The Edge of the Trees is a sculpture outside the history museum in Sydney Australia. 29 tall wooden poles representing trees are stuck randomly into the ground. At one point 29 different groups of aboriginal people lived in the Sydney area. The words on some of the poles are the names of aboriginal people and places. Other poles have bits of human hair, shell, bone, feathers and ash embedded in them and as you walk among them you hear a soundscape of voices talking in a Australian First Nations language called Koori. The installation Edge of the Trees is an artistic representation of the January day in 1778 when the first fleet of ships filled with convicts and soldiers from Britain arrived in Sydney. The aboriginal people in the area will have watched warily from the 'edge of the trees or the 'forest' as these strange men and women came ashore.
Their wariness was well placed. Initial contact between the aboriginal and white cultures was disastrous for the Australian First Nations. The settlers brought small pox, flu and measles germs with them. The indigenous people had no resistance to these diseases and whole tribes were decimated. Aboriginals were considered no better than animals by many of the first settlers and there are many accounts of native people being hunted for sport. Between 1880 and 1969 more than a 100,000 Australian aboriginal children were forcibly taken away from their parents to be turned into white Christians by the state in residential schools, adoptive homes or institutions. They are known in Australia as the Stolen Generation.
Two intriguing pieces at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney gave further insight into the relationship between the two contrasting cultural groups in Australia. 'Land Deal' by artist Fiona Foley consisted of a huge spiral that had been created on the floor of the museum out of flour. Hanging on the wall behind it were about twenty hatchets, three dozen plain square pieces of mirror and a collection of knives and scissors. The amount of flour used to construct the spiral and the items on the wall represented what the Wurundjeri people of Australia were given by the British in exchange for 600,000 acres of their land. Another Foley installation called 'Blankets' consisted of seven grey government issue blankets with the British crown stamped in the corner. These blankets were traded with the First Nations people for land and sometimes their women's bodies. Each blanket has a different word written on it over and over again. The words are 'Aboriginal', 'Women', 'Property', 'Defiled', 'Ravished', 'Shared', 'Discarded'. An explanation in the museum program provided the added information that sexually transmitted diseases brought to Australia by the early settlers spread rapidly through the First Nations communities.
Several exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Australia illustrated hopeful changes in aboriginal and white relations. A film with native elders telling 'dreaming stories' represents an attempt to preserve the ancient legends and religious beliefs of First Nations people. A colorfully painted bus installed at the museum is one used by Australian Freedom Riders in the early 1960s. Duplicating what they saw happening in the American South thirty students took this bus to Australian aboriginal communities to stage protests because First Nations people were still denied Australian citizenship. Their campaign garnered international media coverage and as a result in 1967 aboriginal people gained the right to vote in Australia. The Declaration of Reconciliation is also on display in the museum. Signed in May of 2000 it is a public apology by the Australian government for the wrongs done to First Nations people in the past.
The relationship between the immigrant and indigenous populations in Australia has been a troubled one. Hopefully in coming generations reconciliation and appreciation will bring about healthy change.
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