ALTA 2017 Utveksling/Exchange 11-14 June

Right to recognition: respecting the ethical revival of Aboriginal Australia Noongar...

Session: Movies




Right to recognition: respecting the ethical revival of Aboriginal Australia Noongar (western Australia) and Koorie sovereignty and memory through digital story and photographs

The right to recover historical material culture important for Australian Aboriginal people was detailed in Bringing Them Home (1997) – the report by the Australian Human Rights Commission on the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their families. The report documented that “renewal of family and community ties and hence regeneration of community life and culture may depend to some extent on reclamation of historical documentation” (AHRC report 1997:343). This paper tells the story of my collaboration with two Australian Aboriginal family groups – Wirlomin Minang Noongar families from the Great Southern of Western Australia and Gunai Kurnai Koorie families from eastern Victoria with a continued connection to the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust Bung Yarnda and the country of their ancestors. At the heart of this collaboration is the history of their ancestor Bessy Flowers held in a colonial archive for more than 150 years yet markedly absent from the everyday stories of her Wirlomin Minang kin and Gunai Kurnai descendants. It is about the Wirlomin Minang and Gunai Kurnai families reclaiming a cultural stronghold of Bessy’s memory by visiting the historical sites of her biography and reaffirming inter-community networks of kinship. Most significantly Bessy is spiritually returned to the resting place of her Minang Noongar ancestors – a site of breathtaking beauty in the Stirling Range that is Noongar boodja (country)