Week 9: Drawings Collected by Charles Mountford

In a lecture by Stephen the other week he mentioned the explorer Charles Mountford who was one of the first white Australians to visit Indigenous communities and encourage them to make drawings using western materials. I wanted to find out a little more about his expeditions and while internet searching I came across these drawings made in 1940 by Pitjantjatjara children at the Ernabella Mission in the Musgrave Ranges in north-west South Australia. The drawings were collected by Mountford on a journey to Central Australia and are now held by the State Library of South Australia. Apparently, the Ernabella mission was one of the only which aimed to preserve Indigenous ways of life whilst introducing European principles and education. I think this is manifested in the drawings which include Pitjantjatjaran motifs and objects. 

TjantjintiUntitled (child’s drawing) Ernabella 1940

crayon on paper; 40.0 x 44.0cm

Donated by Charles P. Mountford, 1959

South Australiana Collections, State Library of South Australia

LangalikiUntitled (child’s drawing) Ernabella 1940

crayon on paper; 40.0 x 44.0cm

Donated by Charles P. Mountford, 1959

South Australiana Collections, State Library of South Australia

To me, these drawings are beautiful and fascinating. The use of colour by the children is interesting from an aesthetic viewpoint, as are the tiny notes made on the drawings to identify the symbology behind the works. Therefore, these are not mindless doodles - they are narratives and cultural artefacts. 
On a different note, it feels strangely relieving to learn that at least one mission in Australia had some concern in maintaining Indigenous customs and traditions. Whilst this by no means forgives the atrocities committed by white Australians in attempting to abolish "Aboriginality" throughout the majority of the country, it does reassure that there were some people at the time who respected the importance of cultural preservation.
[Source: National Library of Australia]

Week 8: Constitutional Recognition

"Our Constitution was written more than a century ago. By then, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had lived in this land for more than 40,000 years, keeping alive the world’s oldest continuous cultures. But Australia’s founding document did not recognise the first chapter of our national story.

It mentioned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples only to discriminate. For the first six decades of our democracy, Indigenous Australians could not vote, and were excluded from being counted as citizens until 1967.

Today Australia prides itself on being a place of fairness. But our Constitution still does not recognise the first Australians. And it still lets the States ban people from voting based on their race.

We need to fix this, and bring the country together after so many chapters apart. It is the next step in reconciling our past. And it’s the right thing to do."

[Source: Recognise Why Page]

At our AIME mentoring session last week, we examined the Australian Constitution and the kids wrote their own constitutions based on personal values. Through this we were introduced to the Recognise campaign which is an organisation working for recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the constitution. Though I was vaguely aware that there are inadequacies and discrepancies in the Australian Constitution, it was great to finally realise exactly what it says and why this should be changed. The proposals made by Recognise are as follows:

• Remove Section 25 – which says the States can ban people from voting based on their race;
• Remove section 51(xxvi) – which can be used to pass laws that discriminate against people based on their race;
• Insert a new section 51A - to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to preserve the Australian Government’s ability to pass laws for the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
• Insert a new section 116A, banning racial discrimination by government; and
• Insert a new section 127A, recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages were this country’s first tongues, while confirming that English is Australia’s national language.

[Source: Recognise What Is Proposed Page]

I see no problem whatsoever with making these changes to the Constitution and I think they are a high priority for the agenda of the Australian government. It extremely irritates me that our national anthem purports we are a welcoming, fair and just nation, and yet our most official and important document in the country fails to properly acknowledge the custodianship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders AND still allows the discrimination of people from voting based on race. These proposals were made in January 2012, so the time delays are equally frustrating.

Week 7: McCulloch's Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide

"In June 1997 a small painting by Central Desert artist John Warangkula Tjupurrula painted in 1973 attracted worldwide attention by breaking all auction records for an Aboriginal work when it sold at Sotheby's Aboriginal art auction in Melbourne for $206 000. Three years later, the same painting resold for $486 500. Ten years later, Aboriginal art entered yet another era with two paintings beating the $1 million mark. In May 2007 Emily Kame Kngwarreye's Earth's Creation sold at a Lawson Menzies Aboriginal art auction for $1.04 million and two months later, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's 1977 painting Warlugulong doubled this by selling for $2.4 million. 

Around 6000 to 7000 Aboriginal people, about one quarter of Australia's total indigenous population, are engaged, throughout Australia, in the making of art and artefacts with sales of their work in 1996 estimated at more than three times that of other Australian artists.

These figures, combined with the increasing number of galleries showing and selling indigenous art, the vast increase in numbers of Aboriginal community arts centres (from around 30 in 1996 to close to 100 in 2008) and the rise in the secondary market show that growth in this area is not only on the steady increase but rising dramatically. A proportion of these sales is tourist art and craft but an increasingly high percentage is fine art.

Aboriginal art has also been one of the most positive black-white cultural collaborations in modern history - one which benefits not only Aboriginal communities where it has become an important facet of cultural and financial restoration but also Australian society as a whole, and, at a broader level, the art-loving public of the world. It is the art form with which Australia has become most identified internationally." 

"S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide, McCulloch & McCulloch Australian Art Books, Fitzroy, Australia, 2008, p. 8"

I thought this excerpt from McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide was interesting because of two points it makes. Firstly, that approximately one quarter of the Indigenous population of Australia is involved in making art and artefacts and secondly, that the sales of Indigenous art in 1996 tripled the sale of non-indigenous Australian art. These figures are quite staggeringly large as we are not inundated in everyday life and our visual culture by Indigenous art, and yet it seems it is our biggest market here in Australia! I think it is fascinating that in my own personal experience, the majority of art I see is not recognisable as being "Indigenous", and yet it accounts for the majority of sales.

The other point the excerpt makes is how high the prices for Indigenous art can reach. I think it is actually saddening in a way because obviously these large sale sums that the artwork goes for are not the amounts the artists receive. When an artist, such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, passes away it does immediately hike prices for their art, regardless of indigenous or non-indigenous heritage, but with such ridiculous divides between health, death, incarceration and literacy rates between Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous populations despite this apparent wealth, I think a question is raised as to how fair prices are for Indigenous art and how much exploitation takes place in the market.

Week 6: Christine Nicholls and the issue of Copyright

As I was writing my reflective paper on the Tjanpi Desert Weaver artworks in the Heartland Exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, I emphasised the point that it was disappointing to not be able to learn the whole narratives that the sculptures were perhaps meaning to convey. It is interesting that in an article I am reading by Christine Nicholls, she has emphasised that Dreaming narratives ("lengthy narratives relating to Aboriginal Creator Beings and their activities during the foundational 

time known in poor English translation as ‘The Dreaming'") are owned, and therefore subject to the intellectual copyright of specific individuals and groups. Not everyone has the right to transmit these stories orally, or illustrate the stories without explicit permission. Apparently, there are public and private versions of Dreaming narratives, the private versions requiring permission to be sought and obtained to retell from appropriate adults, usually old or very old Aboriginal storytellers. In abbreviated public versions of the narratives, information is "coded" to screen and protect secret and sacred knowledge.

I still think that it is extremely difficult to come to a full appreciation and understanding of Aboriginal culture without being included in their belief systems, although on the other hand how many of us have actually sought permission to learn the stories? Why should we be allowed to learn them if we never attempt to actively engage ourselves in Aboriginal culture? It is a very different cultural concept to have sacred stories which only a few can know, as though this might have been an aspect of say Christianity hundreds of years ago, the progression of society and technology has led Anglo-European culture to a point where few secrets can be kept. I cannot think of any Euro-centric cultural aspects which cannot be shared by any other culture, although this by no means requires that other cultures should conform to this rule. It is just that we don't hold many things sacred anymore. Perhaps it isn't as simple as being handed the information we want to know about Aboriginal culture - instead, we need to search and learn for ourselves and remember that respect for different cultures is a right, not a privilege.

[Source: C Nicholls, "Understanding And Judging Children’s Artworks By ‘The Standards Of A Diferent Procedure’: Space, Cognition And The Visual Art Of 21st Century Warlpiri And Kukatja School Children", International Art in Early Childhood Research, Volume 3, Number 1, 2012, p. 39]

Week 5: Learning Language

As I was writing my first reflective paper for Indigenous Art, Culture and Design on the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, I came across many words in Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytatjara and Ngaanyatjarra languages:

tjanpi - all kinds of grasses, grass, dry grass, spinifex grasses (NPY)

anangu - person, human (PY)

kalaya - emu (P)

kapi - water (NPY)

kuwaripatjara - in the beginning, originally, before (PY)

lirru - snake (N)

manguri - head ring, circular pad placed on the head for carrying (NPY)

mama - father (NPY)

ngunytju - mother (NPY)

tjilku - child, children (N)

palya - good, okay (NPY)

piranpa - white, white person (PY)

punu  - tree, bush, plant, stick, wood, timber, wooden, carving, wooden artefact, useful wooden implement or tool, thing (PY)

tjala - honey ant (PY)

Tjukurpa - ancestral story, law, 'dreaming' (P)

wakani - piercing, stabbing, sewing, spearing (PY)

wipiya - emu feathers (NPY)

yirlpa - perentie lizard (N)

[Source: P Watson (ed.), Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Macmillan Art Publishing, Australia, 2012]

It is particularly interesting that the word punu can mean at least 11 different things! I think it is fantastic to have the opportunity to learn more about Aboriginal languages. It is upsetting that Australia is one of the only places where we do not learn indigenous languages compulsorily, especially as part of school curriculums. I think it is selfish to assume that everyone learns and can speak English, even in Australia, and I think we need to do the best we can to meet people at least half way with being able to communicate through language. It is an incredible feat that many people of Aboriginal heritage can speak both English and their Indigenous dialects, making us the less educated ones. If Aboriginal children can be bilingual, we need to do our best to achieve this too.

Week 4: South Australian Museum

Last week on Thursday we were given the opportunity to visit the South Australian Museum to take a guided tour of the Australian Aboriginal Cultures gallery. I had not realised that the SA Museum has the largest collection of Aboriginal artefacts in the world! This truly astonished me and made me realise what a valuable resource the Museum is for preserving the history and culture of the land. What I was a little disappointed about was the tour itself. We spent the majority of our time discussing the flaws of the Museum, such as the way the works are presented in quite a dark atmosphere, which is to try and protect them from deterioration, and the lack of interactive learning resources near the displays and proper provision of specific information. It was excellent to hear that the Museum is working hard to correct these faults and make the space even more encouraging to visit, but we discussed these aspects for so long that we didn't get to hear much information about the artefacts themselves! I would have liked to have been told a little more about certain objects, particularly local ones from the Kaurna people, and out of personal interest more on the textile based works. I particularly enjoyed looking at these feather ornaments. The Museum sign stated that feather ornaments feature in ceremonies across Aboriginal Australia, and that with feathers applied directly to the skin, threaded into the hair, or mounted in headdresses, performers in ceremonies become an incarnation of various Bird Ancestors and other spirit people. However, I don't know which design is from which area, or the age of the pieces. I think that one of the most significant reasons people visit the museum is for learning and information, so I definitely feel there needs to be more provided to properly educate people on Indigenous cultures and have more than an appreciation of them in terms of what appeals to them aesthetically.