The Australian continent is larger than Europe, has been inhabited for more than 60,000 years and once belonged to hundreds of Indigenous groups. Ahead of a major British Museum show, curator Gaye Sculthorpe presents 10 objects that sum up the controversies of this complex national story
Antiquity and continuity
Bark painting of a barramundi
Australia has some of the oldest rock art in the world, dating back more than 30,000 years. The rocky escarpments of western Arnhem Land contain thousands of images ranging from now-extinct ancient megafauna (such as giant flightless birds) to 20th‑century paintings of aeroplanes, bicycles and second world war-era ships. Paintings on bark today continue these ancient art traditions, making Aboriginal art perhaps the longest art tradition in the world. The barramundi (fish), painted on bark by an unknown artist from Gunbalanya in about 1961, is a depiction of an important source of food as well as a creation ancestor for people of western Arnhem Land. Often described as “x-ray art”, the portrayal of the internal anatomy of animals in western Arnhem Land art is not simply about portraying the inside of beings. Variations in these images reflect sophisticated differences in the levels of ritual knowledge and seniority of the artist.
Settlement or invasion?
Shield, probably from Botany Bay
When James Cook stepped on to the lands of the Gweagal people at Botany Bay (near present-day Sydney) in 1770, there were two men on the beach shouting and waving spears. The landing party fired at them, wounding one who picked up a shield for protection. One of Cook’s men likely picked up this red mangrove shield from that beach. Plain and unadorned, it has come to represent that historic encounter between Aboriginal Australia and the British empire that led to the subsequent founding of the penal colony at Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, and later the Australian nation. Australia Day is now celebrated on that date, yet for many Indigenous Australians, it represents Invasion Day or Survival Day. Similarly, this shield provokes mixed reactions: evidence of a violent assault or a rare foundational treasure.
Environmental knowledge
Digging stick
Torres Strait Islanders cultivated gardens and obtained many resources from the sea. The Aboriginal peoples of the wet tropical rainforests of North Queensland had distinctive baskets, shields and traps, made from vines and other rainforest plants. In many areas, people burned the landscape regularly to aid hunting and new growth. Boomerangs were not universally used but most Aboriginal groups had spears and digging sticks. Men generally hunted large game, while women gathered reptiles and plant foods. Use of digging sticks by women not only aerated the soil but uncovered edible tubers and witchetty grubs. In central and northern Australia today, women still use digging sticks often now made of metal.
Water
Container made from kelp, Tasmania
Knowing where to find water was critical to survival. In the island state of Tasmania, Aborigines made water containers of bull kelp, which grows in forests in the oceans surrounding the island. After a “Black War” in the late 1820s, the remaining Aboriginal population was exiled first to Flinders Island and then in 1847 to Oyster Cove in southern Tasmania. On Flinders Island, they sent a petition to Queen Victoria protesting against their poor treatment. In 1851 this model water container, made at Oyster Cove, was sent by the Royal Society of Tasmania to the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. This is the only historic kelp water container known to survive anywhere in the world.
Resistance
Jandamarra’s boomerang
Each Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander group has its own ancestors and heroes. For the Bunuba people of the Kimberley region, Jandamarra is a resistance hero. Although first working as a police tracker, he witnessed the killings of his people in the 1890s when settlers were moving onto Bunuba lands in search of more territory for sheep and cattle. Inspector Ord led the chase for Jandamarra. Hiding in the rocky gorges of the Kimberley, Jandamarra was difficult to find but was ultimately located by Mingo Mick, an Aboriginal tracker and shot. His head was removed and sent to England; his descendants are still trying to trace it. The British Museum has spears collected by Ord from Aboriginal camps and has borrowed Jandamarra’s boomerang from Museum Victoria in Melbourne for this exhibition. Jandamarra’s story is now memorialised through oral traditions, several books, a play and a composition created especially for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2014.
The Mabo decision: Indigenous rights
Garden charm from Mer, Torres Strait
The Torres Strait islands are situated between the north of mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea. They became part of the colony of Queensland in 1879. Politically part of Australia, Torres Strait Islanders are culturally linked to peoples of PNG. The ownership of gardens in the Torres Strait was at the centre of a famous legal case. In 1982, Eddie Koiki Mabo and others from the island of Mer, initiated legal action seeking to prove a form of original title to their gardens that had been denied by the Crown. Following lengthy court action, in 1992 the High Court of Australia recognised for the first time in Australian history a form of native title on the island of Mer. This legal precedent, known as the Mabo decision, led to the introduction of the Native Title Act of 1993 with processes enabling other Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal groups to have some of their traditional rights recognised and to negotiate resource agreements on their lands in certain circumstances.
Commodity trading
Bag containing pituri
Although Australia is huge, it was crisscrossed by extensive trade routes. In the Torres Strait, many items were traded with neighbours in Papua New Guinea and on mainland Australia. On the north coast, Aborigines traded with Makassan fishermen from what is now Indonesia, who would visit annually to collect trepang, or sea cucumbers. In the interior, weapons, red ochre, pearl shell, and stone were common items of trade. Pearl shell from the Kimberley was traded inland thousands of miles, changing meaning and purpose as it moved further from the coast. Pituri is a native tobacco that grows on desert margins. The pituri from the Gregory river region of far western Queensland was highly prized. It was packed in bags made of human hair, plant fibres and, later, wool, and traded hundreds of miles.
Aboriginal law
Pukara – a collaborative painting by Spinifex artists
Painted in 2013 by Simon Hogan, Ian Rictor, Roy Underwood and Lennard Walker, this painting presents an important Dreaming story in the Great Victoria desert. These Dreamings embody Aboriginal law and moral codes for living. This painting is about a place called Pukara near Tjuntjuntjara for which the artists hold joint responsibility. Much of the ritual knowledge associated with such paintings is gender-specific with many levels of meaning, most of which cannot be shared with outsiders. The water snakes depicted are two men, the Wati kutjara, taking a young man on a journey of initiation. Their actions and encounters create the water and geographic features of the land that can be seen today. The exhibition presents two major collaborative Spinifex works: one by a group of women and one by men, demonstrating the complementary realms of religious knowledge.
The knowledge of Aboriginal law embodied in such paintings also has a place in the contemporary Australian legal system. The Spinifex people live in a remote arid area of Australia from which people were removed in the 1950s and early 1960s to make way for testing of atomic weapons by the British and Australian governments. In seeking to regain title to their lands in the 1990s, Spinifex people created paintings of important places in their country as evidence of traditional law and ownership. These paintings were used to support native title legal proceedings against the state of Western Australia in the Federal Court of Australia.
Connection to country
Yumari by Uta Uta Tjangala
Understanding the connection between people and “country” is fundamental to understanding Indigenous Australia. This painting was created in 1981 when Uta Uta Tjangala was living away from his lands at the government settlement of Papunya in the Northern Territory where people from Aboriginal groups had been taken. It was at Papunya in the early 1970s that Tjangala and other Pintupi artists began to translate designs from ground and body paintings on to boards and canvas for sale.
The painting shows several important Dreaming places for which Tjangala was custodian. It depicts Tjuntamurtu, a spirit ancestor associated with his conception of place. It also deals with the transgression of Aboriginal law through the story of an old man who has sex with his mother-in-law at Yumari. Motifs from the painting feature on the current Australian passport. Created while living at Papunya, the artist and other Pintupi leaders were longing to return to their own country to the west. Beyond its ritual meaning, this painting thus symbolises the strength of connection between Aboriginal people and country. The desire to live on one’s homelands and carry out ceremonial obligations on country is still fundamental to spiritual wellbeing.
Coexistence and reconciliation
Barama and Captain Cook
Since 1788, Australia has been trying to deal with the challenges of how to understand and respect the different beliefs of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. In the bicentenary year of 1988, artists from central Arnhem Land created a memorial, of 200 larrakitj (memorial poles or hollow log coffins) to commemorate the thousands of Indigenous Australians who had lost their lives defending themselves since 1788.
In 2002, Gawirrin Gumana (b 1935) created a major work dealing with the challenge of coexistence and reconciliation. His larrakitj depicts the designs of the Yolngu ancestral being Barama, at the sacred water hole of Blue Mud Bay in Arnhem Land. The top of the pole has two faces on either side: one being Barama and the other Captain Cook. The artist has never specified which is which. Both ancestors attempt to imbue the land with law using their sacred objects: Barama with his ceremonial staff, and Cook with a flag that he plants on Australian soil. The sacred patterns that flow down the pole show Barama’s law to be still in place, holding on to Yolngu land. Respect for the beliefs and rights of Indigenous Australians within contemporary Australia and the reconciliation of different worldviews into a more cohesive future, remains a fundamental challenge.
The BP exhibition Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation runs at the British Museum, London WC1, from 23 April to 2 August 2015. britishmuseum.org. The associated Encounters exhibition opens at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, in November.
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