell: (808) xxx–xxxx. at what we have brought with us.
As we continue to prepare for this huaka’i, we trust Goats keep out of the way
everyone is mākaukau spiritually, mentally and physically. up the red ravines.
[...] Wasps multiply in the bamboo poles
ʻāina aloha, of the cook house.
momi Standing inside the wall of the heiau
one of the men talks
about the life of the stones.
Sep 7, 2019, 8:45 PM He holds one up for us to see
Drew Broderick < ... > black black stone pōhaku
Re: PKO Huakaʻi Sept 12–15, 2019 the mixing of the waters
the planting of the fields
Aloha mai kākou, I am squatting in my own right of way,
he says, and night comes on.
We are following up with everyone, as representatives of We sleep in the sound of the creaking trees.
Puʻuhonua Society, to affirm what Aunty Momi of the ʻOhana A low yellow light wakes me
sent out earlier. The upcoming huakaʻi to Kahoʻolawe will far from the traffic of the island
proceed as planned. We are grateful for the opportunity to we have come from where
be with Kanaloa in solidarity with Mauna a Wākea. In our the headlights of an orange truck
collective [efforts] for greater self-determination it is vital look out to sea.2
to connect our past struggles to those taking place today. We
know that several of you are on the Mauna already. Please

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 75

Kanaloa: Arrival […]
How does one access Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe? For this
huakaʻi we were led by members of the Kua, the
backbone of the ʻOhana—Uncle Noa Emmett Aluli,
Aunty Noa Davianna Pōmaikaʻi McGregor, Momi
Wheeler, Kelvin Ho, Tom Brennon, Tita Kūhaulua,
and Wendell Figueroa—and guided by protocol.
The night prior our boat assignments were made.
Three groups for the three vessels that carried us across
the ʻAlalākeiki Channel. Under moonlight we departed the
Hawaiian Canoe Club in Kahului, Maui, a half hour by bus to
Māʻalaea and Kīhei respectively. From there, an hour by sea
to Hakioawa, Kahoʻolawe, where we offered an Oli Kāhea:
He haki nu‘anu‘a nei kai
ʻO ‘awa ana i uka
Pehea e hiki aku ai
ʻO ka leo
Mai pa‘a i ka leo
Indeed a rough and crashing sea
76 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Echoing into the uplands
How is it that one lands?
It is the voice
Please don’t hold back the voice
Hoʻolohe mai i ka pane. CJ, our zodiac captain, responded
with an Oli Komo, permission to land. Transferring
our ukana supplies and ourselves into the zodi, we
headed for shore. Jumping into the bay, we entered
an ancient song. An exchange between land, sea, and
sky that spans millennia, long before US bombs fell,
when Papahānaumoku bore Kahoʻolawe. Paytention!
Watcheachoda! Aunty Davi’s voice filled the air.3
We were fifteen—Bernice Akamine, Glen Akamine,
Noelle Kahanu, Marques Hanalei Marzan, Page Chang,
Keith Tallett, Noah Serrao, Joseph Kēhau Serrao, Josiah
Kekoanui Patterson, Cory Kamehanaokalā Holt Taum,
Kūpaʻa Hee, Nanea Lum, Josh Tengan, Drew Kahuʻāina
Broderick, Maile Meyer—a string of names, an unfinished
lei. Artists, musicians, curators, organisers, educators,
writers, attorneys, designers, cultural practitioners,
entrepreneurs, community members. Hawaiians.
 Kanaloa: Holo Mauka

We gathered on weathered slopes, before dawn. We

travelled toward the peak. We ascended through carsonite
markers, paused, beckoning the sun from its sleep:

E ala ē, ka lā i kahikina
I ka moana, ka moana hōhonu

Rise up, the sun is in the east

In the ocean, the deep ocean

Continued upward, humbled in the presence of Haleakalā:

Piʻi ka lewa, ka lewa nuʻu

From left:
Hakioawa. Uncle Emmett and Aunty Davi
orient the group at Hāweoikeaopili, the
ʻOhana’s basecamp.
Climb to the sky, the great height of the sky

Hakioawa. Many hands make light work. ʻIliʻili

gathered along the shoreline were carried up Traversed hardpan, past new growth and old
decay—adze flakes, native/non-native plants,
to Hāweoikeaopili to lay a new foundation for
the Hawaiʻi Island side catchment tank which
provides potable water to the ʻOhana.
coral, shells, and bullet casings. Stopped to discuss
Hakioawa. Aloha mai, aloha aku. Mālama ʻāina revegetation efforts and scatter seeds on the wind,
as justified labour. Cleaning the catchment
tank on Hawaiʻi Island side of Hāweoikeaopili. and eventually arrived atop Puʻu o Moaʻulanui.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 77

Bottom left:
Moaʻulanui. Wai does one of two things on the Island of
Kahoʻolawe. If rainfall is too heavy, wai is expended as runoff
over eroding hardpan, washing tonnes of red topsoil into
surrounding coastal shallows. When rain falls just right, it is
absorbed by plants, and whatever remains soaks deep into
the soil, slowly recharging the Island’s depleted water table.
Naulu, the rain bridge that connects Kahoʻolawe to the
neighbouring Island of Maui takes shape in the distance.
In the afternoon, clouds form over the ascending slopes
of Haleakalā. When conditions are favourable, the winds
carry precipitation across the Alalākeiki channel—bridging
islands—softening Kahoʻolawe with life-giving rain.
78 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Bottom right:
Moaʻulaiki. During a moment of rest and reflection, we position
ourselves in relation. At Puʻu o Moaʻulaiki Navigator’s Chair, the island
chain reveals itself, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Maui, and Hawaiʻi islands
all in view. From here, we also establish a link to Moananuiākea at
large via the Kealaikahiki Channel, the pathway to Tahiti.
Top:
Moaʻulanui. Kua, Kelvin Ho re-seeding resilience, sowing ʻaʻaliʻi
(Dodonaea viscosa) amongst patchy replantings of pili grass
(Heteropogon contortus). “He ʻaʻaliʻi kū makani mai au; ʻaʻohe makani
nana e kulaʻi. I am a wind-resting ʻaʻaliʻi; no gale can push me over.
A boast meaning ‘I can hold my own even in the face of difficulties.’”4
Then we continued, some barefoot, to Moaʻulaiki,
Navigator’s Chair, a piko of a piko of the Hawaiian Island
Chain where voyagers in training learned to kilo observe
ocean currents, stars, and changing weather. Chanting again:
E hō mai ka ʻike mai luna mai ē
Grant us the knowledge from above
On this day, from this ancient vantage point,
we could see Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Maui,
and Hawaiʻi islands. Kealaikahiki, the pathway
to Tahiti, revealed itself recalling the countless
transpacific voyages that began and ended here.
Onward, we share a brief moment with a resilient
wind-shaped wiliwili (Erythrina sandwicensis), one
of the largest remaining in the islands. Then to the
crest of Moaʻulanui, Luamakika, where we made
hoʻokupu at a rain koʻa, shrine. Our offerings varied—
oli and mele, lei lāʻī, ʻawa, wai niu, meaʻai, and wai,
from our respective homes—gifts to Kāne god of
procreation, and Kanaloa’s divine counterpart.
Kanaloa: [...] Departure
ʻO ‘awekuhi, ʻo kai uli
Kuhikau, kuhikau
E hō mai i ‘a‘ama, i ‘a‘ama aha
I ‘a‘ama ‘ia au
Pointing tentacle of the deep sea,
Direct, direct
Grant an ‘a‘ama, ‘a‘ama for what purpose?
For releasing me from my obligation as your guest
Kanaloa has a way of holding on. Like a heʻe, his kino,
he clings tightly to those that enter his realm, long after
departure. Chanting Ke Noi ʻAʻama is an important part
of protocols for release from the burden of responsibility.
Protocols that are completed by an Oli Hoʻokuʻu.5
Accept ‘aʻama crabs instead of us. We have left already.
Kahoʻolawe slipped into the distance. Heading toward
the harbour, we passed islet Molokini—the Island’s
ʻiewe, afterbirth—together in silence. The beachfront
resorts of Kīhei, grave reminders of the work ahead.
Does Kanaloa ever truly release his grasp?
Should we be free of responsibility?
Mauna a Wākea, Hawaiʻi moku, Hawaiʻi
In the stillness of early morning, before our arrival
to Kanaloa, Uncle Emmett addressed the group. Two
questions. “Who has been to the Mauna?” Nearly everyone
raised their hand. “Who has been to Kahoʻolawe?” Just a
few hands. Understanding the significance of the current
Kū Kiaʻi Mauna movement is knowing its relation to other
longstanding and ongoing movements, to Kahoʻolawe,
and elsewhere. Before we can thread our stories of
resistance together, we must come to know them.
After returning to Oʻahu from our first huakaʻi to
Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe, the two of us continued on. Arriving
to Mauna a Wākea in September 2019 was like being late
to a party. Two months had passed since the beginning of
the most recent occupation against the construction of the
Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory atop the
mauna’s sacred summit. Multiple “mauna alerts,” calls for
increased presence at the road blockade, had already been
issued, including the one that almost rerouted our huakaʻi to
Kahoʻolawe. A party in that it felt like we were witnessing
a celebratory family gathering, not an isolated protest.
Joining Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, where kiaʻi
have occupied Mauna Kea Access Road since July, was
in a lot of ways like being with Kahoʻolawe. At both
piko, sovereignty was reestablished through intention,
with clarity of vision, and in steadfast support of beliefs
and practices. Decades of civil disobedience, resistance,
and direct action unite these two wahi pana across time
and space, reminding us of the radical possibilities
realised through the simple act of gathering together.
Mākua, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi
Sitting together at Hakioawa, after hauling our waterproofed
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 79
gear ashore, Bernice Akamine and Josiah Patterson met
for the first time only to discover that it was Josiah’s
father, Dr. Kahu Kaleo, who in the late 1990s, had
encouraged Bernice to present the first iteration of her
installation, Kuʻu One Hanau (1999), in Mākaha, Oʻahu.
On the final evening, during a closing kūkākūkā
discussion, Josiah spoke to the ways Moaʻulanui, Kahoʻolawe
and Mākua, Oʻahu, a valley of his upbringing near the
sands of his birth, were related: both had been desecrated
by the US military and both had been reclaimed and
remediated, albeit to different degrees, through unwavering
efforts of community based grassroots organisations.
To honour interconnected histories of land‑struggles
across our Paeʻāina, upon returning to Oʻahu from Mauna
Kea, we went to Mākua Valley with Josiah under the
guidance of Mālama Mākua including Aunty Lynette Cruz
80 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
and Taylour Chang and under watchful escort from the US
Army Corp of Engineers. On our Island, signs of military
occupation are omnipresent; its effects are felt by both
community and ʻāina and impact our daily existence.
Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi
Ihumātao. Kahoʻolawe. Mauna a Wākea. Mākua.
Acknowledging interisland connections, both within and
beyond the boundaries of a given nation is vital to our
collective oceanic wellbeing. Embodying a continuum
of self-determination, we (re)occupied and we continue
to (re)occupy ancestral places in the present. Doing so,
we held and hold space, in solidarity with communities,
if only for an intensive, a huakaʻi, a weekend, a
couple of hours. As we do so, we remain vigilant.
We must stand together, whenever possible—because
threats to Indigenous sovereignties are always imminent.
February 2020, as fires still burn across the eastern
coast of Australia, scorching homelands and communities,
they are also ablaze on the southwestern end of Kanaloa.
Amidst transpacific flames, we find unexpected solace in
Haunani-Kay Trask’s “Thirst,” written for Kahoʻolawe.

barrenness enters
a wooden lance
splitting sheathes
with the hardened
gleam of lust

we are parching
in the glare
our kernels grizzled
by a strutting sun
Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick is a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi artist, curator, and current

Director of Koa Gallery at Kapiʻolani Community College, Oʻahu who

we are combustible6
recently completed an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at

Eō, we are combustible. Ea, we surrender ourselves

Bard College, New York, and previously worked in Honolulu-based

willingly to energetic transformations. Lighting up.

collective PARADISE COVE (2015–18).

Burning bright. We rise like embers—nourishing seeds.

Carried by currents of air and ocean. Across our ancestral
Josh Tengan is a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi contemporary art curator, previously

places, territories, and nations. We are not the first.

Assistant Curator, Honolulu Biennial 2019 To Make Wrong / Right / Now,
working to survey local visual culture through annual project CONTACT
Mau a mau. We go on.
organised by arts non-profit Puʻuhonua Society. Tengan holds an MA in

Curatorial Studies with Distinction from Newcastle University (UK).

A mau loa i ka lani a Kāne
Forever in the heavens of Kāne
With special thanks to Dana Naone Hall and ʻAi Pōhaku Press for

permission to republish “Going to Kahoʻolawe,” from Life of the Land:

A mau loa i ke kai a Kanaloa
Articulations of a Native Writer (2017), and to David Stannard and
Forever in the sea of Kanaloa7
Haunani-Kay Trask for permission to republish “Thirst,” from Light in

1 Kanaloa 2026 Working Group, “I OLA KANALOA!: A Plan for Kanaloa Kaho‘olawe through the Crevice Never Seen (1994), CALYX Books.
2026,” 2014. From http://www.protectkahoolaweohana.org__2 Dana Naone Hall, “Going to
Kahoʻolawe,” Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer, Honolulu: ʻAi Pōhaku Press, 2017,
p. 29__3 Davianna Pōmaikaʻi McGregor, “Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe: He Wahi Akua/A Sacred Place,” in
Hōkūlani K. Aikau and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez (eds.) Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019), pp. 261–70__4 Quoted from Mary Kawena Opposite:
Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings, Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, Mauna Kea, Hawaiʻi moku, Hawaiʻi. Preparing to step onto the alanui Hale
1983, p. 60__5 The chants and partial chants included in this text were composed by the Edith Kūpuna alongside kiaʻi during noon protocol at Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu.
Kanaka‘ole Foundation and are intended (with the exception of E Ala Ē and E Hō Mai) for use
only on Kahoʻolawe__6 Haunani-Kay Trask, “Thirst,” Light in the Crevice Never Seen, Corvallis: Above:
CALYX Books, 1994, p. 47__7 Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, “He Koʻihonua no Kanaloa, he Moku,” Mākua, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. The goddess Lilinoe appears as a fine
Kahoʻolawe: Na Leo o Kanaloa, Honolulu: ʻAi Pōhaku Press, 1995, p. 109. rejuvenating mist, blanketing the valley.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 81

Kin‑dling and other radical relationalities

Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet

Brent Michael Davids (Lenape) during First

Nations Dialogues’ Kinstillatory Mappings in
Light and Dark Matter. Photo: Ian Douglas

82 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

 “On a night in the woods north of Tallahassee at Pine
Arbor Tribal Community, Mvskoke scholar, linguist
and elder Sakim told me that in Muscogee (Creek)
cosmology, what we know of as the Milky Way is
the path of ancestors—and he said, “I think we all
know, our bodies are stars.” And the belt of Orion?
It isn’t a belt. And it isn’t Orion. It’s a butterfly. And
the belt part is actually the juicy middle part of the
butterfly. And the top wing is this world and the
bottom wing is a reflection of this world. And then
there’s that liminal, juicy line. So there’s always you,
and there’s always the reflection of you, in play.”1
There are these brilliantly shining stars above us. Some of
us can’t see them so well, as though we forget to look up
or they are shielded through our ceilings or lost in the light
pollution. It’s good when I remember they’re there when I
am where I live, in the brightly lit town of New York City,
on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. They offer me grounding.
When I am in consensual relationship with star beings I
feel more deeply the ground and I understand more wholly
how to move. I get to work and be in what is currently
called Australia a lot. I have family and loved ones there,
human kin and more than human too. I was in the bush on
Country about four years ago now. And it was so dark. And
the stars were so bright. And it’s a different sky there than I
am used to, as most of you reading this know, but I was so
far north, just outside Broome, I could see part of the sky
I recognise and it landed me, in relation to the sky I knew
less well. And of course, it’s one sky, as it is one ground.
I spend so much time thinking and being with ground that
there is a dance I do that teaches us to move, bit by bit,
across the world. Well, it can, if you focus hard enough.
I was with an astronomer on this particular night
outside of Broome and he pointed his green laser up to
a dark patch in the sky and he said, “this is not a place
with no stars. There are billions of stars, right here. These
are just dark nebulae, blocking your view.” It reminded
me of Sakim, of his words and teaching. It reminded
me of what we forget. During the bushfires recently, we
gathered—pre-pandemic, when we could gather—around
a Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter fire on
the Lower East Side of Mannahatta. We passed a hat for
the Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities and
Wildlife Victoria. We ate soup, we snuggled under quilts on
a cold night, we gathered love. Demian DinéYazhi’, Nicole
Wallace, and Karyn Recollet shared poems and essays and
light. We were kinstillatory in action, in thought. We shared
space across ground, across stars—and we reflected our
love, bouncing off fire-light to you.
We share an excerpt of a larger essay entitled
“Kin-dling and radical relationalities” in order to
introduce a set of provocations that we are thinking
alongside—together. This is an introduction to concepts
and thoughtlines woven into a longer thought experiment.
We ask of you to please stay in conversation with us as
we are learning that kin‑in‑the‑making also holds space
for rupture, as much as it gestures towards joy. We fall
in love—over and over again—with the provocations
of Nehiyew scholar/poet Billy-Ray Belcourt,
“Sister of forest fire, sister who dwells in the
wreckage. she who forages/for the right things in
the wrong places. nothing is utopia and so she/
prays to a god for a back that can bend like a tree
splitting open to/make room for the heat.”2
We are Emily Johnson (Director, Emily Johnson/
Catalyst) and Karyn Recollet (Assistant Professor,
Women and Gender Studies). In this article we expand
Recollet’s writing on glyphing through reflecting,
challenging, and holding space for her concept
kinstillatory glyphing.3 We also engage Johnson’s view
of dance as everything: culture, history, past, present,
future; as vital spaces of gathering meant for shifts
of consciousness, awareness, and responsibility.4
As artists/scholars it is important for Recollet and
Johnson to build relationships with the land upon which they
visit and live—these relationships extend to responsibility,
care, reciprocity, and anti-colonial understandings of love.
An urban Cree, Recollet was removed from her home
community at Sturgeon Lake, Saskatchewan. In foster
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 83
First kinstillatory fire on Grand Street at Abrons
Arts Center. Pictured: Muriel Miguel, Carole
Johnson, Deborah Ratelle, Murielle Borst Tarrant,
Kevin Tarrant, Lily Bo Shapiro, Ali Rosa-Salas
care for the first six months of her life, she was adopted
by a mostly British family and raised by her beloved
grandparents and mother in Southern Ontario. She met her
beautiful extended family in Sturgeon Lake when she was
eighteen. As a consequence, Recollet creates her grounding
as celestial, as her kinships manifest in relationship
with the stars. Emily Johnson is a dancemaker of Yup’ik
descent. She makes dances for every body and is trying
to make a world where performance is part of life; where
performance is an integral connection to each other, our
environment, our stories, our pasts, present, and futures.
Emily grew up in Alaska with her extended family in close
proximity. Family gatherings centred on harvests of salmon,
moose, and berries frame her worldview and work ethic.
We work together in many forms as sisters and
colleagues. We work from ground to sky and beyond;
through love and rupture, with word, thought and
action. We help focus each other’s curiosity, intuition
and research; and together we create offerings through
dance, writing, star activations, fire gatherings, all-night
84 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
performances, seven-hour long Umyuangviqak’s—which
are endurance-based round-table discussions held by
councils of Indigenous women. We also hike, or have hiked,
and send messages to one another across space time.
We tend to notions of radical relationality, kinships,
care, and our comprehension of star worlds. By radical
relationality, we are thinking with the idea of “relations
of care” as a concept and idea shared by Donna Haraway
and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Drawing upon Haraway’s
relational ontology, that “beings do not pre-exist their
relatings,” and Haraway’s thoughts on the situatedness of
knowledge,5 Puig de la Bellacasa evokes ways of thinking
with care, and how we come to imagine relations as a
means of worlding.6 As such, our praxis is necessarily
dialogical and relational. The processes that we evoke
in our practice are processual as we gather, collectively
witness, and provoke—with knowledge holders
Indigenous to the territories on which we are visitors.
We ask of this collective work, how do we make
consensual, nurturing, respectful, and loving relationships
with one another, the lands we occupy, our more-than-human
kin on earth, with stars and constellations, Ancestors, and
beings yet to come? Our collaborative process is rooted
in the understanding that we do not activate land; rather,
land activates us—therefore curation is light and open to
possibilities. What are some points of departure kinstillatory
gatherings can offer to activate territories and explore
dialogical, movement-based spaces? And further, what have
we been learning and witnessing as part of this process?
Our intentions are to think with fire as a technology and
be-ing that embodies and explicates forms of Indigenous
sociality, a concept whose inspiration was drawn from
Ashon Crawley’s insightful writing in Blackpentecostal
Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility.7 We ruminate on the
possibilities of fire as a conduit for expressions of love
and intimacy toward place and each other. We describe the
potential of fire as kinship—a be-ing that renders possible
futures for Indigenous folx; and we evoke a conversation
which centres kinstillatory gatherings as a methodology.
Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter are
monthly fire-side gatherings held on the Lower East Side
Quilt from Emily Johnson’s performance project, Then a Cunning
Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars, 2017. During the
provocation: This is Lenapehoking, countering perceived invisibility
for Umyuangvigkaq at the ACE Hotel in NYC with PS122, Georgia
Lucas, who was then 11 ½ years old, and the youngest person in the
room, looked up from her sewing and said, “I was born here. But now I
understand. This land does not belong to me, but I belong to the land.”

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 85

Opposite:
Meeting the technologies of fire.
Photo: Emily Johnson
of Manhahtaan in the amphitheatre of Abrons Arts Center.
With careful attention, Kinstillatory Mappings are spaces
wherein Indigenous folx have the capacity for sharing in
joy; while providing an opportunity for non-Indigenous
folx to witness interruptions of normative space/time.
Within these fire gatherings non-Indigenous settlers are
expected to challenge each other’s appropriative actions,
and focus on responsibility, accountability, and care. This is
achieved through sensorial activations alongside meaningful
conversation, witnessing, and potential accomplicing.
As a form of relational practice, we continue to
learn about occupying in-between spaces, and have
gained insight into how to move within rupture. Ongoing
tensions we experience include navigating complicated
assumptions of Indigeneity, and gendered restrictions
impacting our fire keeping practice. Also, we acknowledge
our positionality as visitors on Indigenous territories,
as neither of us consider many of the spaces on which
we create work as our homelands. Nehiyaw Métis
scholar/ lawyer Chelsea Vowel asks us to consider the
ethics of guest‑ing well on Indigenous territories:
“Are guests only those people who are invited? Or
are they anyone who finds themselves within the
physical territory of their hosts? To what extent was
permission actually sought to be in these territories,
and conduct the affairs that Indigenous nations are
thanked for “hosting”? What if an Indigenous person
stood up and revoked that assumed permission?”8
Kinstillatory Glyphing:
Jumping scale into the atmospherics
Kinstillatory describes (a) a choreography of relationality
with land, ancestors (including future ancestors and
more-than-human kin) and possibilities; and (b) a
technology to spatially orient a collective to think,
dream, and activate community futures through
forms of dance, song, feasting, and witnessing.
The concept Kinstillatory coalesced through
witnessing the choreography of Starr Muranko’s Spine
of the Mother. This piece created visual and sonic glyphs
centring the sounds of stars in relationship with one
another captured through the aural vibrations of two rocks
rubbing against each others’ bodies—thus sounding each
others’ grooves and textures. Within the choreographic
vocabulary of Spine of the Mother, dancemaker Tasha
Faye Evans gestures towards a projected image of the
cosmos, wielding precious rocks in her hands which
she then places on fellow dancemaker Andrea Patriau’s
spine. This activation is an embodied alignment between
body and land, gesturing lands’ overflow into sky/space.
This piece offers an otherwise orientation where our
grounding can be considered more celestially rooted,
thus evoking the possibility that constellations (for
instance the Pleiades) are simultaneously futuristic
maps and ancestral portals to our spaces of origin.
Kinstillatory describes a relational practice of being
grounded when you are not of this place, and considers
the possibilities of rooting/routing towards the sky. This
concept also refers to falling in love with rupture to
mimic the practices of supernovas exploding to expel
mass/consciousness, thus providing a framework to jump
scale through extending the potentials for multi‑variant
grounding practices. Kinstillatory informs a complex,
more celestially-rooted form of land pedagogy, wherein
gatherings create possibilities to enter into what Grace
Dillon has conceptualised to be Indigenous slipstream
space/time.9 We perceive the need for methodologies to
accommodate rupture, as Indigenous artists/scholars/
activists are brilliantly and necessarily articulating these
orientations towards the future. For example, Nehiyaw
scholar/multidisciplinary artist Kirsten Linquist asks, “how
do we form relationships and communicate in times of
stress?.”10 Kinstillatory gatherings are more than think tanks,
they are perhaps spaces for “a new generation emerging
into the heartbreak” (Mylan Tootoosis).11 In these moments,
young people experiencing this heartbreak could use a
refuge, a stillness from the storm … a constellation that
holds them up and supports them—an incubator for ideas,
renewal, resistance, the gathering together of hearts and
minds to create futurity maps to activate their gorgeous joy.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 87
Kinstillatory Mappings:
A monthly fire-side gathering on the Lower East Side
“The SilverCloud Singers were drumming and Lucien
was grilling vegetables—we all shared the intimacy
of song, food, dancing, waiting … the kids asking
Lucien about the ingredients as the fire marshall and I
took turns lifting the security lid off the fire in order to
roast tomatoes—holding the heat together, eventually
passing the plate of vegetables, then meringues, then
tea … how the kids were over the moon and how
the drummers led us through the night—at the fire
and with the food—and the collective gathering of
strangers and families and how we round danced! And
how the kids kept dancing. It seemed an important
fire. It seemed, thus far, the most PLACED.”
88 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
Activating within and alongside urban Indigenous Lenape
land space, Johnson hosts and tends these fires with a
careful consideration of fire as central be-ing. The fire
creates the opportunity for kin-in-the-making, opening
portal spaces and generating kinstillatory glyphs in space/
time continuums. Lightly curated, Johnson mobilises the
forms of these gatherings: visiting, witnessing, sharing,
tending, drumming—all in the presence of fire and one
another—on, within, and alongside Lenape land and water.
Fire determines the shapes of these gatherings—
embodying and offering ethical and generative forms of
gathering, witnessing, and accomplicing. Kinstillatory
gatherings are thus cyphers; interventions encouraging the
collective untangling of settler colonial choreographies of
space-making. Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark
Matter have fostered further thinking about kinstillatory
 building. The intentions/wishes of this essay are for our
readers to walk alongside us as we enter these territories
of otherworlding in metaphor, sound, possibility and
sometimes revelling in the necessary pauses and stillness.

1 Sakim, personal communication, March 2016__2 Billy-Ray Belcourt, “The Rez Sisters II,” In This
Wound Is A World, Calgary, AB: Frontenac House, 2017__3 Karyn Recollet, “Glyphing decolonial
love through urban flash mobbing and Walking with our Sisters.” Curriculum Inquiry 45:1, 2015__4
Emily Johnson, “Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars,” in Daniel Sack (ed.),
Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, New York: Routledge, 2017, p. 219__5 Donna
Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14:3, 1988, pp. 575–99__6 Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of
Care: Speculative Ethics in the More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Arizona Press,
2017__7 Ashon Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, New York: Fordham
University Press, 2016__8 Chelsea Vowell, “Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements,” Apihtawikosisan
(apihtawikosisan.com blog), 23 September 2016__9 Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds, An Anthology
of Indigenous Science Fiction. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 2012__10 Kirsten
Linquist, “Using Digital Media Arts and Technology for Decolonial Truth-Telling Across Temporal/
Spatial Layers and Networks.” Conference presentation presented at the Native American and
Indigenous Studies Association Conference, Los Angeles, California, May 2018__11 Mylan Tootoosis,
“The System isn’t Broken, it was built this Way: Seeking Justice for Colten Boushie and Tina
Fontain.” Conference roundtable presented at the Native American and indigenous Studies Association
Conference, Los Angeles, California, May 2018.

Emily Johnson is a Yup’ik artist, choreographer and director of Catalyst,

whose works function as installations, engaging audiences in sensing

and seeing performance and environments, where performance is

part of life, an integral connection to each other, our stories, our past,

present, and future.

as a praxis of Indigenous care to create space for more

Karyn Recollet is a Nēhiyāw writer, artist and Assistant Professor in
nuanced discussions of Indigenous radical relations.
Fire’s capacities as a relative/kin specifically situated on
Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, whose focus in

Lenape homelands, creates a hub space for Indigenous

on urban Indigenous art-making practices as complex forms of urban

sociality through forms of intimacy. As the fire is cared

glyphing—expressing an expansive understanding of land pedagogy

for, the fire in-turn creates space and calls people in. The
that exceeds the terrestrial.

fire’s sound, gestures, movement, and warmth become the

technologies for kin-in-the-making: neighbour meeting
This is an extract, with a new introduction, of an essay first published

neighbour, child meeting fire, settler meeting round dance—

in Movement Research Performance Journal, Issue 52/53, November

an Indigenously defined space. The space itself, filled at

2019. We kindly thank Movement Research Performance Journal for

times with drum or song, poem, story, and silence becomes

this republication.

an in-between space full of care, welcome, pause and

eclipse. Just off busy Grand Street in Lower Manhahtaan, From left:
Land-ing, joy. Thomas E.S. Kelly (Bundjalung-Yugambeh/Wiradjuri/
the intention is for people to walk into this space off the Ni-Vanuatu) leads a dance during First Nations Dialogues’ Kinstillatory
sidewalk, to come knowing there is a gathering or to Mapping in Light and Dark Matter, January 2019. Photo: Ian Douglas

join it in surprise. This is otherworlding, this is futurity SilverCloud Singers at Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 89

Sovereign Acts
In the wake

Ali Gumillya Baker, Faye Rosas

Blanch, Natalie Harkin and
Simone Ulalka Tur with Uncle
Lewis Yarluburka O’Brien
(The Unbound Collective)

Unbound Collective
Sovereign Acts: In the WAKE, 2019
Migration Museum, Tarnanthi Festival
of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Art, installation detail
Photo: Katerina Teaiwa

90 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

In the WAKE is a retrospective of five Sovereign Acts that
considers what it means to be bound, and what it means to be
free. We began in 2015 with Tarnanthi, first light. We close
with Karrka, a time to reflect in the wake of the last light.
We are Mirning, Yankunytjatjara, Yidiniji/Mbarbarm
and Narungga. This work is grounded in old stories from
our Elders, our families and communities. It is grounded
in the work of those artists, poets, scholars and thinkers
who enable us to better understand those intersecting
dynamics of power and oppression; to think through
alternative systems of accountability for race, class and
gender-based violence. African American artist/historian/
scholar Christina Sharpe metaphorically frames “wake
work” as a site for artistic production, resistance and
consciousness; a way forward for living “in the wake”
of deep colonialism—in the path behind a Tall Ship, in
celebrating and keeping watch with the Ancestors, and
coming to a state of “wakefulness as consciousness.”1
Creating art in the wake of violent colonial histories
is our call to recognise signs that continue to mark and
haunt contemporary Indigenous life. Our call to continue
imagining the unimaginable and theorising from the
“position of the unthought.”2 A kind of “rememory”3 where,
despite our lives being historically controlled and archived
by the state to the point of erasure, our memories still exist,
out there in the world. Our memories are here, on this
Adelaide Cultural Precinct site—deeply social collective
and waiting for us to bump into so we might read the signs
and create at that point of struggle between remembering
and forgetting. It can sometimes feel impossible to navigate.
We encounter the past through uncanny triggers. We
will ourselves to recollect, reassemble and reconstitute
what we know and don’t know in order to counter
dominant narratives of our lives. To reinscribe stories and
experience. To shape consciousness. To transform and
liberate. This is our responsibility to remember. To rise-up,
stay afloat and keep watch in the wake of the last light.
This is our creative activism. We stand against the
drilling for oil and gas in oceans on Mirning country. We
stand against a nuclear‑fuelled future in South Australia.
We stand against a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal lands.
We say no! The poison, leave it! (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta
Editorial Committee).4 We speak for the women in our
families who were indentured domestic servants. We shed
light on this history of systemic slavery at the hands of the
assimilationist state. We stand with Indigenous peoples
on the frontline of climate change; our Pacific Island
brothers and sisters who are presently archiving their lives,
saving what they can, and just staying afloat to survive.
This wake work is central to deconstructing elements
of trauma and violence that impact Indigenous lives in
the past and in the present. It is to “occupy and enjoy”
(King William IV, 1836).5 It is to be occupied by the
continuous past and rupture these tough colonial spaces.
We move through the landscape as sovereign women
and celebrate our being and becoming, in the wake of
everything we know and what is yet to be revealed.
Wake-work demands we do not slumber. We must pay
attention to all the work yet to be done. We insist on our
existence, and we defend the presence of our ancestors. This
is our holding—to remain conscious in the wake and keep
afloat at all costs. This is the future of all our lives, held
close through our humanity. Here, we honour. We celebrate.
We mourn. We re‑experience the power of the wake.
We wear well-rounded skirts covered in collated,
carefully placed paper archives. Archives of Protection
Acts and the Aborigines Protection Boards. Archives of
personal family domestic servitude. State Aboriginal Record
archives—surveillance and control. South Australian
Museum archives—data cards and beating hearts, their
cabinets of curiosity. Ledgers quantifying bodies as items
to collate, add, subtract and index to erase—the horror, this
mathematics of genocide6 as records that form a trail so
long it takes your breath away. Some text is blacked-out.
Some text is visible. These difficult records are carefully
tended to and thought deeply about. We locate the personal,
in the wake. This is our historical and contemporary
presence, in the wake. We can make sense of the silences,
absence and invisible spaces in these records, and our
existence of being black in the wake of colonialism.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 91
Both images:
Unbound Collective
Sovereign Acts: In the WAKE, 2019
Migration Museum, Tarnanthi Festival of
Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Art, performance detail from
video by Tom Young, Flinders University
Photo: Natalie Harkin
For this final iteration of the Unbound Sovereign
Acts, our Elder and cultural collaborator Uncle Lewis
Yarluburka O’Brien gifted a series of memory lessons
as he reflected on this Cultural Precinct site.7
MEMORY 1 | The SA Museum: on being measured on the
Board of Anthropological Research expedition to Point
Pearce Mission Station, in 1938
It was 1938 at Point Pearce, I was only 8. I lined up
with the other kids and did as I was told. Everyone
was looking dismayed. I felt like a guinea pig. It felt
awful and strange, especially the callipers on the head,
all being measured and the anthropologists looking for
differences in intelligence. They collected everything—
body measurements, hair samples, our school work
92 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
and everything. It’s all in the museum, my maths and
English tests. I don’t remember any preparation, and
I didn’t connect with Tindale or get to know him. The
only time he spoke was when he cut a locket of my
hair, and he asked me: “what colour hair have you
got son?” / “dark brown” / “have a look” / “oh, it’s
black!”—but I knew it was dark brown in places.
He took hair samples from all over the country.
Our hair is an artefact. But why is ours so special?
What about everyone else’s hair? These hair samples
have upset a lot of people. About 20 years ago I
accessed a lot of records from the Department of
Community Welfare. I had to wait six months. It
takes a long time because they have to black out
information in the records. Then ten years ago I got
my Museum records and looked at them in that room
out the back. I saw my school test results and was
pleased to read the maths one, 9/10. It made me feel
good. English wasn’t as good but that didn’t matter.
I saw their Data Cards too, but didn’t want to spend
too much time with them. I knew what they did and
how it made me feel. Like an animal to be analysed.
But we knew what they were doing—testing out the
theories that they dream up. It was a way of control,
just like the mission bell—a bell for school, a bell
for lunch, a bell for work. When the bell rang at
noon for lunch, we all stood up in class and sang the
song: Home to dinner / Home to dinner / Ding dong
dell / There’s the bell! It is really amazing how the
anthropologists did all that study. But I don’t believe
everything they said. You got to see the brighter side
and find out for yourself, more about yourself.
MEMORY 2 | West End Labour Story: on women’s
literacy and employment through The Native School and
our cultural knowledge on learning
Adelaide’s West End has an interesting story.
Another hidden history from the mid-1800s is that
the shopkeepers in the West End of Adelaide liked to
employ Aboriginal women from The Native School,
because they were literate. They could read and write
in English. They were fluent. The shopkeepers were
getting memos all the time from England to employ
young women, but they were illiterate. In England, the
poor kids never went to school until 1860. Nothing to
do with their intelligence, and they recognised the need
to be trained in the ways of people who had power.
So the West End shopkeepers preferred Aboriginal
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 93
 women because of their education, and because they
were quick to learn. They learned English at the
Native School here on Kintore Ave and could read the
shop invoices. They were also schooled in “domestic
duties” and learned all the skills fast which made
them employable. Our people could learn English
very quickly because of our cultural knowledge on
learning. They knew not to ask too many questions,
but to learn from observation. You have to work at
things, and practice. Ninthi (Kaurna suffix) means
becoming or transposing from one state to another.
That’s why we can learn from the string—learning
from observation and story. Kaurna knew the secret
of learning, all the concepts and skills and the hard
work of observation, plus the belief system. They
had much knowledge about learning – incredible
technical knowledge that wasn’t acknowledged.
And what’s astounding is that these women could
learn it all in three months, like Kudnarto did,
because of the cultural knowledge of learning. They
were already educated, had practised since kids.
There is still so much mess to clean up! We sweep, mop and
cleanse this site with such Memory Lessons for now and our
future. This is a call for a new thinking. If you look carefully
at these skirts you will find new imaginings placed between
the State’s records. Sovereign loves poems and songs of
calling for long-held philosophies, for times of grief, for
protection of country and activism. For our love of trees,
our bodies and love letters to our families. We are our future
archive and we are compelled to perform in the wake. As
our skirts slowly twirl, sway and rustle, the archives speak
and change and blend into new awakenings. To rise-up,
stay afloat and keep watch in the wake of the last light.
We are the Unbound Collective. We honour our
families and communities and all those who continue to
stand in solidarity. We thank everyone, the individuals and
organisations, who have supported, mentored, collaborated
and encouraged this work over six years. Living in the
wake is living Nunga existence. Bound and Unbound.
We began with Tarnanthi first light. We now close
with Karrka, in the wake of the last light.
1 Christina Sharpe, 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University, 2016, p. 4__2
Christina Sharpe, “Black Studies: In the Wake,” The Black Scholar, 44:2, 2014, pp. 59–69__3
Reference to Toni Morrison, Mouthful of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations. Chatto & Windus,
2019; Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and Sociological Imagination, 2nd Edn, University
of Minnesota Press, 2008__4 Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta Editorial Committee (Stewart, IM, Brown
Eileen Kampakuta, Crombie, Eileen Unkari, Austin, Emily Munyungka, Watson, Tjunmutja Myra),
Talking Straight Out: Stories from the Irati Wanti Campaign, Alapalatja Press, Coober Pedy, South
Australia, 2005__5 King William IV, The Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia,
19 February, 1836, England__6 Katherine McKittrick, “Mathematics Black Life,” The Black Scholar,
44:2, States of Black Studies (Summer 2014), pp. 16–28__7 Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien, Memory
Stories gifted for Unbound Collective, Sovereign Acts | In the WAKE, personal communication,
Adelaide, 2019.
This text is based on the exhibition guide for Sovereign Acts | In
the WAKE, Migration Museum, Adelaide, Tarnanthi Festival of
Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, 2019.
The Unbound Collective are Ali Gumillya Baker, Faye Rosas Blanch,
Natalie Harkin, Simone Ulalka Tur, with Katie Inawantji Morrison
(performer/violinist/composer). We particularly acknowledge: Tarnanthi,
The Migration Museum, ArtsSA (DPC), Australia Council for the Arts,
National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network, Flinders
University (Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement and College
of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences), Vitalstatistix, Freddy Komp
(projection consultant), Jessica Wallace (editor, Fishtail Films), Michael
Bonner (camera), Denys Finney (camera), Bradley Darkson (sound),
Seana O’Brien (costume). We particularly thank Uncle Lewis Yerloburka
O’Brien and Michael Kumatpi Marrutya O’Brien, and Margaret, Leona
and Bonny Brodie, for Kaurna cultural collaboration and support. Also
thanks to partners and families: Konrad Craig, Maya, Ruby, Leo, Sophie
and Oscar, the late Mona Ngitji Ngitji Tur, Shayne and Jack Minungka,
Renee Amari Tur, Karina Lester, Lucy Lester, Greg Blanch and family,
Denise Noack, Jai, Mali, to all our grandmothers.
Opposite:
Unbound Collective
Sovereign Acts: In the WAKE, 2019
Migration Museum, Tarnanthi Festival of
Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Art, Archive skirts, installation detail
Photo: Ali Baker
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 95
Looking for murnong
Lou Bennett and
Romaine Moreton
We live in the country of people from the land of the
volcano. Jaara Jharr, the country of the Jaara Jaara, Lou
Bennett’s people. This land is vibrant, ancient, dynamic
and powerful. Our home in Malmsbury sits on ancient
volcano plains, where basalt, sandstone, quartz, granite,
and tachylyte cushion our every step. Boitchedjina, the
soft instep of the foot pressed against Lar, the word for
tachylyte, or volcano iron glass or obsidian, important to the
Jaara people. Lar is also the root word for home in Dja Dja
Wurrung. Ancient volcanoes stand proud, rising from the
basalt plains. This country, Jaara Jharr, a country of constant
change, movement, and creation, like our languages, never
sleeps. In Western colonial text and mind, this country
has been domesticated, is fixed and known. The Western
colonial industry has always relied on the exploitation
of the storied lands of Indigenous peoples. The rich soil
of the basalt plains, perfect for growing crops, orchards,
and farming sheep or yeep in the language of the Original
peoples. Lar, home, carried in the baskets of Jaara women,
fashioned into artefacts such as spear tips or cutting utensils,
fired up in ovens to roast the roots of the murnong. The
ancient hands of the Jaara have fashioned these necessities
with intimacy, love and familiarity. Lar. Home. Familiar. The
treeless country, the wide roving plains, pre-date colonialism
and invasion. The storied landscapes of Jaara Jharr.
Here on the basalt plains is our best chance for finding
murnong, the native yam daisy. Murnong is elegant, her
head gently droops when she is in bud, her flowering
face a yellow head of florets gently spaced. She reminds
us of the dignity and poise of Jaara women, drawn by
colonial artists as gathered together, their bodies bowed
while harvesting the yam. Introduced species attempt to
replace her. Like Jaara people, murnong contests colonial
replacement by the European Dandelion. Murnong, as
both sound and name, has been coded into the colonial
alphabetic writing system, renamed Microseris walteri,
an object, commodified. Of coding, Tuck and Yang say:
96 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
“coding is … a glimpse into the systematizing of
relationships that form the deep structure for the
world that programmer is creating … To codify is
to manage, to arrange in an order that is meaningful
to the coder. Coding is something we do to objects.
Codes stand in for objectified living things. Codes
become objects them-selves, to be treated objectively,
in the way that the living things would not allow.”1
Murnong, our living, breathing Ancestor, once plentiful
on the plains and throughout Jaara Jharr, is now found in
places like roadsides and rock crevices, and reminds us
of Indigenous people’s right to refuse colonialism and its
codes. To refuse the colonising code, Tuck and Yang say,
“requires deconstructing power,”2 to emphatically state
the importance of Indigenous people’s active refusal:
“Refusals are needed to counter narratives and
images arising (becoming-claims) in social
science research that diminish personhood or
sovereignty, or rehumiliate when circulated.”3
Murnong is more than a plant. Murnong is an
Ancestor. To speak her name affirms our place
and our belonging as Original peoples.
Relationships of sound
Today we travel to Leanganook to find her, murnong, and
in doing so we not only refuse colonial toponymy, we
also refuse language oppression “as a form of domination
that is coherent with other forms of oppression …”4
More than a word; more than sound; but a vibration that
echoes through all existence, weaving past, present and
future into this moment, into our bang (body), goorook
(blood), djalli (tongue), all the way to our djina (foot).
 “The universe is vibration, the voice a medium of
creation … We begin to comprehend the use of
song in Indigenous cosmology, for the whole of
existence is song – the audible and the inaudible …”
Romaine Moreton, The Right to Dream5

Our living bodies imbued with the breath of Djuandak

Murup (Ancestors) are connected to the eternal, the
infinite through the air that we breathe. Our breath.
Mang kapung (This now). This being. For Indigenous
peoples, we are the embodiment of our languages and
have been since the beginning. “Spoken language is
a complex, living system” and the “written language This drawing by J. H. Wedge (1835) shows
is what some linguists call an artifact of culture.”6 As women digging roots of the Yam Daisy.
Collection: State Library of Victoria
Indigenous peoples, how we negotiate and navigate
the written language relies in part on our right to
resist and refuse colonial writing systems governed
by written language bias, and the impact of writing on
our conceptualisation and speech. Also, our bodies.
We ascend Leanganook, in colonial toponymy named
Mount Alexander. Major Thomas Mitchell displaced the
original name of Leanganook and renamed it Alexandria to
honour Alexander the Great, emperor of ancient Macedonia.
Colonial toponym is an example of what Irene Watson
refers to as “the covering of Raw Law and the unsettling
of our country,”7 using violence to force our Djuandak
Balag (Old People) to stop singing songs and performing
ceremonies that expressed their “connections to country and
law.”8 Leanganook is a granite mountain, and the granite
sourced here was used for the Burke and Wills Memorial
in the Melbourne General Cemetery.9 Our Djuandak
Balag were forced to stop singing songs that kept our law
strong, while code colonialism reduced our countries to
raw materials and used these materials to establish their
economies and to strengthen their own, imposed laws. For
this reason, when we journey to places such as Leanganook,
we are aware that we are on a quest of rematriation.

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 97

Leanganook (Mt Alexander)
Photo: Romaine Moreton

98 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

Rematriation
Rematriation for us refers to a process of using Indigenous
spiritual processes to recover ourselves from the text,
the colonial records, the archives, the repositories.
Rematriation is an acknowledgement of Indigenous
homelands as sacred, where a return to country is a
restoration of spiritual life without external interference.
Rematriation for us is walking on country to overcome
colonial codes, to find and feel places of belonging and
to connect spiritually, and to forget the distractions of
how our language is spelled in the white man’s writing
system, and instead focus on how our languages sound.
The sound of our languages are the vibrations that
are true to each place and marks them as unique.
Written language bias and linguistic imperialism
constantly interrupt our right relationships with our
own country by centring and imposing the mechanics
of the Western codes and alphabetic writing system that
values the rules of linguistics, taxonomy, toponymy,
colonial naming policies, and standardisation over
our living, breathing landscapes. We can observe the
standardisation of the town names, such as Echuca where
granite from Leanganook was taken to build Echuca’s
railway. Echuca derives from the original word Wolithica
and Moama deriving from the original word Molwa.
Western standardisation has corrupted the sound of our
words, and therefore our unique connection, relevance
and origin to country, to fit into Western phonology
and the limitations of the Western sound systems.
“Anglo-sizing our words can only distort and
weaken our language uniqueness and our oral
way of teaching our language. For example,
our vowel system has distinct differences to the
Australian English vowel system. The town names
of Echuca and Moama are evident of this.”10
Anglo-sizing is the constant reminder to Indigenous
people that our languages have been corrupted and
homogenised to accommodate the Western tongue and
ear. The limitations of English and Euro‑linguistics are
evident in the above examples, and in the dropping of the
prefix “ng” and replacing with “ny” or “kn” or omitting
it altogether in the example of Ulumbara which derives
from Ngulumbara. The changing of syllable stress from
the first to the second and the broadening of the vowel
sounds are further examples and practices centralising
whiteness. Identifying these practices have informed our
rematriation practices, our resistance and right to refuse.
Language activism
“The vibration of the body and the land was
not separate, for through the song, the voice
of the singer, and the speaker of language,
they became one.”
Romaine Moreton, The Right to Dream11
The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) Strategy 2016–20 states its “ultimate objective
is to have ISO standards used everywhere.”12 The
coding of languages globally is ISO 639. Standardising
our languages with codes is the constant barrage
of whiteness centralising itself, and when the
collectors were collecting, they weren’t benign.
They were doing something purposeful. They were
codifying our languages to assimilate them into their
own language systems. Due to their process and
Western ear, the limits of their codification represent
the limits of their tongue, their bodies, and their
relationships. The colonial collectors have essentially
buried our old people and our sounds in their texts,
all in the process of replacement and its strong
association with the elimination of native peoples.
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 99
 “The logic of elimination not only refers
to the summary liquidation of Indigenous
people, though it includes that … it strives
for the dissolution of native societies.”12
In Jaara country, warfare between the colonists and Jaara
raged. Jaara people were rounded up and placed into
mission reserves for their own “protection”. How do we as
Indigenous researchers, artists, song-women and storytellers
insert ourselves into the colonial text for the purpose
of recovering our old people, our sense of ourselves?
How do we walk lightly amongst written words that act
like colonial gravestones and markers? Rematriation is
form the very words we are looking for, the very stories
we seek to tell and retell. For now, our search for murnong
continues. Growing in those spaces where she is safe
from hooves, cars, colonialism and whiteness. We choose
not to purchase murnong seeds. How can this be a right
relationship? We seek her on the basalt plains, wild and free.
Like our languages. Like our songs. Like our law. Raw Law.
1 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Unbecoming Claims: Pedagogies of Refusal,” Qualitative Research,
Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), June 2014, p. 812__2 ibid. p. 182__3 ibid. p. 811__4 Gerald Roche,
“Articulating language oppression: colonialism, coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority
languages,” Patterns of Prejudice, 53:5, 2019, 487–514__5 Romaine Moreton, The Right to Dream,
University of Western Sydney, 2006__6 “Orthography in Linguistics: Definition & Examples,”
Study.com, 20 January 2017__7 Irene Watson, Raw Law: Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and
International Law, Routledge, 2015, p. 20__8 ibid.__9 The Burke and Wills Research Gateway: http://
burkeandwills.slv.vic.gov.au/archive/archives/block-granite-burke-and-wills-monument__10 Lou
Bennett, Lotjpa Yorta Yorta! Retrieving, Reclaiming and Regenerating Language and Culture through

important, and activism is equally important. In activating the Arts, unpublished dissertation, 2015, p. 11__11 Moreton, op cit, 2006__12 ISO Strategy 2016–20,
2015, p. 2__12 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”,
our ancient places to which we belong, we are actioning for Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 2006, pp. 387–409__13 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White
Possessive, University of Minnesota Press, 2015, p. xv.
our own people. Our right to refuse Western colonialism
and the assumed authority of whiteness over who we
are is part of our inheritance as Indigenous peoples.

“The complexity of our density consists of more

than the knowledge that has been produced
Language activist Lou Bennett AM, Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung,

about us. For example, being Indigenous

is an arts practitioner of international acclaim with thirty-years

includes the complexity of the life we live in

experience, currently a Westpac Research Fellow at the University of

webs of kinship as mothers, daughters, teachers,

Melbourne researching the importance of Indigenous-led language

healers, performers, and professors.”13

retrieval processes. Her research project, Sovereign Language

Rematriation through Song Pedagogy is receiving much attention.

In this space we converse with and listen to Djuandak

Balag, with Waa and Gorek Gorek. Every morning we are
Storytelling activist Romaine Moreton, Goenpul Yuggera Bundjalung,

woken by a cacophony of birds eagerly waking at sunrise.

is an extensively published writer of poetry and prose and a filmmaker,

Each one with their own language, their own song. We

who through Binung Boorigan Pty Ltd, addresses the need for

listen deeply every day to the country, find and hear the
Indigenous business models in arts research and production fostering

language belonging to this country. We listen to the wind

the deployment of decolonising strategies.

and messages it brings. We converse with each other as

women of story and song. Here is where our stories and
language reside, and it is here where we practice daily the
ongoing lessons of Law from Djuandak Balag. The raw
sounds of our languages emanate from the country and

100 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020


Tuppy Goodwin (centre) and
other Mimili community members
march with their banners for the
Biennale of Sydney
Photo: Meg Hansen
Courtesy Mimili Maku Arts
Desert Aboriginal art centres adapt to
the pandemic
Kieran Finnane
Opportunities for the desert Aboriginal
art centres have fallen like dominos in
the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The experiences are far from uniform,
as each art centre is on its own life
cycle. Some have been hit at a fragile
moment, while others, in a more
robust phase, have nonetheless had to
swallow big disappointments. They are
all adapting as best they can—as one
manager said to me, “Aboriginal people
have a history of adapting to change,
they’ll get through this.” But, as for
so many others around the world, the
longer the restrictions and uncertainty
last, the harder it will become.
In the first weeks of March,
some artists were far from home,
getting ready for the opening of the
Biennale of Sydney. They hailed from
Tennant Creek, the highway town 500
kilometres north of Alice Springs, from
Alice itself and close-by Ntaria, and
from Mimili in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara
Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of the
far north of South Australia.
The novel coronavirus was well
and truly on the horizon when they
had left, with the first Australian death
at the start of the month. By the time
the Mimili group travelled a few days
later, they were concerned enough to
get a health check, had familiarised
themselves with the safety routines and
were carrying a good supply of hand
sanitiser. Through the second week,
as they were in Sydney supervising the
installation of their work and taking part
in the Biennale’s VIP viewing, infection
numbers were climbing steeply. Australia
had not yet closed its borders, nor
moved on specific measures to protect
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 101

From top:
Kulilaya munuya nintiriwa (Listen and learn),
installation view, Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery
of New South Wales
Courtesy Mimili Maku Arts
Mimili Maku artsworker and artist Alex Baker
working on the Biennale project
Courtesy Mimili Maku Arts
Opposite, from top:
Jimmy Frank Jnr, Joseph Williams, Fabian
Brown, Rupert Betheras, Marcus Camphoo
One-Eyed Man, mixed media on repurposed
pokie machine, 2020
We are the living history installation at Cockatoo
Island for the Biennale of Sydney
Photo: Lévi McLean
Courtesy Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre
Joseph Williams, Jimmy Frank Jnr, Fabian
Brown, performance at Artspace, Gangsters of
Art installation for the Biennale of Sydney, 2020
Photo: Jesse Marlow
Courtesy Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre
102 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
remote Aboriginal communities, but
it was not hard to see their particular
vulnerability to a virus that spreads
like wildfire in overcrowded conditions
and holds greater risks for people with
underlying ill health. The artists were
busy and excited but also worried.
Back in the Centre, west of
Alice, the Papunya Tjupi art centre
was in full swing after a difficult start
to the year. Following the death of
one of their senior artists, Kumunjayi
Nangala, the centre closed for all of
January and into February, opened
for while, then needed to close again
for Kumunjayi’s long-delayed funeral.
When they finally reopened, everyone
was just bursting to paint again, none
more so than the young men who had
been relishing Papunya Tjupi’s new
men’s space launched last year and
had plans to host two exchanges in
the coming months with male artists
from other desert communities.
The senior women artists were
painting towards a show opening late
April at Raft Artspace. Working on
big canvases, passing paint between
them, they were excited about the
body of work they were creating. Arts
worker Sharon Butcher was looking
forward to an upcoming professional
development trip to Sydney and
Darwin. And preparation had begun
for everyone to do a big bush trip in
April, a generative painting camp,
as the artists had done previously at
Kalipinypa, a Water Dreaming site
well to the west. This time they hoped
to go out to Doris Bush’s country, at
Nyunmanu, a Dingo Dreaming place.
Then the coronavirus meetings
started. “At first we were worried
for the business and thinking about
different strategies for staying afloat,”
says manager Emma Collard. “It
didn’t hit us until a week or so later,
the broader potentially catastrophic
health concerns and that we were
really looking at imminent closure.”
For the Mimili Maku artists the
Biennale offered the first public showing
of their biggest project to date, Kulilaya
munuya nintiriwa (Listen and learn), two
years in the making. They won’t say
“culmination” because that will come
next year, on Country, a show for all the
APY communities of this response to
the work of the late Kunmanara Mumu
Mike Williams.1 Before his death in
March last year, he had planned for the
Biennale his boldest political protest
show ever, with banners and flags
hanging throughout Sydney and in all
the major galleries. After his death, the
idea was taken up by his widow, artist
Tuppy Goodwin, and his best friend and
collaborator, spear-maker Sammy Dodd.
“His Tjukurpa is huge,” says Tuppy
Goodwin, “it covers all of Australia.
He left it here (on the earth) for us to
pick up … Australia’s Tjukurpa, Iyukuta
Tjukurpa.” She and Dodd made a
selection from Kunmanara’s personal
and public political writings and had the
texts printed on both sides of 36 large
canvas banners. Then they gathered
artists and community members at
a big bush camp to paint onto the
banners their responses to the texts.
This became one of the key works of the
Biennale, hanging in the foyer at the Art
Gallery of New South Wales. Augmented
Reality technology allowed viewers to
see a digital version of the work on
their device, with Kunmanara’s texts
translated from Pitjantjatjara into English.
Young Alex Baker, employed as
an arts worker at Mimili Maku and who
travelled with the artists, was excited were in South Australia, and none in the
to think about what he could do with APY Lands. The NT had its first cases
AR technology in his own nascent but there were none in Central Australia.
work. He also got to hang out with Still, news of the frightening escalation in
the thrillingly hard-to-categorise Brio countries overseas was enough to have
from Tennant Creek, who work like everyone feeling increasingly anxious.
no other artists out of the desert. This The Brio had planned to perform at the
could also be said about the highly opening. They met to discuss whether
innovative Kunmanara, but he cleaved to stay or go. They stayed, performing
in life and in his work to Country and for enthusiastic but relatively thin
Tjukurpa; they were central. The Brio audiences, before leaving on Sunday,
bring both—indivisible in the Aboriginal several days earlier than planned.
world view—into a startling dialogue By 24 March the Biennale had
with the urban and industrial economies to close the doors on its multiple
and cultures that they live in now. venues, and shifted to doing its best
The Mimili Maku group were to engage audiences online. The
booked to go home on the Thursday Brio are philosophical but it was a
before the Biennale opened to the public big disappointment. Their work is all
on Saturday 14 March. By then, there about a visceral encounter and for
had been three reported coronavirus the Biennale the artists had worked
deaths in Australia and 175 reported more collaboratively than they had
infections, though fewer than 20 of them before, in the process becoming very

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 103


From top:
Mervyn Rubuntja, Hubert Pareroultja, Vanessa
Inkamala and Marisa Maher with Homeless on my
Homeland, 2018–19, installation view, Art Gallery of
New South Wales for the Biennale of Sydney
Photo: Australia Council for the Arts/Maja Baska
Courtesy Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre
Hubert Pareroultja at work on a laser-cut steel mural
Courtesy Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre
104 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
clear about what they have to say.
Jimmy Frank and Joseph Williams’s
punishment spears plunging through
a defunct poker machine with Marcus
Camphoo’s gridding in paint reclaiming
its surfaces capture it succinctly. “We
are the living history,” as Frank puts
it, giving this title to the installation.
That history is about origins but it’s
also about massacres and mining, about
the greed that came to their Country and
failed to recognise the Warumungu as its
owners. In the 21st century, “it’s about
moving forward, making new things
happen” but not without the truth-telling,
insists Frank. This may touch on issues
that are pretty sensitive for some people
but the truth “hasn’t been told enough,
the bad stories.” “It’s not about dwelling
on it, it’s about bringing out truth, in
order to move forward and better our
community, our nation.” Frank is worried
some people might want to sit on the
process, including some from within his
own community. “How do we convince
our elders in the community that this is
a new way of doing art?” he asks. “How
can we support this new way of art?
I’m really concerned to maintain that.”
The Brio don’t have an art centre
as such, and efforts to protect the town
from the coronavirus and comply with
restrictions are sucking up the available
resources. There’s currently no money
for the men to work with non-Indigenous
artist Rupert Betheras, catalyst,
mentor, as well as member of the
group, exhibiting alongside them. And
previously where the artists had access
to three sheds that served as their
studios, now there is only one, which
under social distancing limits means
that only two can work at any one time.
Fabian Brown and Clifford Thompson
have been showing up regularly.
The town’s Nyinkka Nyunyu Art
and Culture Centre has been crucial
in supporting the artists and getting
their work out into the world. Its doors
are shut now too, of course, and its
budget limited to maintenance levels.
Jimmy Frank is employed there and
in his steady way speaks of using the
shutdown to get organised so that
“when everything comes back to normal,
we can hit the ground running.” “It’s
reminded me how tenuous things are,”
says Nyinkaa Nyunyu manager Erica
Izett, “made me more aware of what has
happened to Indigenous people over
and over, how major disruptions come
in from the outside, rendering them
not in control of their own destiny.”
For all their tough allure and
dynamic energy, this group of artists,
of those I spoke to, seem the most
vulnerable to the coronavirus impacts,
being both relatively new on the scene
(their first show was in 2016) and
missing the protective factor of an art
centre with stable staff and funding to
support their practice. Like the Brio,
Iltja Ntjarra and Mimili Maku had the
Biennale rug pulled out from under
their feet but they were able to return
to assured structures and support.
Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands is the art
centre serving the Namatjira school of
painters, many of them now living in
Alice Springs while others are based in
Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Their Homeless
on my Homeland series had been
installed at five Biennale venues across
Sydney. The artists had worked on
cheap checkered nylon-weave bags
of the kind often used by homeless
people, spelling out short sharp
political messages on one side and
affixing paintings of their homelands
to the other. “Every night worried for
children and grandchildren,” read one
message; “Family house full up,” read
another. Set down seemingly casually
in the art venues, their incongruity drew
attention. With the virus spreading
and anxiety building, the work was
very relatable. It was also one more
instance of these artists breaking with
tradition to bring their message home.
Returning home early, a busy year
lay ahead of them. They had already
held a workshop, in collaboration with
Charles Darwin University, to develop a
new project, painting large landscapes
on laser-cut metal screens for outdoor
installation. While they adapted to the
changing circumstances, this was
work to be getting on with, including
for their top-ranked artists who don’t
hesitate to experiment with new
materials, collaborate, work at greater
scale, to undertake commissions and
produce designs for merchandise.
Meanwhile, in the office, staff prepared
to shift various activities online, like the
popular watercolour workshops the
artists give at the Darwin Aboriginal
Art Fair, and to upgrade their website
and social media presence. To this
end, arts worker Marisa Maher has
been working on a click-through Family
Tree that will allow people to see the
connection to Albert Namatjira, whether
by family line, or being taught by him.
Spread out in the spacious studio
when I visited, Hubert Pareroultja
was working on the fine detail of one
of his delicately hued medium-sized
watercolours, while Reinhold
Inkamala was painting a series of four
postcard-sized works. All of the artists
will be doing some of these, to offer the
market affordable works while money
is tight. A landscape installation by
Pareroultja in collaboration with Mervyn
Rubuntja and Vanessa Inkamala has
been selected as a finalist in the National
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Art Awards (“the Telstra”). It is painted
on four two-metre lengths of silk that
are hung to create a three-dimensional
effect, as though you could walk into the
Country it shows. Silk is an unforgiving
ground on which to paint, as it is hard
to erase any unwanted marks. Rubuntja
was painting a new silk when I visited,
understandably proud of mastering the
technique and also tickled about the
socks from the Iltja Ntjarra merchandise
line that carry one of his designs.
This readiness to do
bread-and-butter work, alongside fine
art work, is shared by many though not
all art centres. At Tangentyere Artists,
which supports artists living on Alice
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 105
 Springs Town Camps, manager Ruth
McMillan explained it plainly: “For lots
of people, painting money is their food
money.” So finding ways to shore up
income was where the town-based
art centres I spoke to turned their
attention in the third week of March as
Australia moved to close its borders
to non-residents and introduce
social distancing, and the alarm was
being sounded about the urgency of
protecting Indigenous Australians.
Tangentyere Artists, getting
ready to hang a much-anticipated
exhibition, closed their gallery to visitors
on 16 March, and in the following
week closed the studio. Painting
materials for small works were sent
home with artists, but most of them
do not live in circumstances where
they can paint larger works with the
necessary peace, quiet and security.
Staff poured their energy into creating
a new website for their merchandise,
Town Camp Designs, doing a
stocktake, updating their database,
streamlining their sales processes.
Luckily, like Iltja Ntjarra, they
had made an early start in the year,
running a workshop in February in
collaboration with artist Marina Strocchi
for residents of Hidden Valley Town
Camp. A raft of simple but striking
black and white line drawings were
produced, ideal for transposing onto
a range of textile products, children’s
t-shirts, hoodies, cushion covers, tea
towels. It was all ready to go by early
April, the site, the stock, the systems.
At the same time Tangentyere
launched their exhibition online,
beautiful figurative and non-figurative
work on the theme of rain falling and
water flowing. After the initial shock
of shutdown, they started accepting
appointments for viewing, no more
than two people at a time. They also
prepared the studio to reopen for
just four artists at a time, one in each
corner, and with all the necessary
hygiene practices in place. There’s
a roster so everyone can get a turn.
The prolific Sally Mulda though is a

106 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020

constant presence, bent quietly over her
canvas continuing with her signature
story-boarding of everyday camp life.
She had a solo show at Raft Artspace
in May, which would go ahead online.
Along with Grace Robinya and Doris
Thomas she was also a finalist in this
year’s Alice Prize for which Robinya’s
work was highly commended. This
national contemporary art award was
launched online but as NT internal
restrictions start to ease, it looks set
to open to the public. Unless there’s a
turn for the worse, that will also be the
case for the Telstra, for which Joanne
Napangardi Wheeler is a finalist.
These current bright spots
reflect the hive of activity in the studio
preceding the crisis, when there were
between 18 and 24 people painting
on any given day. Demand thinned
significantly after 26 March when
Tangentyere Council, the governing
body for Town Camps, went all out
to get anyone with a home on a
remote community or outstation to
return to Country ahead of an internal
lockdown in the Territory, restricting all
but essential workers from travel onto
Aboriginal lands. Some of the regular
artists also live in Aboriginal hostels that
have implemented strict coronavirus
response regimes, requiring residents
to stay at home except for essential
requirements. Similarly, some of Iltja
Ntjarra artists, like Gloria Pannka,
returned to Country, while some are
“staying at home” in the hostels.
Under the Tangentyere Artists
umbrella, Yarrenyty Arltere has its
own space on the Town Camp of that
name (also known as Larapinta Valley)
and has its own distinctive practice
of soft sculpture. Because its studio
operates within a community centre,
all of which were closed by Federal
Government fiat, it has not been able
to do a limited re-opening. Instead staff
go house to house to keep up sewing
supplies and offer encouragement.
But productivity has dampened. In
their busy households, most of the
artists are just managing to make
small soft sculptures that will be sold
through the Town Camp Designs site.
The shutdown has been a
particular blow to Yarrenyty Arltere, as
they had a 20th anniversary celebration
show due to open at the Araluen Arts
Centre in May. This was all about coming
together as a community, the camp and
the whole town, so there was no point
in going online. It will take place next
year. A July show in London has also
been cancelled but they are still working
towards a September show in Brisbane,
and as the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair
may yet go ahead (opening 7 August, a
day ahead of the Telstra) they will work
to put together “looks” for its textile arts
feature, From Country to Couture, as
they have done for the last few years.
When I visited in late April news
had just come through that travel
restrictions for the outstations close to
Alice Springs would be lifted. Manager
Sophie Wallace was looking forward to
visiting Trudy Inkamala who had been
quarantined at her family outstation
since 26 March. The eighty-year-old is
finding it increasingly hard to sew but,
in another workshop led by Marina From top:
Sally M. Nangala Mulda in the studio
Strocchi, has had a breakthrough, Courtesy Tangentyere Artists
transposing the character and colour
Trudy Inkamala
of her soft sculptures to works in ink Bird with Old Polly and Old Laddie, 2020
on paper. Wallace did want to lose that three panels, ink on Indian rag paper
Courtesy Yarrenyty Arltere Artists
momentum. Stalwart of Yarrenyty Arltere
and its chairperson, Marlene Rubuntja, Opposite:
Grace Kemarre Robinya
has also been extending her practice, Night Time Raining at Mount Allan, 2020
sewing landscapes in soft bas-relief, acrylic on linen
Courtesy Tangentyere Artists
intricately embroidered in brilliant colour.
Both Tangentyere Artists and
Yarrenyty Arltere have new video
projects in the pipeline, which they hope
are sufficiently advanced to be able to
complete with their collaborators at
a distance, in readiness for possible
outings at Tarnanthi, scheduled to
open mid-October, and Desert Mob.
This annual exhibition in Alice Springs
of work from the desert art centres,
the highlight of their year,2 should be
celebrating its 30th anniversary this
September. What form this will take
is still unclear. Going ahead would be
a gamble and could put art centres
Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 107

under a lot of pressure, but doing
nothing would also be very deflating.
The APY Lands had moved early
in March to restrict incoming travel and
this was hardened on 26 March when
the Lands were designated a biosecurity
area. At Mimili, the art centre, the only
community-governed entity, acts as
something of an information hub about
the pandemic. “The community faces
lots of issues at the best of times,” says
manager Anna Wattler, “and they’re
all amplified right now.” She works
daily with Tuppy Goodwin, who is also
the centre’s chairperson, both to get
the community’s concerns heard by
government and to feed back to the
people on the ground. “There’s lots of
new rules in Mimili now,” says Goodwin.
“The young fellas are not allowed to go
collect firewood, we can’t have church,
or collect mingkulpa (bush tobacco),
we can’t use cash, we can only buy
little bit fuel on special days. I know
108 | Artlink Issue 40:2 | June 2020
how important it is to have strong rules
now, but no one is explaining them
to Anangu, and people are getting
angry.” She has been writing letters,
“trying to find out about this sickness
and what it means for Mimili, talking
to our friends in the cities to help us.
At first government didn’t listen to us
at all, but I even went on ABC News
talking about how we need support to
keep the old people safe. The clinic is
small, two nurses for one community,
no doctors. We cannot stay safe in
Mimili when the sickness arrives.”
But the artists want to keep
working. Mainly elders are coming into
the studio, working on big canvasses,
at safe distances from one another,
for a major project for 2021, still under
wraps. “We can’t just sit home all day,”
says Goodwin. “Our houses are too
busy, maybe 15 people living in one
house now. Government sent Anangu
from the city back to Mimili now, and it’s
really hard for us, because there is more
family in the house, more people I need
to buy food for. The young kungkas
(women) work from home now, but us
old people still work at the art centre.”
There’s uncertainty over smaller
shows lined up for later this year, so
the art centre is also using this time for
an archiving project, bringing together
the wealth of cultural knowledge and
resources accumulated at the art centre
over last 20 years: “This is a powerful
thing to do in a time when many people
are not able to afford art,” says Wattler.
She is hoping to access grants
to support the archiving work while
they ride out the coronavirus wave.
There’s no plan to produce work at
the low-priced end of the market, for
which they do very little at any time. It’s
a small stable art centre, where artists
are established in their careers. Younger
artists work and learn alongside their
Elders until they’re ready to emerge,
like Marina Pumani Brown, a finalist
in this year’s Churchie Emerging Art
Prize, as well as in the Telstra in a
collaboration with her mother Betty
Kuntiwa Pumani, a past winner of
the Telstra and the Wynne. (Mimili
Maku’s Robert Fielding is also a Telstra
finalist, and a past category winner.)
At Papunya Tjupi, expectations
for the show at Raft Artspace were
down-sized. There were eleven large
canvases ready to go. They made a
beautiful but more modest exhibition
which went online. Painting for another
show, at Outstation in Darwin, had not
even begun when the centre closed its
doors. The artists want to keep working
but are looking at different approaches,
at smaller scale work using more
robust materials, adapting to what’s
achievable from home. Linocuts to be
printed by collaborators in Alice are
among the possibilities. Arts workers
also made up painting-from-home
packs—paints, brushes, small linens,
stretched and primed with transparent
gesso. “The artists were thinking about
the work they do on bush trips,” said
Collard, “it’s less controlled, more
messy and raw, brushes aren’t getting
cleaned as much. They’re wanting
to lean into their home environments
and see what they come up with.”
When we spoke, arts worker
He is heartened by research Desart
Sharon Butcher had been caught by the
had commissioned—before the
sudden changes, visiting her sister in
coronavirus was even heard of—to
Barunga way to the north. The internal
better understand how the industry was
lockdown in the Territory would have
faring after the damage of the global Kieran Finnane is a founding journalist of the
made travel back to Papunya difficult if
financial crisis.3 The operational and Alice Springs News, who also contributes
not impossible but in any case she felt
financial data analysed, from 2004–05 arts writing and journalism to national
too frightened, too worried about getting
to 2018–19, showed a slow but steady publications. Her new book, Peace Crimes:
sick to try. She’d stay put. Collard was
recovery back to where art centres
also preparing to leave temporarily, Pine Gap, national security and dissent will
were before the GFC, and that was
even though a return would mean two be published by the University of Queensland
with a reduced reliance on government
weeks in strict quarantine. After getting Press in August 2020.
funding in the last two years studied.
the artists organised and the art centre
This result is testimony to the oft-referred
directors used to having board meetings
to resilience of the movement and Above:
by phone, she’d be able to work on Artsworker Selwyn Nacambala, artist Jayquin
gives reason to their determination to Nelson, chairperson Watson Corby with
building their new website just as well
keep working, making their exceptional Papunya Tjupi’s troopy packed and ready to go
from Alice Springs: “With no-one painting with artworks ahead of the art centre temporarily
art, through this ravaging new crisis. closing on 10 April. Courtesy Papunya Tjupi Arts
here, it makes no sense for me to stay.
It’s such a lonely place right now.” 1 For more on this artist, see his memoir, Kulinmaya! Keep Opposite, from top:
Desart is the art centres’ advocacy listening everybody!, which I reviewed for Artlink, 1 December Lekita Malbunka, Helen Ebatarinja and Sheree
2019: www.artlink.com.au__2 See my reviews of Desert Mob Inkamala modelling for Yarrenyty Arltere fashion
body. Apart from helping them to for the last two years, Artlink, 7 October 2019 and 27 September shoot, 2019. © Maurice Petrick, Cornelius
negotiate the changes breaking upon 2018 at www.artlink.com.au__3 Kieran Finnane, “Art centres: Ebatarinja, Quincy Stevens, Dennis Brown,
pushing back, pushing forward,” Alice Springs News, 9 April Desart and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists
them and to access the assistance 2020: www.alicespringsnews.com.au.
Isobel Major Nampitjinpa in the studio
available, CEO Philip Watkins has Photo: Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore
been turning his mind to recovery. Courtesy Papunya Tjupi Arts

Issue 40:2 | June 2020 Artlink | 109

Moffatt and Gary Hillberg ∙ Arlo Mountford: D
Just Not Australian ∙ Material Sound ∙ Eugen
ador ∙ Montages: The Full Cut 1999-2015 Tr
y Hillberg ∙ Arlo Mountford: Deep Revolt ∙ Vo
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ountford: Deep Revolt ∙ Void ∙ Just Not Austr
Eugenia Lim: The Ambassador ∙ Montages: T
015 Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg ∙ Arlo M
volt ∙ Void ∙ Just Not Australian ∙ Material So
e Ambassador ∙ Montages: The Full Cut 1999
and Gary Hillberg ∙ Arlo Mountford: Deep Rev
tralian ∙ Material Sound ∙ Eugenia Lim: The
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touring nationally in 2020

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 THANK
YOU
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would like to acknowledge the commitment and resilience of our
students and staff during this difficult time.

It is hard to be apart, but our online tutorials and digital studio

classes allow us to continue learning and creating, together.

Stay safe, stay strong.

acsa.sa.edu.au

*Identified as the best art school in Australia for overall student experience according to the national Student Experience Survey (SES) 2017, 2018 and 2019.
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Image: Georgia SAXELBY, Lullaby (stills from video performance), 2017, in collaboration with Viva Soudan and Bailey Nolan, installation view, 2020 Adelaide//International. Photo: Sam Noonan

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