Consideration of place is very important to the expression of First Nations knowledges, as well as to the interrogation of how such knowledges have been framed by western systems. This is especially important in understanding and appreciating the situating of the exhibition, Emu Sky. Emu Sky is an activation of place, of country, and of knowledge. A rekindling of the fire of wisdom that runs across nations, through the veins and corridors of country. Emu Sky storytellers speak from within and against the colonial architecture of the gallery space, centring their knowledges to re-contextualise place and call for a re-negotiation of the ‘known’ and ‘understood’.
Emu Sky is placemaking in action, ancestors speaking through the vessel of artist, curator, storyteller. It is a call to country that has been forgotten by many as country, Aboriginal land. Wurundjeri Country. The exhibition takes place within what has been called the Old Quad, a part of the corporeal colonialism enshrined on sacred Wurundjeri land by the vestiges of ‘discovery’ and academic pursuit. ‘Old’ Quad denotes a kind of antiquity. And in some ways it is old, erected long before I was born and came to walk between its pillars as a student. But in other, more significant ways it is very young, dwarfed in age by the knowledges which will take artistic form in Emu Sky. Perhaps then the ‘old’ is a distraction from that which is older and which holds up its sandstone pillars, the Aboriginal country beneath. For Emu Sky, the Old Quad becomes a place of remembering, rekindling and re-presenting First Nations’ knowledges. In the creation of this nexus of cosmologies, kin and nations, Emu Sky shares many knowledges that were deemed too ‘old’ by colonial constructs, not in the esteemed way that the ‘Old’ Quad is ‘old’, but to mean archaic and defunct. However, as blackfellas know, these knowledges are ancient, timeless, and futuristic simultaneously.
As Aboriginal people, our places for learning don’t always, and most often do not, look like a classroom. Sometimes, they look like a space carved out amongst sandstone by blak hands, an ephemeral disturbance to the colonial landscape. Sometimes they look like a feed of pipis and a yarn spun around like smoke. Country is my classroom and Nguthungulli, creator spirit, is my teacher. My classroom is at my old Nan’s feet, learnings stoked over the billow of another Bushells. My classroom is my home, four walls balanced on top of country, on the hills of Banyam/Baigham, where my great great grandmother ambled collecting seeds years ago. The sky is my classroom, playing dot to dot laying on the heat of the driveway. Country whispers and tells me it loves me when my Aunty grabs me to plant a kiss on my cheek. Look, ngunyar (be quiet) and listen to country and elders, learning for ourselves and for country on our own terms. I am learning the Widjabul language of learning and knowing. Indigenous ecological knowledges are not an archive, a relic of the past, but are dynamic and deeply contextual. I reminded of this when I look to the coolamon resting on my bedside table. It sings of Birpai country and murmurs of 60,000+ years of environmental wisdom and custodianship. It is not a relic, but a reminder, a vessel for learning. These knowledges and these classrooms are older than any ‘Old’ place deemed to be so by colonial nomenclature. But they are also new, re-contextualised, and re-kindled. Emu Sky hopes to ensure these knowledges persist longer, even when the exhibition ceases, the Old Quad classroom is stacked away, and the building returned to ‘normal’. Emu Sky is about learning in spaces which look and feel more like us.
Despite the ephemerality of the exhibition space, to be reverted to its Old Quad formality perhaps without a trace of the disruption, the dislocation that occurred, the place remains country, an Aboriginal place, the knowledges no longer presented glossy on the walls but running under feet. Like the waterways that once ran through this place, knowledges flow and surge, imbuing this place with memory. Caring for country and its wisdoms in this way is nothing new, but for some it is, those invited in to share this learning. Does it create a dialogue or a frontier? Or perhaps just a spot, a black spot in an ‘Old’ place. Emu Sky creates an Aboriginal space but it leans on an Aboriginal place. Beneath brick and mortar, Wurundjeri country whispers.
You are on Aboriginal Land. Even when the smoke clears. Before and after Emu Sky.
Paris Mordecai is a proud Widjabul Wia-bul woman from the Bundjalung nation in Northern NSW. Paris is the Indigenous Engagement and Outreach Officer for the Faculty of Science where she leads outreach and education programs that aim to engage and inspire young mob with science. She is deeply passionate about education, Indigenous empowerment and self-determination, working with community, and intersectional feminism.
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