Maroon Magazine 2018_266

Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine June 2018
culture we believe that we have always lived here, and
we call our homelands Country. In Australia there are
over 250 different language groups, each with their
own Country. “Country is family, culture, identity.
Culture is self” (Kwaymullina, 2005). Additionally,
our knowledge is gained through our relationships to
people, place, animals, objects and spiritual entities
(Martin, 2001).
We meet in Canberra, home to all of us except one,
and Country to none of us. Canberra means meeting
place in the local Ngunnawal peoples’ language and
for the members of our collective who call this place
home we are aware that we are shaping connections to
far places through our circle of friendship, co-learning
and co-creating.
We weave to work, talk, learn, share and co-create.
Our group is connected through art and love and the
Cullunghutti project. We are Dr Gretchen, researcher
and North American Nez Perce woman; Janet
Fieldhouse, a ceramic artist whose art practice
references her identity as a Torres Strait woman;
Kimiah Viti Alberts, artist facilitator, graphic designer
and woman of South Seas and Murri (Queensland
Aboriginal) heritage; Krystal Hurst, a Worimi artist
and cultural heritage expert; Lyn Talbot, a Jerrinja
woman and artist who weaves, makes dancing people
and is learning glass art; and Wendy Somerville, sister
to Lyn and a PhD scholar, researcher and non- artist.
Krystal, Lyn and Wendy are Aboriginal people from
New South Wales and we call ourselves Kooris. In this
collaborative project we feel the absence of Dr
Bethaney Turner, co-investigator, and Dr Tracy
Ireland, mentor, both of whom are not Aboriginal.
On a blowsy but sunshiny late winter day we weave,
talk, share and laugh. The collective compared parts
of speech from their respective language groups,
hoping to capture similarities, commenting on pronunciation
and meaning. Lyn and Wendy are weaving in
the New Zealand cabbage tree fronds that add layers
of meaning to their baskets and to honour the land and
a Maori ancestor who lived and worked on the
mountain with his Koori wife. Tharawal means
cabbage tree, and it is the language/name that people
from the area from Wollongong to the Shoalhaven
River used to describe themselves. Today Lyn and
Wendy share their partial Jerrinja worldview and
language; Gretchen shares aspects of her Nez Perce
language and cultural practices; Janet explains her
Torres Strait Islander language, background and art
practice; Krystal patiently teaches and shares her
Worimi knowledge; Kimiah is the least talkative but
shares snippets of her family stories with us.
Kimiah moves and mostly listens. She plays with
Shona, the miniature border collie who shares this
space with the Somervilles. Kimiah pops out to get
extra arts materials and manages to sit or stand with
all of us. She follows the sun and we follow her. She
explains her position as a non-artist, how she loves
symmetry and order and frets that she won’t be able
to achieve those things in this project. Krystal shares
with Kimiah the knowledge of how to start and incorporate
new strips of reeds and when we are forced by
the cold to move to the kitchen table Kimiah completes
her symmetrical, intricate, woven work of artistry. It
is exquisite and a testament to her designer’s eye.
We are privileged when Gretchen shares with us the
meaning of Kimiah in her culture. This is her story to
tell, however, here we can talk about what she brings
of her creative practice to us. Gretchen is a beader and
anthropologist and describes herself as an anthrobeader.
For this project she dives in and completes
weaving her basket long before the rest. Her embellished-with-beads
basket of memories of the day will
hang on her office wall. Her basket has many spaces
for memories to pass through or lodge, as they like.
Krystal also makes an imaginative embellished
hanging basket, though the embellishment was a
painted quandong seed, not pretty beads. Memories
might choose to wrap themselves around the quandong
to roll out of the bottom of this basket. For Wendy and
Lyn, the quandong seed evokes memories of a childhood
spent in the flat red earth Country, not their own Country,
but the place they grew up. Krystal spoke of a project
she would like to organise, a project that speaks to Koori
memory and cultural practice along the coast of New
South Wales. The project involves mullet, to Lyn and
Wendy the fish that tastes exactly as fish are supposed to
taste and reminds both of their mother.
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