Open AccessWaraburra Nura
Author(s) -
Manning Nolan-Laykoski
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
new emerging scholars in australian indigenous studies.
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2208-1232
DOI - 10.5130/nesais.v5i1.1581
Subject(s) - indigenous , clan , politics , ideology , sociology , thriving , realm , privilege (computing) , colonialism , gender studies , white (mutation) , anthropology , aesthetics , history , ethnology , law , social science , political science , art , archaeology , biology , ecology , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
My visit to the UTS’s Indigenous Art Collection and the Waraburra Nura (the Happy Wanderers place) Indigenous garden afforded me the opportunity to re-engage once again with the knowledge that my white privilege has a black history. As a member of the Munnungali clan and Yugambeh Nation-Language people who reside in the Bouedesert area of the Gold Coast Hinterland, I am already deeply connected and sensitive to issues of Colonial representations of history, the role of Indigenism in contesting Western knowledge orthodoxies, the importance of pushing back against the reproduction of the colonised as fixed identities and why under-theorizing the deprived and disadvantaged Australian Indigenous human condition, allows it to proliferate. As a whole, Jennifer Newman’s and Alice McAuliffe’s talk and the artwork on display reflected Indigenous survival, resilience and thriving. It also reflected the relationship between art and politics, not only because it represented both Western and Indigenous political ideology, through an account of political events of historical moments in time, but also because it illustrated how the artist themselves (since their art production is a commitment to a political stance) belong to the political realm.