Office for Contemporary Art Norway / Valiz

and Criticism Curation Art, Indigenous Words. Sovereign Sovereign

Words Somby, Megan Ánde Tamati-Quennell, Snarby, Prashanta Irene Tripura, Shyam, Sontosh Singh Bikash Tripura. Raman Venkat Edited Sara, by Katya Ánne García-Antón Máret Moulton, Kimberley Ismahasan, Biung David Garneau, Eshrāghi, Luna’i Māzyār Léuli Donnelly, Hannah Das, Kumar Santosh Cope, Megan Chakma, Kabita Browning, Daniel

Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism

Office for Contemporary Art Norway / Valiz With this publication we pay respect to our peers in Sápmi, as well as to the myriad Indigenous histories, presents and futures harboured in lands and oceans across the world. We acknowledge their Ancestors and the stories of survivance (survival, resistance and presence) in the face of colonial mechanisms that are still ongoing. We also honour the agency possible in the constitution of alliances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities within the fields of culture and beyond. Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism Edited by Katya García-Antón

Office for Contemporary Art Norway Valiz, Amsterdam – 2018 7 Preface Katya García-Antón

Sounding the Global Sovereign Histories Indigenous. Language, of the Visual Contemporaneity and Indigenous Art Writing

15 Can I Get a Witness? 63 Jođi lea buoret go oru. Indigenous Art Criticism Better in Motion than at David Garneau Rest. Iver Jåks 33 What Does or Should (1932–2007) ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? Irene Snarby Prashanta Tripura 77 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, 47 History and Context of toi te whenua. The Madhubani (Mithila) Art Permanence of Language, Santosh Kumar Das Prestige and Land Megan Tamati-Quennell 97 Sovereignty over Representation. Indigenous Cinema in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Kabita Chakma Statues, Maps, Stories Sovereign World-Building. and Laws. Critical Perspectives Acting Within and Beyond on Land Rights and Use Notions of the Curatorial

115 Hiding in Plain Sight. 191 I Can Still Hear Them Decolonising Public Calling. Echoes of My Memory Ancestors Daniel Browning Kimberley Moulton 129 Yarabinja Bujarang. 209 People Call Me Venkat Beautiful Sea Country Venkat Raman Singh Megan Cope Shyam 137 Indigenous Stories, 217 Ethno-Spatiality as Indigenous to Global Sovereignty. Curating Survival Performative Encounters Máret Ánne Sara with Taiwanese Indigenous 169 Where the Hard Meets Contemporary Art the Soft Biung Ismahasan Ánde Somby 232 MĀTAU ʻO 177 Indigenous Peoples’ Land TAUTUANAGA O Rights in Bangladesh. FAʻĀLIGA ATA MO O An Overview of the TĀTOU LUMANAʻI. Chittagong Hill Tracts Considering the Service of Sontosh Bikash Tripura Displays for our Futures Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi 252 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms. Belonging to a Place in Time Hannah Donnelly 268 Bibliographies 272 Biographies Sovereign Words

Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism 1 Facts drawn from the United Nations Per- manent Forum on Indigenous Issues. See ‘Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Voices: Fact- sheet’, available online at: https://www.un.org/ esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_fact- sheet1.pdf Accessed 6 October 2018. Preface

They have assumed the names and and epistemicidal mechanisms past and gestures of their enemies, but have present that inevitably impinge upon artistic held on to their own, secret souls; and frameworks. in this there is a resistance and an The publication Sovereign Words. overcoming, a long outwaiting. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism2 – N. Scott Momaday, House of Dawn, 1968 considers the complexities arising today in writing a canon of art history that declares Here is a lesson: what happens to itself as global. Sovereign Words convenes people and what happens to the land multiple Indigenous voices from across the is the same thing. planet to discuss the narrations of their – Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual histories and presents against the context History of the Living World, 1995 of the Modernist and colonial ideologies that have framed them in the past, and which Our sovereignty is embodied, it is continue to attempt to do so today. From this ontological (our being) and episte- standpoint, the publication presents newly mological (our way of knowing), and it commissioned texts by Indigenous artists, is grounded within complex relations poets, story-tellers, performers, lawyers, derived from the intersubstantiation curators and scholars that reflect upon the of ancestral beings, humans and words, writing forms, spaces and processes land. In this sense, our sovereignty is through which their cultural and artistic carried by the body and differs from practices, their histories and contact points Western constructions of sovereignty, with the international art-historical canon which are predicated on the social have been and must be counter-narrated contract model, the idea of a universal today. supreme authority, territorial integrity With the expansion of the art-histori- and individual rights cal canons in academia, and the so called – Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty ‘Global Turn’ in international curating that Matters, 2007 ensued with the new millennium, in the last years the spotlight has also turned towards There are approximately 370 million practices and discourses emerging from Indigenous peoples on the planet, belonging Indigenous communities. In this process of to 5,000 different communities, in 90 nation art-world ‘Indigenisation’, artistic and other states worldwide. Indigenous peoples live cultural voices from Indigenous communi- in every region of the world, 0.006 per cent ties are increasingly sought after for exhi- in Europe, and about 70 per cent in Asia.1 bitions, festivals, biennials, art fairs, and Despite this global span, colonial powers by museums racing to consider the global expertly argue for the localness of reach of their art collections and practices. Indigenous experience, in order to fragment, Such a phenomenon has been spurred on isolate and render invisible these intellectual by the characteristic Modernist impulse to processes from the world’s stage. The sup- be universal and encyclopaedic, as much as pression of Indigenous world-views, histo- by a current search for alternative bodies of ries, stories, aesthetics and languages, the knowledge that might facilitate a reflection undermining of circular time-conceptions upon some of the most urgent crises of our and age-old knowledge systems, the repres- times. sion or co-opting of spiritual practices, as Indigenous artists, writers, and curators, well as the violent dispossessions of lands however, are not seeking acceptance from and waters and their colonial renaming and the hegemonic art-historical canon, but exploitation, stand out as recurring ecocidal recognition as custodians of ancient, highly

7 Preface influential and neighbourly discourses. ing during a six-day discursive programme Indigenous Criticism with a capital C, as within the context of the Dhaka Art Summit, the international mainstream knows it, has widely considered to be one of Asia’s most been emerging globally for more than thirty flourishing art forums. The programme years, and has inspired critical thinking and benefited from the advice and collaboration artistic movements that canonical practices of the Dhaka Art Summit (through its Chief have heralded as their own. Today, criticism, Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt) and artistic practices and curatorial processes Artspace, Sydney (through its Executive are being built with an awareness of entan- Director Alexie Glass-Kantor), with the kind gled perspectives, both Indigenous and support of the Australia Council for the Arts. non-Indigenous, and with the knowledge The resulting publication, Sovereign that Indigenous discourses are as kaleido- Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and scopic as the histories, colonial experiences Criticism, confronts some of today’s burning and daily realities that characterise their questions resulting from the shifting struc- myriad communities. An important point to tures of cultural and art communities, as take into consideration is the fact that the well as society at large across the world. ‘Indigenous Turn’ is regarded by many Contributors from four continents include Indigenous peers as a non-Indigenous Daniel Browning (Aboriginal journal- project: an introspective, discursive focus ist, radio broadcaster, documentary that this publication self-consciously recog- maker, sound artist and writer); Kabita nises and in which it intends to partake with Chakma (researcher, architect, writer critical respect that we hope will generate a and lecturer from the Chakma community much-needed level of cultural bi-linguality. in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangla- Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, desh); Megan Cope (Quandamooka artist Curation and Criticism also acknowledges from North Stradbroke Island in Southeast the risks of misunderstanding and misap- Queensland); Santosh Kumar Das (artist propriation when non-Indigenous think- from the Madhubani region of Bihar); Hannah ers reach out to Indigenous knowledge; Donnelly (Wiradjuri writer and artist); Léuli indeed, these conflicts are addressed in Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi (artist, curator the publication from an Indigenous per- and writer from the Sāmoan archipelago, spective. Amongst the first of its kind, this Pārs plateau, Guandong delta and other compilation of Indigenous voices has been ancestries); David Garneau (Métis artist, built in dialogue with non-Indigenous writer, curator and Professor of Visual peers to enhance the knowledge around Arts at the University of Regina); Biung Indigenous perspectives regarding the Ismahasan (curator and writer from fields of cultural practices, art and film, the Bunun Tribe of Taiwanese Indige- ethics and history, as well as theory, law nous peoples); Kimberley Moulton (Yorta and museology. The publication emerges Yorta curator and writer); Máret Ánne from the Critical Writing Ensembles Sara (Sámi artist and writer); Venkat platform, an ongoing series conceived by Raman Singh Shyam (Pradhan Gond OCA dedicated to commissioning, debat- artist); Irene Snarby (writer and doctoral ing, connecting and publishing new art research fellow at UiT – the Arctic Uni- and cultural writing across the world. In versity of Norway; Sápmi/Norway); Ánde this spirit, the 2018 edition featured sixteen Somby (Indigenous lawyer, writer, yoiker Indigenous peers who came together for a and Associate Professor of Law at UiT – residency and discursive programme titled The Arctic University of Norway; Sápmi/ ‘Sovereign Words. Facing the Tempest of Norway); Megan Tamati-Quennell (Māori a Globalised Art History’. Peers presented Curator of Modern and Contemporary Māori and publicly debated their texts and think- and Indigenous Art at Te Papa Tongarewa

8 Katya García-Antón The National Art Gallery and Museum of 2 New Zealand) Prashanta Tripura (lecturer We are grateful for the dialogue with David and anthropologist); and Sontosh Bikash Garneau and Kimberley Tripura (researcher; Tripura Indigenous Moulton regarding the community in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of subtitle of this pub- Bangladesh). lication, which drew This publication challenges cultural attention to the complexities of using the term workers (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) to Indigenous. The term is engage meaningfully and ethically with the being increasingly ap- histories, presents and futures of Indigenous plied world-wide after its cultures, arts and thoughts, and to consider adoption by the United Nations in 1982, as a the ricocheting effects that this engage- tool to create a global ment will inevitably have on international platform for the advoca- canonical perspectives. What will the new cy of Indigenous rights. histories of the arts of Indigenous practi- Nevertheless, there tioners look, feel and sound like? How will are many communities who uphold instead the novel methodologies of word/voice-crafting terms ‘First Peoples’ or be constituted to embody and empower ‘First Nations’, con- the Indigenous discourses of the future? cerned that ‘Indigenous’ Is it sufficient to widen the hegemonic and risks a positioning of Indigenous peoples as a Modernist art-historical canon through the homogenous community. politics of inclusion? Is this expansion a new These complexities were colonial model for Indigenous practices, or is amongst the key issues it fostering the cosmopolitan kind of thinking debated in the ‘Sover- that Indigenous communities have always eign Words’ project, and are addressed in David shared? To whom does the much talked-of Garneau’s and Prashan- ‘Indigenous Turn’ belong? And does it really ta Tripura’s essays in represent a project of introspection and this publication from revision in the face of today’s ecocidal, different perspectives. Equally, ‘Art’ and ‘Cura- genocidal and existential crises? Will such a tion’ are loaded terms process nevertheless re-assert a hegemonic with specific histories structure? With the canonical power systems that relate to canons of the international art world increasingly mostly created by and under fire, Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, for Anglo-Eurocentric circuits. Irene Snarby, Curation and Criticism makes a strong bid Megan Tamati-Quennell for in-depth knowledge-building and intel- and Kimberley Moulton, lectual alliances that will inform the cultural as well as the introduc- and artistic processes of Indigenous and tion to Section 4 bring up relevant points to this non-Indigenous futures. debate.

9 Preface Sounding the Global Indigenous

Language, Contemporaneity and Indigenous Art Writing Sounding the Global Indigenous

Language, Contemporaneity and Indigenous Art Writing 1 The country of Bangla- desh upheld the premise of ’One language’ (Ben- gali) and ’One people’ (Bengali) following its independence from Pakistan in 1971. This constitutional negligence of languages and identi- eties other than Bengali adds to the complexity of the notion of Indige- neity.

12 The posing of questions is a way of hearing An artist who identifies with out a language, making audible new forms ‘Indigenous peoples’ thus of speech and grammar. Each of the contri- needs to ask herself: will my butions in this section allows for its author’s artistic creation make the own practices of listening, sounding the audience reflect on and iden- words of shifting collective vocabularies. tify with the crises faced by the To ‘Sound the Global Indigenous’ is to voice Indigenous peoples? transnational communities, active at a planetary level through self-elected affinities Garneau counters approaches to Indigenous and wilful forms of solidarities – networks of artworks as new ‘expressions’ of the old or non-state actors producing tools and spaces the already known, by suggesting they might of transformation that rewrite both colonial instead be called ‘customary art’. He posits and rooted modes of cultural reproduction. Indigenous art-making as a questioning and In the first of these essays, David experimental practice of research – striving Garneau, Professor of Visual Arts at the Uni- towards new relations of thought, feeling versity of Regina, analyses traces of settler and identity at the nexus of both Indigenous ‘w(h)itnessing’ in contemporary writing on culture and capitalist colonialism. Indige- Indigenous art, outlining the challenges nous contemporary art, he argues, synthe- and demands of Indigenous art criticism. sises new relations within past and present Taking as his starting point Terence Houle’s modes of native culture, as well as between last performance Iisistsikóówa and Alison native and colonial forms of experience, Cooley’s review of it, he mediates these participation and spectatorship. For him, questions through a personal account of the Indigenous offers ‘an additional way of his own history as a writer, as both critical being’ for Aboriginal, Native or First Nations spectator and Indigenous subject, between peoples, or ‘a new mode of being Native’. the positions of Cooley and Houle. By asking By contrast, artist Santosh Kumar Das ‘Can I get a witness?’ Garneau employs the offers a focused and personal account of language of jurisprudence to highlight the why customary or so-called traditional art epistemological uncertainties at play in the need not be viewed as homogenous, but ‘a experience of Indigenous art. living and vibrant form’. The development of Academic anthropologist, poet and Madhubani (Mithila) art and the development development professional Prashanta Tripura of the artist are recounted side by side. By poses his own concern in asking ‘Is there tracing the shifts under government inter- or should there be something called “Indig- vention of Mahdubani art, from collective enous poetry”?’ By doing so, he voices his and domestic spaces to commercial and perspective on the ontological and ethical individuated practices, Das shows how: complexities of the category ‘Indigenous art’ as lived in his home context of Bangladesh.1 we would do better to register Indigeneity, as in Garneau’s account, is first the changes that … Indigenous and foremost a ‘chosen identity’; in Tripura’s cultures undergo through the experience, the label of ‘Indigenous’ is a hat forces of societal change and one chooses or refuses to wear depending historical churnings, and then on who is doing the asking. The ontological reconsider our ideas of these question ‘is there such a thing as Indige- expressions. nous art criticism?’ may be followed by the question ‘for whom does it exist?’ just as the Whether located between the colonial ethical question ‘should there be an Indig- and the native, between the past and the enous art criticism?’ also asks how and in present, the local or the international, what mode it should be. As Tripura writes: Indigeneity, as Tripura upholds, is a site of

13 Sounding the Global Indigenous contention and agency. Das and Tripura both 2 offer cogent examples of how the category Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of of the Indigenous is implicated in the rela- the Living World (New tions between the home and the market, York: Simon & Schuster, class and gender, urban and rural, as well 1996). as ceremonial and secular life. Criticality, in relation to oneself, one’s community, and to one’s art is always recurring at the core of Indigenous thinking. All three essays in this section emphasise the role of knowledge, interpretation and translation. Indigenous art, writes Das, is ‘a language that has its own very distinct and honest grammar, a vernacular’. These three contributions outline the questions surrounding the usage and implementation of language. Tripura suggests that to use the term ‘Indigenous peoples’ indicates a will to ameliorate the linguistic conditions of recognition for people who identify with Indigeneity, as well as to promote and protect rights. As Garneau writes ‘Central to “Indigenous” is Aboriginal and tribal title to specific spaces.’ For these authors, there is an ongoing struggle between official and vernacular language and an inseparable tie between rights of land, rights of culture and rights of language. To reiterate the words of Linda Hogan, ‘what happens to people and what happens to the land is the same thing’.2

14 Can I Get a Witness? Indigenous Art Criticism David Garneau

15 Can I Get a Witness? ‘Indigenous’ is an emerging category that extends and adapts First Peoples’ ways of knowing and being into the contemporary moment and into spaces beyond our home territories. Enabled by advancements in communication, trans- portation, government policies and funding – and driven by a sense of urgency arising from degradations to our persons, sovereignty and environments – Natives from around the world are connecting with each other to produce international networks and a collective consciousness. Art is part of this movement. While Indigenous contemporary artists and curators live and work in individual cultures and territories, we also participate in global art worlds and discourses, and create objects, performances, exhibitions, texts, sounds and meanings that blend, bend and snap both colonial and customary cultures. If our labour is to be more than a tributary to mainstream art, and if our lives are to exceed the sum of our privileges, Indigenous artists and curators must engage in collective, critical reflection on ourselves, works and processes. If this movement is to thrive, resulting in Indigenous creative sovereignty, we need our work not only to be recognised by mainstream witnesses, but engaged, criticially, by Indigenous people. And, if we are not to gain Indigeneity at the expense of our Creeness, Métisness, Māoriness, Chakmaness, Sáminess and so on, our production must be critical to all our relations. In Plains sign language, Terrance Houle introduces himself to a crowded Toronto classroom. He is violently interrupted by four men wearing balaclavas and academic gowns. In a dramatic voice, one of them reads a scholarly paper about Indigenous art while his accomplices roll their papers into clubs and beat the artist. Though staged, the brutality is real. Houle is bruised and scraped, his glasses knocked from his face. The attackers force him to a black- board, where they outline his body in chalk. Only once he has been stripped naked do several audience members try to protect his battered prone body. He waves them off. Eventu- ally, the assailants leave. Houle sits up and lights a cigarette.

16 David Garneau 1 He slowly puts on Blackfoot regalia: a loin cloth, necklace Alison Cooley, ‘Terrence Houle and the Violence and breastplate. He smears his hands with red paint and of Complicity’, 7*11d.ca: presses them to his body and face; sings and washes himself http://7a-11d.ca/terrance-houle/ Accessed 6 in black earth; cuts off his braids and buries them in the August 2018. mound of soil. Iisistsikóówa – Blackfoot for ‘he is tired’ – was, Houle claims, his last work as a performance artist. In her response to the event, Alison Cooley writes that ‘the performance reads as an allegory for being an Indig- enous artist in Canada: being categorized, canonized, valorized, commodified on the market and in academic theory, even while being subject to the colonial aggressions of nationally sanctioned racist policy-making and individual everyday violences.’1 Iisistsikóówa reminds Cooley of her passive complicity in the casual oppression of Natives. She explains that her failure to disrupt Native oppression, in Houle’s performance and in her life, is due to ‘colonial power that make[s] us all vulnerable, reproduces our differences until we are all too female/too poor/too queer/too triggered/too weak/too scared to intervene.’ It is a powerful concession. Cooley’s account is sincere, thoughtful and empathetic. The description is evocative and the analysis perceptive. Aligning herself with Aboriginal struggle as a fellow subject of colonialism, she displays self-reflexive and affective solidarity. She shows how patriarchy and colonisation distort everyone. That she attended the performance at all, that she wrote about it, and did so with intelligence and sensitivity, is admirable and helpful. Witnessing – she describes herself as a witness – is crucial to Indigenous/non-Indigenous (re)conciliation and the possibility of a non-colonial future. But however empathetic, her writing is settler business. Her text centres a non-Indigenous subjectivity – hers – and the consciousness it aspires to raise is also non-Native. She casts colonial power as total, and Terrance Houle, its degraded subject, as living pedagogy for non-Natives. Settler-authored critical reviews of Indigenous art are infrequent, and what does exist is addressed to non-Natives.

17 Can I Get a Witness? Too often, Native art is contextualised within Western art history rather than also considering First Nations, Inuit or Métis aesthetic precedents, or, more importantly, Indigenous contemporary theory and practice. Many writers avoid contemporary criticality altogether, liking or disliking work on seemingly universal formal or subjective grounds. Even the better non-Native reviews of Aboriginal and Indigenous art generally turn on familiar tropes of injustice, the suffering ‘Indian’, and white guilt/solidarity. This is fine, as far as it goes – much Aboriginal art, after all, complies with these tropes – and we can always use a witness (who will be believed). But when the subject of these writings is non-Native consciousness, and the Indigenous is visible only when in proximity to white witnessing, it is important to recognise them as settler texts – an important genre, but of limited use for Indigenous people. Cooley reports of Houle’s performance: ‘We recognize these motions newly as a manifestation of something that was always there (not beyond Houle’s experience, but beyond our own).’ In this fascinating construction, the author uses the royal ‘we’ to encourage readers to join her as a collective, enlightened Canadian consciousness (‘our own’). This entity is an unsettled settler witness who tours the already always there, seeking not to homestead but to see what can be seen. Refreshingly, Cooley establishes an ethical horizon for her inquiry. She recognises that there are Native worlds beyond her gaze and beneath her feet, and that she will not encroach upon them. Here, and in recent settler accounts of Indigenous art generally, there is respectful, non-penetrative engagement – that is, acute gazes outward and, especially, inward; an emphasis on insightful witnessing, on the ocular and reflective – but a reluctance to touch and be touched, to get physically involved, to engage the body and other senses. There is a type of non-Indigenous witness – I am not referring to Cooley – who hungers for scenes of Native incident. These are mostly white people who stray with

18 David Garneau purpose among the urban disasters of capitalist colonialism, hoping to catch sight of spectacular degradation that they can redeem through witnessing, reporting and art-making. Wandering where they will, seeing and recording what they want, they know all the while that, though at some risk, they are ultimately protected by the state, and their subjects know it. This may be an honorable activity carried out by artist- reporter-social-critics who do not want to insulate themselves and their publics from the consequences of inherited privilege, who feel the moral urge to know and make known. Or it may be the somnambulistic wanderings of disenchanted privilege searching for sites of authentic being – which means discovering subjects who are unaware of the creative meta-text, meta-images and meta-sounds that these agents might yet provide to represent them. Whatever the apparent motive, from an Indigenous point of view – one sensitive to the subtler manifestations of the settler collective uncon- scious and performance – this form of settler witnessing, of a specific looking-for, appears like colonisation. Not through settlement, but through survey. The scopophilic colonial witness produces its Aboriginals through notice, record and interpretation, rather than produces relations by being-with. These are panopticonic flan- eurs whose cover is a cool, glazed surface unsoiled by tactile experience but whose insides roil with affect, and with the frisson of their disturbing presence. Their excitement is to discover another level of territory to conquer through surveillance. To the Indigenous scout, they are the settler avant- garde, who occupy territory by pressing their right of free passage; privileged bodies walking in dominion, strolling as a sovereignty exercise. Not only do they claim land through conspicuous surveillance, but they affirm the integrity of the settler body and self as mobile, clean, autonomous but protected, and other than the grounded, messy, dependant, endangered and unknowable Native. Picture Terrance Houle cleansing his beaten body with earth, singing, cutting and burying his braids in a pile of

19 Can I Get a Witness? soil in a Toronto classroom. His performance is medicine, an antidote to the ocular-centric and textualised self, and the prophylactic disaster tourist manifesting destiny. What initially looks like an Indigenous degradation becomes a redemptive ritual, echoing Blackfoot ceremonies that include self-authored mortifications of the flesh and the potential for transformation. The inverse of the panopticonic flaneur, Houle enters the heart of w(h)itness and stays put, despite the beating, in a hyperbolic demonstration of the impossibil- ity of his passing through settler territory unchallenged. He does not beseech authorities, explain his actions, but endures with his ceremony, language and dignity intact. Settler reviews tend to narrate Indigenous contemporary art as expression – creative illustrations of the pre-existing and already known – rather than as research, as a form of questioning, of striving to generate new knowledge, new feelings, sensations, thoughts and intuitions and new identities. Iisistsikóówa cannot be digested with the language, precedents and theories of mainstream art alone. It is neither a spectacle of Blackfoot culture for settler consumption, nor something that Blackfoot people would entirely claim. Fresh art, art before art history, critical art, art worthy of criticism, is not reducible to culture. It is a new thing emerging from the multiple sources that shape Houle, but which he now has sufficient agency to interrogate and reshape. If Indigenous artists completely understood what they were doing, they would be making customary art. They would be expressing their culture through its distinct received forms. The confidence of customary artists comes from knowing what they are doing and knowing that it has a place within the culture that their work embodies. Indig- enous contemporary art is informed by, but not limited to, these traditions. Their destinations and receptions are uncertain – until, that is, an Indigenous critical community arises to consider them. They are experiments and therefore need not only appreciation but also criticism to complete them. Only with their entry into critical discourses is their

20 David Garneau power beyond the aesthetic activated, and can they stimulate change in tribal and dominant cultures. It is the Indigenous work of art, text, exhibition and sound that inspires, breathes life into, the Indigenous. At the center of Iisistsikóówa is an affective disturbance that cannot be explained away or displaced with words. When Houle cuts off his braids, this is not a rhetorical device but a profoundly moving embodied performance of a complex subjective experience using and adapting inherited tools. While a conventional sign for Blackfoot people, its contents are also personal. It can be a mourning gesture honouring the loss of someone close, or to mark a personal transition – the hoped for loss of oneself and the birth of another. What are we to make of its occurrence in a public, non-Indigenous space of performance art? Why these witnesses? Australian art historian Ian McLean has a nuanced sense of Indigenous Contemporary art. ‘Indigenous Contemporary art’ rather than ‘contemporary Indigenous art’ is a phrase I owe to him. The formula acknowledges that while all living Indigenous people are contemporary, not all the art they make is Contemporary. ‘Contemporary’, in the second instance, designates a type of art, not simply the fact that it is something produced now. For example, saying that Modern art was practised in New York in the 1950s does not imply that all art made there and then was Modernist. Cus- tomary art made by contemporary Native people, then, is unlikely to be Contemporary art. To avoid confusion, from now on I will capitalise the word when it refers to the art period that follows Modernism. The word ‘Indigenous’ operates in a similar way to the word ‘Contemporary’. According to conventional usage, small ‘i’ indigenous refers to something original to a particular place, and capital ‘I’ Indigenous refers only to a People original to a particular place. However, as I will soon explain and advocate, in its Contemporary usage, Indigenous is not synonymous with Aboriginal or Native or First Nations etc.,

21 Can I Get a Witness? 2 but indicates an additional way of being Native. Indigenous Ian McLean, ‘Theories’, in Ian McLean (ed.), Double people are Native people when they are Contemporary. I will Desire: Transculturation pick this up later. and Indigenous Contem- porary Art (Newcastle: McLean begins a recent essay with the claim that ‘a Cambridge Scholars, 2014), p. 10. theory of Indigenous contemporary art remains elusive. This is reflected in its failure, outside of a few countries that are peripheral to the main game, to make a sustained impression on the main body of the artworld discourse.’2 If an Indige- nous artist wanted success in the dominant art world alone, they would just be artists. To identify as an Indigenous artist is to declare your belonging to the Indigenous art world and its discourse. ‘A theory of Indigenous contemporary art’ may be elusive, or it may just elude a false measure. A theory of Indigenous Contemporary art could only be successful as Indigenous – which is to say sovereign – if it were sensible and useful to Indigenous Contemporary artists and communities. Recognition by the global elite, ‘the main game’, is of secondary importance. Like most non-Indigenous-authored texts, his assumes that Indigenous Contemporary art is addressed to the dominant art world, rather than also being a Native-to-Native communication – an Indigenous exchange that may be in conversation with the mainstream but is not subsumed by or fully comprehensible to it. To engage Houle’s performance as Indigenous, we must recognise it as addressed to Indigenous us. Iisistsikóówa takes place in a university. To the student, the Indige- nous-in-training, Houle offers a dramatic version of what lies ahead, what it feels like to be an academic subject and the subject of academic inquiry – rendered a chalk outline. He warns that while the position ‘Indigenous artist’ resembles its dominant-culture compliment, it is always accompanied by the burden of not just difference but the colonial drive to know, contain, absorb and mortify. And it is exhausting. He also warns about the consequences of losing touch with your body, earth and home culture as sources of knowledge and being in this abstract site, of following too closely the protocols of witness and whiteness, the danger of aesthetic distance.

22 David Garneau While you don’t have to be Indigenous to understand Indigenous art, it helps. Yes, iisistsikóówa engages non-Na- tives along the lines that Cooley captures: Houle embodies the racism visited upon him by a society that appreciates his art but reviles his brown body; settlers should recognise their complicity and construction within colonialism and decolonise themselves etc. However, for Indigenous people, iisistsikóówa is also about dissolving the art/life, ceremony/ secular divide. It is about the Native reproduction of colonialism; self-harm and lateral violence, and, most pointedly, the performance questions the desirability of Indigenous academic critique of Indigenous art, especially if this means displacing living knowledges with textual translations, and if the academic attitude employs non-Native methods such as aesthetic distance. I am a painter who wrote reviews (1989–2011) because my friends clamoured for criticism and publicity. While not always pleased by my effort, they were happy it existed. Critical art writing is not just press but discourse. It records and generates thinking, nudges readers, art production and display. It deepens the arts community and shares its doings beyond its borders. Until the turn of the century, I wrote almost exclusively about non-Indigenous artists for non- Native publications. My reviews appeared in local weeklies in Calgary, and mainstream national magazines such as BorderCrossings and Canadian Art, and a few international ones. I was regional editor of C and Vie des Arts, and co-founded and co-edited Artichoke. I also wrote for avow- edly anti-colonial, non-commercial publications like Fuse and Parallelogram. But even there, I had white readers in mind. Like Cooley, I cast myself as an implicated go-between educating settlers. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that, like Houle, I admitted exhaustion and (temporarily) retired from this service. I wanted to discover, produce and critique the performance of Indigeneity from within itself rather than from under a settler gaze or guise. I wanted to be, talk and think with Indigenous people about and through our art

23 Can I Get a Witness? 3 and lives, rather than be a Native informant, teaching and Joane Cardi- nal-Schubert, ‘Flying entreating the dominant culture’s embroidered fringe. with Louis’, in Lee-Ann Indigenous Contemporary artists of the 90s and 2000s Martin (ed.), Making a Noise: Aboriginal were also eager for critical art writing – sort of. Joane Car- Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Weirinf dinal-Schubert, in her essay ‘Flying with Louis’, in the and Community (Banff, path-making collection Making a Noise! (2005),3 argued Alberta: The Banff Cen- tre, 2004), p. 47. that we need Aboriginal art histories and criticism: ‘our own 4 language of art: “Aboriginal Art Speak”’.4 This was a shift Ibid., p. 34. 5 from the goals of the generation that preceded her. The Pro- Ibid., p. 28. 6 fessional Native Indian Artists Incorporation, better known The date of SCANA’s as the Indian Group of Seven (1973–75), lobbied to have start and dissolution is unclear. Most accounts their work classified as capital ‘A’ art by the commercial art I have received from market: ‘they had the vision; saw the need for an interven- former members say meetings began in 1983 tion of passion to achieve the benefit of equality’.5 For the and ceased in the late 1980s. According to most part, their desire was to join, not reform, the art world. Government of Canada Cardinal-Schubert’s crew – the Society of Canadian records, the society 6 was incorporated 28 Artists of Native Ancestry (1983–?) – wanted in to the com- January 1985 and not formally dissolved until mercial art world, too, but they also demanded an expanded 5 May 2015. See https:// equality that included access to what non-minoritised artists www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/ cc/CorporationsCanada/ received: exhibitions in publicly funded art galleries, dedi- fdrlCrpDtls.html?cor- cated arts funding, residencies, teaching, curatorial oppor- pId=1837303 Accessed 8 August 2018. tunities and a place at decision-making tables. And in the 7 Cardinal-Schubert, ‘Fly- following decades, much of this was achieved. However, as ing with Louis’, p. 42. early as 2004, Cardinal-Schubert took stock and determined 8 Ibid., p. 27. that equality looked more like containment and exploitation: ‘I maintain that our efforts have been misunderstood; we have been co-opted.’7 ‘We have kicked down doors … lobbying with governments, educational institutions, funding agencies, galleries, and even our relatives, friends and peers.’8 We have, she explained, secured special funding for Indigenous arts, won curatorial internships at museums, learned Western critical theory and museum conservation, and been ‘a bunch of really “good” Indians’. But the price of individual achievement was loss of Aboriginal collective solidarity. Aboriginal art, she argued, is curated, celebrated and consumed by non-Aboriginal audiences in Canada and overseas, all of which are ‘too far away’ from First Nations,

24 David Garneau 9 Inuit and Métis communities. If we continue this way we Ibid. 10 will face ‘a further identity crisis’ and ‘we will not be able to See http://firstpeoplesof- advance an Aboriginal art theory’. It is time, she argued, for canada.com/fp_groups/ 9 fp_inuit1.html Accessed a leap into ‘self-determination’. This ‘identity crisis’ is what July 2018. it feels like to be at the end of the Aboriginal and the beginning of the Indigenous.

From Aboriginal to Indigenous Prior to European contact, people did not conceive themselves as Aboriginal. What they called themselves, as in the case of the Inuit, usually just meant ‘the people’. Every group also had other names, appellations given to them by Native others to indicate a significant difference. The Cree called the Inuit ‘Eskimos’, which meant ‘eaters of raw meat’.10 Recognising our independence from both settlers and First Nations people – and sometimes each other – Cree called us Métis ‘Otimpemsuak’, ‘the people who own themselves’. First Nations on Turtle Island were as different from each other as nineteenth-century Russians were from the Portu- guese. It was only with colonisation that adjacent communities forged alliances as a means of protecting themselves from decimation. To identify as Aboriginal is to recognise that you have more in common with other Turtle Island Natives – despite different languages and cultures – than you do with settlers. The present European Union is a similar political construct – a collective of nations with different languages and cultures who nevertheless organise into a common conceptual identity in response to greater external forces that threaten them all. ‘Aboriginal’ includes but is not identical to the various tribal identities that compose it. To be Aboriginal is to be Tahltan, for example, but also to have an inter-tribal consciousness that differs from and may even conflict with your primary identity. Indian Brotherhoods, the Assembly of First Nations, the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry and so on, are all expressions of Abo- riginal consciousness. They are more than the sum of their parts.

25 Can I Get a Witness? 11 ‘Indigenous’ is not synonymous with ‘Aboriginal’, but Cornel West, ‘Our Next Race Question: The marks the emergence of a new way of being. If Siksikaness Uneasiness Between is your primary (tribal) identity, and you treaty with adjacent Blacks and Latinos’, Harper’s Magazine, April, First Nations to compose the Blackfoot confederacy, this is 1996. Republished as ‘On Black-Brown Relations’, your secondary, Aboriginal, identity. Indigenous is a ter- In The Cornel West tiary identity consisting of Aboriginal people who ally with Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), First Peoples from other parts of the world. These alliances p. 500. are most often with those who share a common imperialist history – First Peoples from Canada, Australia and New Zealand are, therefore, ‘natural’ Indigenous allies. When asked if he was a black man, Cornel West once explained, ‘When I say I am a black man, I’m saying first that I am a modern person, because black itself is a modern construct … a hundred years ago I would have said I was a “coloured man”.’11 He goes on to argue that ‘We’ve come up with various categories, including black, as a way of affirming ourselves as agents, as subjects in history who create, initiate and so forth.’ Indigenous is a similar manifestation of agency, as history makers. Indigenous has been emerging from the Aboriginal for generations, but it is only recently, especially with the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that the mode has become conscious to itself. People can perform an identity for ages before it is legible. While I participated in the Indigenous for some time, it was not until I went to Aus- tralia with a delegation of Aboriginal curators from Canada (2008), and met with Aboriginal artists and curators there that I knew myself as Indigenous. In those conversations, we discovered shared identities formed within, against and despite colonisation. Our ability to articulate this – to have a shared self and collective consciousness – constitutes a different, an Indigenous, mode of being. Indigenous is both a particular self-consciousness and a social consciousness. It is the continuous circuit of recognitions and performances by, for and among Indigenised peoples. The Indigenous emerged because of new technologies that allowed us to know of, meet and communicate with

26 David Garneau 12 each other. Indigenous is a discursive and contingent space Ian McLean, ‘Names’, in Ian McLean (ed.), Double characterised by mobile relations that are enabled and main- Desire: Transculturation tained virtually, through the internet, telephones, in reading and Indigenous Contem- porary Art (Newcastle: and writing etc, and physically, thanks to rapid travel. Cambridge Scholars, 2014), p. 15. These three modes of being Native – the First Nation, Aboriginal and Indigenous – are nested in each other. An Indigenous-identified person is both Aboriginal and a member of a First Nation, tribe, Métis local, iwi or what have you. However, while all Indigenous people have a tribal affiliation, not all tribal peoples are Indigenous. Yankuny- tjatjara elder, Lowitja O’Donoghue explains: ‘We are very happy with our involvement with indigenous people around the world … because they are our brothers and sisters. But we do object to [the term] being used here in Australia … Call us Aboriginal.’12 While our primary social identities are due to birth or adoption, being Aboriginal or Indigenous is a choice. Cardinal-Schubert’s call to withdraw our creative energy from national and international exhibitions and focus on local communities looks like a retreat from the Indigenous and Aboriginal and back to the tribal. She was concerned that these outward-seeking behaviours were working well for the Canadian nation, and were rewarding individual artists, but were not doing much for the artists’ Nations. I think she was responding to a weakness in the Indigenous position. Of the three ways, the tribal or Nation-al is most tied to land and language. Aboriginality is related to country, but when in the Aboriginal condition, people spend more time in cities and in motion. The Indigenous condition is the least grounded. It exists in placeless spaces online, in texts, in transitional spaces, urban studios, international residencies, temporary exhibitions and conferences, and usually in English. As Cardinal-Schubert theorised, and experienced, in the Indigenous mode a person, if untethered to his or her community, land and language is easily assimilated by the mainstream for its own purposes. To identify as a Haida

27 Can I Get a Witness? artist, for example, is to say that you are not only an artist, but one claimed by a specific community, and that relationship implies responsibilities to that community. If, like Jimmy Durham, you identify primarily as an artist, and your (claimed) tribal affiliations are incidental, unengaged, or imaginary, and yet you still make art with reference to that culture, you may be in the Indigenous mode, but more likely you are simply an artist. But even here, while the tribe may no longer claim you, the community of the Indigenous may. The Indigenous art world is an international network of artists and curators. It includes the Aboriginal curatorial collective, which while based in Canada has an international roster; NASA; international residencies and other gatherings; loose collectives of artists and curators who link with each other in person and through email, social media, Skype meetings and publications. This self-conscious, extra-tribal, global network of non-state actors legitimises its own members and attempts to keep them from slipping into assimilation on the one hand, and traditionalism on the other. I think of this looking out, for, and into each other as Indigenous critical care. Cooley notes that one of the papers used to club Houle has the name ‘Joan Cardinal’ [sic] written on it. Along with Clement Greenberg’s name, it is folded into the critical colonial superstructure that oppresses the author and artist alike. From the Indigenous point-of-view, however, one vigilant for Indigenous criticism of Indigenous art – and in this case, Blackfoot criticism of Indigenous critical writers! – this is a shattering gesture, one specifically delivered to us, the Indigenous. Joane Cardinal Schubert (1942–2009) was an important artist, curator and writer. Like Houle, she was Blackfoot; they worked in Calgary together for several years. You don’t have to be Indigenous to ferret this information out, but Indigenous folks are more likely to look into these personal relations and consider the meaning of Houle’s gesture. Houle is a ceremonial person. No matter how engaged he is in the

28 David Garneau mainstream art world, much of who he is and what he means remains undigested by it. He centres himself in ceremony and country. Iisistsikóówa, I feel, expresses incredulity towards criticism, towards academic considerations of art that imagine they hover above the Native subject, whether authored by Indigenous people or not. His use of Cardi- nal-Schubert’s name on one of the rolled texts used to beat him may suggest that he considers her writings abusive, but it is more likely that he is suggesting that her text could be used by non-Natives to abuse the Native artist. There is always a concern that Indigenous people, especially aca- demics, might be giving away too much, playing the Indig- enous informant for rewards within the mainstream. There is always the possibility that Indigenous can be co-opted and used by the mainstream to abuse the Aboriginal, tribal and country. I take the performance as a warning rather than a prohibition. Houle introduces himself in Plains sign language, the trade language used to link Plains tribes, and later, European traders. It was the first Aboriginal language, a tool of conciliation. All of Houle’s public work seeks conciliation, a space between the Indigenous and Native. Indigenous criticism of Indigenous art begins with the knowledge that you are part of a community. Whatever you say or otherwise publish is delivered with care because you know that you will be held accountable by virtual neigh- bours. In Indigenous criticism of Indigenous art there is no critical distance of the Modernist sort. Unlike adversarial and ocular-centric Western criticism, Indigenous criticism is creative engagement in a dialogue with art; it is co-responsive not meta-discursive. The purpose of this work is to push the whole project forward, and as a critical writer, you are part of that project. Second, such work is grounded in Indigenous creative and territorial sovereignty. Axiomatic to Indigenous criticism of Indigenous art is the assumption that there is such a thing as art that is a part of, but also apart from, the mainstream, and its marker is ‘Indigenous’, a content determined by its

29 Can I Get a Witness? 13 members. Central to ‘Indigenous’ is Aboriginal and tribal Arthur Danto, ‘The End of Art’, in his The Philo- title to specific spaces. sophical Disenfranchise- The philosopher Arthur Danto argued that the end of art13 ment of Art (New York: Columbia University occurred in 1964 with Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. Previ- Press, 1986), pp. 81–115. ously, art objects were made and organised by a Hegelian force called art history, which progressed. Signs of collapse appeared as early as Dada and Duchamp, which never quite fit the idea of art’s forward march. But Warhol delivered the coup de grace, writes Danto, because his sculptures contained their own theory – they are conceptual objects. Unlike previous works that required art history and philosophy to explain, fuel and guide them, Brillo Boxes embodied what they represented. This sort of art is self-aware and no longer needs philosophy or art history. In fact, these philosophical objects became agents that challenged and influenced phi- losophers such as Danto. They were no longer philosophy’s subjects but its colleagues. Without these informing structures or propelling essential entities, artworks could go in any direction they liked. Pluralism, he predicted in 1986, would forever reign. There would be no art movements, only individual artists and curators doing their own thing. And that is what happened, in the dominant art world. Contemporary art is the name of art after the end of art. What ended was not art but Modernism. What lost credibil- ity was art and criticism that imagined they were forms of revealed and universal truth, rather than agreements among similarly trained elites. Artwork or critical writing that now attempts to revive these old ways is capital zombiism – non-critical, art-market twitches, artificial semblances of life. Why would Indigenous artists want to participate in such a world? Why would Indigenous theorists seek as a measure of success whether we make a ‘sustained impression’ on that necropolis? That we only make a ‘sustained impression’ on the periphery that is our centre makes better sense. While the dominant discourse loses its faith in its meta-narratives, the Indigenous continues to learn and embody its world-view,

30 David Garneau not as the view, but our views, the ones that make sense of us in our territories. Indigenous art is the name of our art after the end of Aboriginal art. What it hopes to stop is reproduction of the colonial, and the misguided idea that art, criticism, and identities are forms of revealed and universal truth, rather than agreements among similarly trained elites. It marks the end of distorted identities and Native people made invisible or degraded by an ontological hierarchy built to benefit its colonial designers.

31 Can I Get a Witness? 32 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? Prashanta Tripura

33 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 1 Background For example, Prashanta Tripura ‘Internation- I would like to begin this essay by describing the context al Year of the World’s in which I began addressing the question posed through its Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous Peoples title. The first point that I would like to make relates to the of Bangladesh’, keynote paper presented in Bang- nature and scope of my past engagement with the notion la at a seminar organised of ‘Indigenous people’. Over the past twenty-five years, I to mark the International Year of World’s Indige- have thought and written considerably about the meaning nous People, 18 Decem- and relevance of this notion in the context of Bangladesh, ber 1993, Dhaka. English translation available at: where it remains contentious. Here, I am thinking of a trend https://ptripura2.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/ among many people in positions of power who claim that ip-year-1993-keynote- the so-called ‘tribal’ peoples of the country cannot be cate- paper/ Accessed August 2018; ‘The Quest for gorised as ‘Indigenous peoples’. Against this backdrop, most Indigenous Identity in of my writings1 have constituted an attempt to point out the Bangladesh: Reflections on Achievements and hypocrisies, inconsistencies and other holes in the views held Setbacks since 1993’, in Unsettling Discours- by dominant groups and classes. At the same time, I have es: The Theory and also written a number of articles in which the emphasis is on Practice of Indigenous Studies, proceedings of the need for greater degrees of critical introspection in our the 2013 International 2 Seminar-Workshop on In- deployment of various categories of self-identification. digenous Studies, 26–28 The second point is the fact that to a large extent, the June 2013, Legend Villas, Mandaluyong City, Phil- problem that I address here is a reformulation of a similar ippines, jointly organised issue that I brought up in relation to poetry in an article by the University of the Philippines Baguio City that I wrote in Bangla in April 2013. The title of that article and the Tebtebba Foun- dation (Baguio City: Cor- – which can be translated as ‘Is There or Should There dillera Studies Center, be Something Called “Indigenous Poetry”?’ – reflected a University of the Phil- ippines Baguio, 2013); question that had come to my mind twice in a short span of ‘From jumia to Jumma: time during the period from November 2012 to January 2012. Shifting Cultivation and Shifting Identities in Ban- On both occasions, I had found myself refusing to wear the gladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts’, Farms, Feasts, hat of ‘Indigenous poet’ with which I had been presented Famines, special issue even though it was not something that I had sought. The first of the Himal Southasian quarterly 26, no. 2 (April occasion was on being invited to an informal gathering of 2013): http://himalmag. poets at Jahangirnagar University – where I had once held a com/jumia-jumma/ Accessed August 2018; teaching position in anthropology – which prompted me to ‘Letter to Bangladesh from a “non-existent” post the following status update on Facebook in Bangla: Bangladeshi’, The Daily Today, I received an invitation over the phone to attend a Star (27 August 2014): http://www.thedailystar. gathering of poets. I was told that there would be a session net/letter-to-bangladesh-from-a-non-exis- of ‘Indigenous poets’. I am not a poet. But even if I were, I tent-bangladeshi-38811 would not have wanted to be known as an ‘Indigenous poet’.’ Accessed August 2018; ‘Identity Grabbing’, The Bangladesh Paradox, special issue of Himal Southasian quarterly (September 2015): http://himalmag.com/ identity-grabbing/ Ac- cessed August 2018. 34 Prashanta Tripura 2 Recently, on a television programme in which I participated, For example, Prashanta Tripura, ‘The Colonial I was introduced as an ‘Indigenous researcher’, a designation Foundation of Pahari that sounded odd to my ears. I have written quite a bit in Ethnicity’, Journal of Social Studies 57 (1992). support of, and demanding recognition for, the identity of the Reprinted in Naeem Mo- haiemen (ed.), Between Indigenous peoples of Bangladesh. So why do I feel uncom- Ashes and Hope: Chit- fortable with this label when applied to me? In my view, tagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh the demand for recognition of Indigenous identity is polit- Naitonalism (Dhaka: ical, and its usage should remain primarily in this domain. Drishtipat Writers’ Col- lective, 2010); ‘Culture, Outside of it, the uncritical use of the category in the context identity and development in the Chittagong Hill of poetry or literature is problematic, and in many cases Tracts’, Discourse: A meaningless or even derogatory!3 Journal of Policy Studies 2, no. 2 (2014): https:// The second time was in January 2013, when an editor sent ptripura2.files.word- a message to my Facebook inbox, seeking my permission press.com/2014/01/p-tripura-culture-devel- to reprint a ‘poem’ of mine that had been selected for inclu- opment.pdf Accessed August 2018; ‘In Search sion in a forthcoming anthology of ‘Indigenous poetry’. He of Adibashi (Indige- informed me that the selected text – the title of which can be nous) Consciousness’, bdnews24.com (11 translated as ‘Banished Words’ – had already been published August 2012): https:// opinion.bdnews24. in an anthology of Indigenous poetry. Assuming that I would com/2012/08/11/in-se- not object to it being included in a second anthology of the arch-of-adibashi-indigenous-consciousness/ same genre, he asked if there were other poems of mine that Accessed August 2018; could be include in his publication. I wrote back saying that ‘Becoming Bangladeshi’, in Himal Southasian I had issues with the label ‘Indigenous poet/poetry’. In reply, online (11 October 2012): http://himalmag.com/ he provided a brief justification for the planned publication, becoming-bangladeshi/ but I was too busy at that time to offer any further explana- Accessed August 2018. 3 tion as to why I objected to being categorised as an ‘Indige- 1 November 2012 (au- nous poet’. So no further communication took place between thor’s translation). us, and certainly nothing that could have suggested that I had consented for him to include my text. Nevertheless, I soon found out that he had done so when ‘Banished Words’ appeared for a second time in an anthology of Indigenous poetry without my explicit consent and despite my expressed reservations. It was in this context that in I wrote my April 2013 article, in which I posed the question as to whether there was or should be anything called ‘Indigenous poetry’. In that piece, I presented my own view on the matter directly: ‘my article is an attempt on my part to take down and break out of the category of Indigenous poets/poetry’.

35 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 4 It was against this backdrop that I conceived this current ‘Violence-torn Hills and an Idyllic Stream: essay focusing on my reservations about the uncritical use the Canvas of Joydeb of the label ‘Indigenous’ and linking the discussion to ‘art’, Roaja’s art’, in Dream Without Pillow: Reflec- a connection that was suggested by the fact that the work- tions of Joydeb Roaja’s Art Journey, booklet shop would take place as part of the Dhaka Art Summit. published by Joydeb In this regard, another piece of background information is Roaja in connection with his solo exhibitions and relevant: my exchanges with Joydeb Roaja, an artist based performances in Japan, in Chittagong, Bangladesh, who has been taking part in the 17 November – 1 Decem- ber 2016. Dhaka Art Summit and happens to be related to me through kinship ties and a shared place of origin. Our personal relationships aside, what is pertinent in the context of this essay is an exchange of views that we once had, when he contacted me to say that he and some of his fellow artists from the Chittagong Hill Tracts region had questions about the label ‘Indigenous’ and its relationship to ‘art’ and ‘culture’. I responded to his questions through a Facebook note, and later I went on to write a few more articles – including one in which I talked about my impressions of Roaja’s art4 – which gave me an opportunity to reflect on some matters that are relevant in the present context. I will share my main observations and conclusions in this regard later in my essay, but first let me recount a key moment from an earlier period when my substantial engagement with the notion of ‘Indige- nous people’ began.

The ‘Indigenous Turn’ I use the expression ‘Indigenous Turn’ here to refer to a sustained international engagement with the term ‘Indigenous people/s’, particularly in relation to relevant declarations and conventions within the UN system, such as the Indige- nous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (ILO Convention No. 169). In this context, when I take stock of my personal writings or review the wider body of literature relating to the ‘Indigenous and tribal peoples of Bangladesh’, no clear ‘Indigenous turn’ can be discerned prior to 1993. For example, after scanning all my articles written in Bangla or English before the year mentioned, I could not find a single

36 Prashanta Tripura 5 instance in which I used the term ‘Indigenous people’ or its Tripura, ‘International Year of the World’s Indig- Bengali equivalent, ‘adibashi’. Against this backdrop, the enous Peoples’. year 1993 represented a point of departure not only for me personally, but also for a growing number of Bangladeshis, who began to use ‘Indigenous people’ as a preferred term of identification for those ethnic groups that had more commonly been categorised as ‘tribal’. This wider shift took place in response to an initiative by the United Nations, which had declared 1993 to be the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. In this context, I became closely involved with a committee that was formed to organise a non-governmental programme to observe the UN Year under consideration in Dhaka. As part of that programme, there was a seminar on 18 December 1993 at which I presented a keynote paper,5 which was the first time that I had to deal with the term ‘Indigenous people’ substantially in the sense in which it was being deployed internationally. In December 1993, I was a young lecturer of anthropology with only two years’ teaching experience behind me. Prior to that point, while studying or teaching anthropology, I had not engaged with the concept of ‘Indigenous people’ directly, except through critical examination of related categories such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribal’. It should be mentioned that anthropology was not a discipline that I had been interested in academically at the beginning of my university education. I was an engineering student until 1982, when I got a scholarship to study computer science at a college in the United States. However, in 1984, halfway through my undergraduate studies in the US, I made a drastic decision to change my major from computer science to anthropology. At that time, I looked at this new discipline as a potential source of the kind of knowledge that would equip me to understand my cultural roots, and to contribute to the struggles for survival which my fellow Tripuras and other ‘tribal’ peoples in the Chit- tagong Hill Tracts were undergoing. Thus, I began extensive studies of the histories, cultures and socioeconomic problems of various societies that would fall under the emergent category of ‘Indigenous peoples’.

37 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 6 The keynote paper that I presented in Dhaka in 1993 was Abdus Sattar, Aranya Janapade (in Bangla, 6th written in Bangla and revolved around two key questions: edition, Dhaka: Nawroze a) why spokes-persons of the government of Bangladesh Sahitya Samver, 2012), pp. 35, 117, 197, 275. See claimed that the ‘tribal’ people of the country could not be also Abdus Sattar, In the Sylvan Shadows (Dhaka: regarded as ‘Indigenous people’ and b) what should be the Saquib Brothers, 1971); Bangla word for ‘Indigenous people’, since in 1993, there Tribal Culture of Bangla- desh (Dhaka: Muktadha- was no well-established Bangla word. In that context, the ra, 1975). term advocated in my paper was ‘adibashi’, a word of San- skrit origin that literally means ‘original inhabitant’ and had already been in circulation for several decades in the sense of English terms such as ‘aboriginal’ and ‘tribal’. (The original Sanskrit word, which is found in other South Asian languages such as Hindi and Nepali as well, is more commonly transliterated as ‘adivasi’, a form in which it is often used in English directly without translation. In such usage, the term ‘adivasi’ is applied almost exclusively in the context of South Asia, particularly India, and refers to the same categories of people that are administratively classified as ‘tribal’, ‘scheduled tribe’ or ‘aboriginal’.) However, the problem with the term ‘adibashi’ was that it had also come to acquire the connotation of ‘primitive’, and it was in this sense that it was often used by many writers and intellectuals in Bangla- desh. For example, Abdus Sattar’s Aranya Janapade (‘In the Wild Tracts’, first published in 1966) – an officially awarded and the most widely read Bangla book on ‘tribal’ people in Bangladesh for an entire generation – contains many state- ments of the following type (reproduced here in my own translation): ‘The adibashis are not the true sons of the soil of this country.’6 Given the strong connotation of the word ‘adibashi’ as ‘primitive’, many so-called ‘tribal’ people of Bangladesh who were keen to embrace the English term ‘Indigenous people’ as a category of self-identification were initially hesitant about using the Bangla term ‘adibashi’. Conversely, many Bangladeshis who were accustomed to using the word ‘adibashi’ primarily in the sense of ‘primitive/tribal’ would come to oppose the idea that the people designated by these

38 Prashanta Tripura labels could be categorised as ‘Indigenous people’ in the sense in which the latter term was being used internationally. To some extent, such objections persist to date in some circles in Bangladesh. However, over time, ‘adibashi’ came to be widely used, with or without the connotation of ‘primitive’ and associated attitudes ranging from condescension to antipathy.

Denial and appropriation of ‘Adibashi’ identity: developments since 2010 As indicated above, there have always been voices in Bang- ladesh that insist that the ‘tribal’ groups of the country are not entitled to recognition as ‘Indigenous peoples’. If we analyse the arguments put forward by those who hold such views, it is not difficult to see the main reasons behind their objections. In most cases, what they are really saying boils down to a straightforward denial of the rights – particularly land rights – that the self-identifying Indigenous peoples seek under international law. In this regard, all the governments that have been in power in Bangladesh have been consistent: none embraced the concept of ‘Indigenous peoples’ wholeheartedly when it was being promoted internationally. Instead, each government sought to accommodate the concerns of the self-identifying Indigenous peoples of the country under existing official categories – e.g. ‘backward’, ‘tribal’ – that date back to the period of British colonial rule. However, in 2010, a new twist was added to this story through the introduction of a newly coined term – ‘khudro nrigoshthi’ (roughly, ‘small ethnic group’) – which was first used in a law, enacted in 2010, whereby the names of various government-run ‘tribal cultural institutes’ throughout the country were renamed by replacing the term ‘tribal’ with the neologism under consideration. For many activists who sought constitutional endorsement of the category adibashi in Bangladesh, the newly introduced legal label ‘khudro nrigoshthi’ was far from a satisfactory response to their demands. On the contrary, the

39 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? term – which connotes a nuanced meaning akin to what ‘small anthropological group’ or ‘minor anthropo-sect’ might convey in English – was seen as offensive by many Bangladeshis who supported the cause of the self-identifying Indigenous peoples of the country. Yet, to the dismay of all such people, in 2011 the government of Bangladesh introduced a new clause in the constitution as part of its fifteenth amendment (Article 23A), titled ‘The culture of tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities’. It reads: ‘The State shall take steps to protect and develop the unique local culture and tradition of the tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities.’ Aside from the archaic nature of the language used, what is notable about this constitutional formulation – touted by the government as its answer to the longstanding demands of the ‘Indigenous peoples’ of the country – is that it does not really say anything about the linguistic and land rights of the people under consideration. To many observers, what was most disappointing about the above developments was that they took place under a government led by a party that had promised it would recognise and protect the rights of the adibashis. In this context, it is worth mentioning that in 1993, the unofficial observance in Dhaka of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People was organised by a committee that was headed by two opposition members of parliament of that time. In 2011, both were serving as ministers under a Prime Minister who had also expressed her solidarity with the adibashi in 1993. Yet, not only did the constitutional amendment of 2011 fail to include the term ‘adibashi’ as had been much anticipated, but by May 2011, the foreign minister was busy explaining to the diplomatic community and media in Bangladesh that the ‘tribal’ people of the country could not be regarded as ‘Indigenous’. Later, government circulars instructed that all concerned should refrain from using the term ‘adibashi’, which was deemed unconstitutional, to refer to those groups that had come to be categorised as ‘tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities’. Such pronouncements ema-

40 Prashanta Tripura nating from official circles were echoed by many pro-establishment writers and intellectuals who continued to speak the same kind of language that Abdus Sattar used a generation ago. However, by 2010–11, the word ‘adibashi’ had shed its connotation as ‘primitive’, thus a growing number of Bengali nationalists were ready to appropriate the label, affirming, for example, that ‘The Bengalis are the true adibashis of the country.’

My re-entry into the ‘Adibashi’ debate and new encounters with my ‘Banished Words’ I left academia in 2001 to become a fulltime development professional working within Bangladesh. In my new role, which I played for over a decade from 2001 to 2012, I pro- fessionally engaged with Indigenous peoples – for example, in the context of promoting mother-tongue-based multilingual education for their children – but when the ‘adbiashi issue’ became a focus of much public discussion and debate in various media around 2010–11, I could not take an active part in it. This changed by mid-2012, when I decided to try a new career path as a freelancer and also became very active on social media. Thus I began speaking out against what I perceived to be the hypocrisies, inconsistencies and racist attitudes of those who continued to deny – through various means, including the invention of the ‘minor anthropo-sects’ – the rights of the self-identifying Indigenous peoples. However, as indicated already, I would also stress the need for adopting critical perspectives in articulating or supporting the ‘adibashi cause’, and in terms of how the label ‘Indigenous’ was applied by various quarters. In this regard, I was particularly conscious of various biases such as clas- sism, sexism and tokenism that were reflected in the ways in which different individuals and groups deployed the term ‘adibashi’. It was in such a context that I found myself refusing to wear the hat of an adibashi poet, an experience that would prompt me to question the category of ‘Indigenous poetry’ generally.

41 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 7 Let me provide some additional contextual information M.A. Momen, ‘Bohubha- shar Bangladesh: Jibito regarding ‘Banished Words’. For me, this ‘poem’ was little Bhashar Moron Jatra’, more than a personal record – a page from my diary – Prothom Alo (3 February 2012): http://archive. expressing my emotions after taking part in a silent march prothom-alo.com/print/ 21 1989 news/221588 Accessed that took place in Dhaka on May , organised by August 2018. students belonging to the Indigenous peoples of the CHT to protest mass killings that had been perpetrated at a place called Longudu on 4 May. A note on this contextual information accompanied it when first published in a magazine brought out by a group with ties to the CHT. When I redis- covered the same piece of my writing in the anthology of ‘Indigenous poetry’, however, I was struck by the depoliti- cised romanticism of the book’s title, which can be translated as ‘Fragrant Flowers of the Forest’! Apart from the incongruity of my piece in a collection named in this way, I would like to make another observation regarding the linguistic and class-related uniformity of the ‘Indigenous poets’ represented in it. Almost all, including myself, came from among the urban middle class of ‘Indig- enous people’ who predominantly wrote in Bangla and had professional identities as doctors, engineers, bureaucrats, army officers, ministers and so on. Thus, to me, the class- based nature of an anthology like Fragrant Flowers of the Forest was sufficient reason for us to pause and question the relevance of such publications in the context of the everyday struggles of ordinary Indigenous people. Moreover, I am also concerned that without knowing the diverse contexts in which the selections of such anthologies may have been written, readers could easily misread them. For example, in the case of my ‘Banished Words’, at least one person came up with a complete misreading of it, as I discovered when reading an opinion piece in which the author, unaware that the title of my piece referred to the silent march, remarked: ‘Though individuals like Prashanta Tripura agonize over losing their Indigenous languages, it is in Bangla that they have to express this agony!’7

42 Prashanta Tripura Reflections on ‘Indigenous’ Art and Culture Let us now return to the question posed through the title of this essay: what does or should ‘Indigenous art’ mean? In this regard, in line with the previous discussion, it is obvious that the answers would depend on the various meanings that we attribute to the label ‘Indigenous’, and the different purposes for which we may seek to use it in relation to ‘art’. In this context, I would like return to the exchange that I had with Roaja, who first contacted me in September 2012 saying that he and some of his fellow adibashi artists were strug- gling with various questions in connection to a group exhibition on the theme of ‘Indigenous life and culture’ in which they were to take part in. The questions with which they were faced were as follows: what does Indigenous culture mean? Does it only consist of ‘traditional’ dances and songs? Or are there other factors to be taken into account? As mentioned, I wrote a short article in response to these questions, in Bangla, which I first published as a Facebook note. In that piece, I highlighted the following points that I would later go on to elaborate and build upon in a few more articles:

Indigenous culture: Defining this term precisely is difficult because the category ‘Indigenous’ (‘adibashi’) means different things to different people, and culture too is a mul- tidimensional concept. Internationally, the contemporary notion of ‘Indigenous people’ is meant to serve two main objectives: a) replace various pejorative terms by which the peoples brought under the new designation were referred to in the past; b) promote and protect various rights that the Indigenous peoples have been denied for centuries under colonial or colonialist states that they have been brought under in different parts of the world. Since the umbrella category of ‘Indigenous peoples’ includes various societies with different histories, it is not possible to speak of their ‘culture’ as a singular concept. In fact, even for a single ethnic group, e.g. in relation to Tripuras, we cannot talk about a homogenous culture.

43 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 8 However, at a certain level, we can speak of ‘Indigenous See Conrad Phillip Kot- tack, Cultural Anthro- culture’ in the singular as if to say that having gone pology: Appreciating through similar historical trajectories, all Indigenous Cultural Diversity (14th Edition) (New York, NY: peoples embrace a set of core cultural ideals that would McGraw-Hill, 2011); Jacques Maquet, The include reciprocity, egalitarianism and a readiness to live Aesthetic Experience: in harmony with nature. An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts (New In relation to the arts, there are different traditions Haven, CT: Yale University – including ‘primitivism’ and romanticism – that may Press, 1986). 9 be seen in the works of art produced by urban artists. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (eds.), Clearly, such creations are not the same as what art may The Invention of Tradi- mean in the context of Indigenous peoples, for many of tion (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983). whom the separation between art and other domains of social life may not have existed traditionally.8 Apart from dealing with this general problem, other issues that we have to confront in deciding on how we want to use terms like ‘Indigenous culture’ or ‘Indigenous art’ are noted below.

Context: The significance of any cultural element depends on the total context of which it is a part. The same consideration would also apply in the case of artistic creations. An artist may create partial representations of what he or she may conceive of as ‘Indigenous culture’, but how and to whom the works of art are being represented, and to what ends, are also important aspects of the context.

Invented traditions: All around us, there are many traditions that are often recent inventions or innovations tailored to meet contemporary commercial or other needs.9 This gener- alisation is applicable in various sectors including music and dance, dress, food etc. The same may be true in some cases for visual arts as well.

The purpose of art: This is not a new question. Art and politics do not necessarily have the same dynamics or purposes, and in many cases there should not be any deliberate attempt to mix the two. However, when we are dealing with a category of people who are primarily defined by the his-

44 Prashanta Tripura torical denial of their rights – i.e. the Indigenous peoples – the question of the social responsibility of artists cannot be avoided. An artist who identifies with ‘Indigenous peoples’ thus needs to ask herself: will my artistic creation make the audience reflect on and identify with the crises faced by the Indigenous peoples? Or will my artwork end up in the collections of Individuals or groups that are directly responsible for the denial of the rights of Indigenous peoples?

The importance of local perspectives: The cultural differences that might attract the attention of external observers may seem rather mundane to local bearers of a given culture, and the opposite of this may also be true. An urban artist might depict the lives of jum cultivators in a very joyful form, but these people may have to face a lot of hardship in reality, or may not necessarily dance and sing about those aspects of their work that the artist may focus on. Therefore it would be important for the artist to connect with local perspectives on what joy or pain really mean and how local bearers of Indigenous cultures express such matters.

The changing nature of culture: No culture is ever static. Differ- ent aspects of any given culture continue to change in response to various factors at different levels. This is true for all societies, including those categorised as ‘Indig- enous peoples’. To consider an obvious example, there may have been a time when most Tripura women wore rinai and risa, their ‘traditional’ garments. However, this may not be the case in many settings today. Therefore, if artists paint, draw or depict Tripura women in some other media, they do not necessarily have to represent them in their ‘traditional’ attire.

45 What Does or Should ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? 10 The points summarised above were, of course, hardly origi- Prashanta Tripura, ‘Cul- ture, Identity and Devel- nal. They were not new even in the context of my own writ- opment in the Chittagong ings. For example, years before, I had ended an article with Hill Tracts, Discourse: A Journal of Policy the following words: Studies 2, no. 2 (1998). Republished version available at: https://ptri- The performance of dances or songs in which jum pura2.files.wordpress. com/2014/01/p-tripu- cultivators are depicted in an idealised setting does not ra-culture-development. necessarily conform to the historical experiences of pdf Accessed August 2018. contemporary jum cultivators. It seems that for many urban Jummas, the quest for identity is confined to such symbolic and romanticised reconstruction of a way of life that they themselves have left behind and will never return to. On the other hand, there are still many people in the CHT for whom jum continues to be important as a principal means of subsistence. So the questions that I would like to pose are as follows: how much do we educated urban Jummas know about the conditions under which today’s jum cultivators live? What are their futures? And so long as they want to continue to practice jum, how can it be ensured that they look like the happy people whom we see depicted on stage?10

In case my answer to the question that appears in the title of this essay is not already obvious to the reader, I would like to offer an analogy. Let us imagine that we are talking about whether artworks produced by women should be categorised as ‘women’s art’, ‘feminine art’, ‘feminist art’ etc, or just as ‘art’, and how these could further the cause of gender equality. I suppose that there can be no straightforward answer to this question, since the choice would largely depend on who is making it. However, I think many people who care about promoting gender equality would prefer ‘feminist art’ or just ‘art’ to the other two categories. In the same vein, in relation to ‘Indigenous art’, if we must continue to use such a category, perhaps we should replace it with a new term like ‘Indigenist art’.

46 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art Santosh Kumar Das

47 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art No culture is an absolute, unmoving or unchanging entity. Madhubani art, first named Mithila art, originated on the walls and floors of the domestic space. It was essentially a community and ritual activity drawing on the collective skills of women. The art underwent a significant change when, on a government initiative in 1965, it was transformed into a commercial activity, with the drawing executed on paper outside the physical context of rituals. The current form and status of this traditional art form can be attributed to this shift. People began reproducing the wall and floor drawings on paper for the market, and later for other national and international markets, and this was made possible through government channels. Thus culture became a commercial activity – one that came to be illuminated by individual voices, moving the focus from the collective to the individual artist. Gradually, through the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, individual female artists came to be recognised as the chief practitioners of this art form. Interestingly, what went unnoticed was a major and historic shift in this art form. Although the techniques and themes used, stemming from the age-old tradition, continued to be common and shared, the transition from the domestic to the commercial space meant that the activity began to change from a communal one into an individual one made in the confinement of the artist’s studio, according to her/his imagination, personal skills and capacities. Thus it was transformed into an art form no longer guided solely by the limits of tradition and rituals. Madhubani art had moved in many new directions since the Indian Civil Service officer WG Archer first discovered it on the walls of buildings in the wake of a devastating earthquake in 1934 and compared the paintings to the works of Picasso and Pollock. In its new-found form (an art form albeit commercial), the entire community found itself motivated to take up painting. This time the chief force was commerce. The ritualistic use of the tradition remained in place, but its commercial function took centre stage, freeing it from the traditional position of ‘mere’ woman’s art. Even men took it up as a reliable form of employment.

48 Santosh Kumar Das 1 Official versions still claim Madhubani as a woman’s art, ‘Dalit’, meaning ‘broken/ scattered’ in Sanskrit remaining totally indifferent to the changes that have taken and Hindi, is a term place over the years. In contrast, Western scholars have been mostly used for the castes in India that have engaged by its feminist character. Such an interpretation is been subjected to un- touchability. ‘Dalit’, Col- largely correct and not out of context: over the years, even lins English Dictionary, female artists from Madhubani have shown an inclination https://www.collinsdic- tionary.com/dictionary/ to move away from traditional mythological themes in order english/dalit Accessed 8 to include social issues like female infanticides or dowry October 2018. deaths. Now Madhubani art finds itself in a peculiar situation. Orthodox purists in the native society frown upon its contemporary form as a deviation from the tradition, a violation of culture. They are only comfortable with paintings rep- resenting the exotic or the esoteric themes inherent in the tradition. Any other theme is perceived as a distortion and harmful modernity. The West, meanwhile, sees Madhubani art as a feminist expression through which women come to terms with the larger society and their world within it. But on the ground, it has long ceased to be just a woman’s art or just a ritual art. It is growing in shape and size, transcending the official precepts of folk/Indigenous art. Amidst this scenario, in which the mainstream sees Madhubani art as an unchanging form of culture and the magnanimous West as a feminist expression, we tend to overlook the basic concept: that this Indigenous art is a form of expression, a language that has its own very distinct and honest grammar, a vernacular as a valid form against the outright classical or academic. The other voices in this art are drowned out by these two extremes. By ‘other voices’, I mean the male painters working within the visual language of Madhubani, and the Dalit style, treated with common disregard within the larger culture of Mithila society.1 Folk art is expected to look primitive. Culture is basically a coming together of diverse voices within communities. In other words, it is a living entity that tends to respond to the moods of history. Modern-day Mithila or Madhubani art is a product of history too. It began on walls as a part of ritual. Over time, it was done on

49 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art paper. In the process, it took the form of a means of livelihood. We eventually saw great artists breaking on to the horizon. What was once a woman’s religious art became a secular activity across the expanse of Mithila adopted by both men and women. The Mithila phenomenon has come to be known as Madhubani art in recent times. An art form that has its roots in folk life spread to foreign shores. It is high time we came to review approaches to folk/ Indigenous expressions like Mithila art. The world should regard it as a living form of art/expression, but at home, we are in a hurry to term it an endangered or extinct art form. We would do better to register the changes that folk or Indig- enous cultures undergo through the forces of societal change and historical churnings, and then reconsider our ideas of these expressions.

Contemporary Perspectives Outsiders often seem to interpret ‘folk’ art as a product for a limited cultural use and application within the household. Madhubani art has found itself bracketed in the same genre. It is true that it originated in this context, but as time progressed, it transgressed the boundaries of geography with themes ranging from the mythological/ritualistic to social, local and international. These have continued to change along with exposure to the market. As a community art, it was a non-commercial activity carried out mostly for wed- dings and festivals by a group of women, each contributing with her individual skill and expertise. But in its modern incarnation as a commercial art, a shift that took place as a result of government intervention, the tradition of painting came to be practised more as an art form. The women painters who initially emerged found the opportunity to travel with their art to places within India and abroad. Coming into contact with the wider world, they responded to new experiences and this in turn inspired paintings of a different nature, ones that described the artists’ journeys and experiences beyond their cultural boundaries. The example of Ganga Devi and Sita Devi are

50 Santosh Kumar Das illustrative of the fact that folk art can function way beyond the limits of the ritualistic and mythological, making room for newer themes and stylistics. Ganga Devi’s paintings based on her journey to America show a whole new set of imagery finding voice within the idiom of Madhubani. She captures in great detail, and without any deviation from the tradition, American phenomena such as a roller-coaster ride. Besides appropriating such foreign imagery, she also observes and renders the difference between American costumes and those with which she was familiar. In the early 1990s, Ganga Devi also painted a large panel based on the life cycle of a Maithil woman, from her birth to becoming a wife and finally a mother. Likewise, after her America trip, Sita Devi made a realistic painting of Washington cemetery – neat rows of graves, quiet and orderly, with a sprinkling of flowers. The result is a sublime combination of pastel colours and shapes sparsely punctu- ating the frame, so quiet in comparison to her earlier depictions of Hindu gods and goddesses like Durga and Krishna, which are vibrant and exotic. Even in the early stages, when Madhubani art was becoming visible to the wider world outside, it had begun to show its great potential as a powerful visual language, universal in appeal, while being Indigenous in its very nature. The narrative and illustrative capacity of folk art can surprise those who look at it with a conservative mindset. Over the years, the folk or Indige- nous art that began as a ritualistic adornment for walls and floors has come a long way, reflecting the dramatic changes taking place on social, cultural and economic levels, not to mention the technological advancements that have left no one untouched. These works elevated the position of artists, offering great delight to one and all. The artists also broke a new ground, allowing folk art to come into its own as a result of their great mastery and skill, and their courage to treat new subjects.

51 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art ↑ Santosh Kumar Das, Buddha on the Moon, 2009. → Santosh Kumar Das, Narendra Modi Becoming Acrylic on paper. Courtesy of the artist. a Hero while Mahatma Gandhi is Forgotten (from the Gujarat Series), 2002. Acrylic on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

52 Santosh Kumar Das 53 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art 54 Santosh Kumar Das ← Santosh Kumar Das, Auto-Rickshaw Being ↑ Santosh Kumar Das, Artist as the Supreme Torched by the Rioters, 2002. Acrylic on paper. Creator, 2017 (from the book Black: An Artist’s Courtesy of the artist. Tribute, Chennai: India, Tara Books, 2017). Acrylic on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

55 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art My Art I myself am an artist. I paint in the Madhubani style. But how I came into this art and stayed in it for so long is an interesting journey. A common question that I face whenever I come into contact with the art world is why I chose folk over modern art after having studied at a fine-art school. My answer is very simple: this is what I was born to do. Before art school, while still in my village, this art had seeped deep into my being. After I graduated, when I had to choose between native and foreign, imposed/acquired and natural, I went with the native, the vernacular. The minimalistic nature of this drawing, and the spontaneity of the compositions, was a major pull for me. Apart from that, it also enabled me to limit my palette to black. To be frank, I was not attracted by colours, or rather, I was intimidated by them. The preroga- tive of using black seduced me and has kept me hostage to the extent that twenty-seven years later, I am still unable to undo the magic power that the black colour of the Madhu- bani style initially held for me. I am going to focus mainly on the freedom that the folk or Indigenous language of Madhubani has given me as an artist and as a human being. When an idea comes to me, it has a certain language, a certain form. I watch it carefully for some time, and realise that it is the same language or form that I have known so intimately all my life: the folk language of my place. The sources of the idea may be diverse – perhaps a film poster or the figure of a bridge seen from a distance – but ultimately, as it begins to solidify, it begins to assume the form of Madhubani. It is like my mother tongue. Speaking in it comes most naturally to a child. We don’t think much while speaking in our mother tongues. We feel and express. There is no strain or risk. It is the same for me when painting in the Madhubani style. It is the language of my thoughts. And using the form has been a rewarding experience for me. All these years, I have just tried to be honest to the medium – the lines made with a nib on paper.

56 Santosh Kumar Das Recently, I created a pictorial autobiography in the Mithila style, published by Tara Books in Chennai. Through this book, I tell my own story in this art – a journey that started with my mother, who was also a good artist. I tell how she would make the black colour from the soot collecting on the lamp, how her bedtime stories created a fascinating world of kings, princes, demons, etc. This was a coming-of-age work for me, telling my own story in black colour and black lines. On the creative level, it satisfied my urge for storytelling in the limited idiom of Mithila art. And on the personal level, it is a tribute to the culture that has nourished my artistic needs. This art has continued to shape my world as I go on exploring the blank paper. I am basically a worshipper and seeker of beauty, in both tangible and intangible ways. Paint- ing in Madhubani is an experience for me, a call to remain creative and innovative. The flat visual language of Mithila art is no longer an inhibition, an impediment for me. Instead, it gives me an impetus to push the boundaries, to tell new stories, to depict ideas that shape our collective world, to practice Mithila culture that celebrates every day as sacred. History has been a witness to how Mithila art was developed as a form of art intended to represent cultural riches as well as bring bread and butter to a large chunk of the population back home in Bihar. This art is not just a commercial activity; it is rather an inspiration to tap the hidden potential of this visual language – the language of pictures that begins with colours and tools that are very basic in their make and use. A bamboo twig can be a brush, a vehicle of expression. A nib tucked into an ordinary pen can be a gateway to a richer, larger experience of mythology, culture and contemporary realities. Even while this art remains folk, I have been able to use it to rise above the constraints of geography and themes, to push the boundaries set for folk artists. People may ask why a folk art like Mithila art needs to change, but the urge or need for change must be regarded as sign of tradition as a living thing, as a vibrant, thriving phenomenon that responds to the rhythms of time and history.

57 History and Context of Madhubani (Mithila) Art Such a moment of change first happened for me at the turn of this century. This was a time when riots had broken out in Gujarat. I was moved by what I saw in the newspapers: arson, fear, anger, hatred. I was deeply shocked by the use of religion – how the holy is dragged into the theatre of politics and turned into an agenda and how we tarnish what we are supposed to worship and protect, whether gods or humans. I heard a call from inside to do a series of painting on the riots – a subject never before portrayed in Mithila art. I finally made twenty-four paintings that have travelled extensively across India and abroad. They were a testament to what folk art can achieve without losing its character and grace, without tampering with the traditional technique. This series made me confident of the fact that art is nothing but a means to connect with the world we inhabit and to give voice to our emotional and social life. For me, Mithila art has become a way of life. It can act like poetry by meaning more while speaking less. I can express feelings like love, joy, ecstasy, devotion, music, while still remaining a folk artist. I can feel, think, and sing through my lines as beautifully as the flowers blooming in the spring or as the cuckoos calling in Sovereign Histories an orchard in summertime. of the Visual

58 Sovereign Histories of the Visual 60 Engaging critically with art and film histo- Megan Tamati-Quennell (Curator of ries, including the canons they form and Modern and Contemporary Māori and by which they are shaped, is essential to Indigenous Art at Te Papa Tongarewa The rethink homogenising (colonial) narra- National Art Gallery and Museum of New tives, question restrictive dichotomies or Zealand) looks at the importance of text and empower counter-histories. Coming from language in Māori culture through the prism Indigenous voices, such critical reading and of Modern and Contemporary Māori art, writing practices about the visual field and selecting artists who purposefully engage its histories contribute not only by nuancing with familiar concepts from the anglo- understandings of local and global history. eurocentric art-historical canon, repurpos- Writing sovereign histories is in itself an act ing them to harness their power. of resistance, resilience and strength. As creative strategies for ensuring the ‘Several surveys of Sámi art’, Irene survival and sovereignty of Māori culture Snarby (Doctoral Research Fellow, UiT – the and life, Tamati-Quennell refers to ‘Māori Arctic University of Norway) summarises, appropriation of European culture and tech- ‘have focused on a distinction between nology, recoded for Māori purpose’ in her traditional knowledge, handicraft and duodji discussion of the work ‘Everyone Will Live on the one hand, and pictorial art, auton- Quietly’ Micah 4:4 by Māori artist Michael omy and artistic freedom on the other’. Parekowhai (b. 1968). The key term here is Unravelling this mutually exclusive oppo- ‘recoded’, because although Māori adaption sition, Snarby addresses the work of Iver of the introduced written languages Te Jåks (1932–2007), a celebrated Sámi artist Reo Māori and English was catalysed by from Sápmi/Northern Norway. She reclaims missionaries and settlers, written language Sámi aesthetics, knowledge and art making was quickly repurposed to serve Māori- as something that is constantly in motion, specific purposes, including laying claim unfolding in the contemporary. By empha- to tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty), and sising cyclical notions of time and nature in challenging colonialism. Tamati-Quennell her reading of Jåks’s works, Snarby con- looks at the work and practice of four Māori tests the colonial museology that tends to artists: Ralph Hotere, Shona Rapira Davies, extract objects from life and display them Emily Karaka and Michael Parekowhai, all on museum shelves as if frozen in time. Jåks of whom use text as a significant feature. placed tremendous importance on duodji – a By exploring their practices in parallel with term that encompasses complex and holistic the history of the written word in Aotearoa Sámi world-views and attitudes to nature, (New Zealand) from the time of first contact describing both the knowledge that goes with settlers, her essay expands upon into the making of objects and the objects art-historical notions of Modern and Con- themselves. Often reducing the concept temporary drawing, painting and sculptural of duodji to ‘Sámi handicraft’, non-Indige- practices that include words by bringing to nous scholars and critics read Jåks’s work the foreground the Māori-specific personal within the Modernist tradition of Western art and political relationships to written language, history. Snarby, on the other hand, offers land and sovereignty. a counter-history in which Jåks figures Architect and freelance researcher Kabita as a Sámi artist and as part of the avant- Chakma’s deployment of the term ‘visual garde, without diminishing the importance sovereignty’ when looking at the history of of duodji. Sámi questions of aesthetics, representation of Indigenous peoples from display, decay and process-oriented ways of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Bangladesh) is working with materials and nature become a intended to catalyse agency. This is not only framework in which Jåks is celebrated as an the case when examining cinema history artist ahead of his time. after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, which is Chakma’s primary focus, but also

61 Sovereign Histories of the Visual when used as a wider tool to critically interrogate and counter depictions of Indigenous subjectivity as ‘exotic’, ‘savage’ or ‘other’ in the larger visual field, including painting and photography. Chakma connects the emergence of Indigenous films from the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Barry Barclay’s proposal that Indigenous Cinema is a ‘Fourth Cinema’ – one that resists conforming to the ‘modern nation state’s cultural goals and aspirations’. The violence of this conflict past and present comes into sharp focus in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, whose heterogeneous Indigenous peoples live beneath the shadows of Bangladesh’s hegemonic, nation-building slogan ‘One language, one people’. Rather than accepting constructions of their subjectivities by others or conforming to the imposed ‘modern’ Bengali identity, Chakma celebrates a selection of Indigenous film makers who highlight the diversity of complex Indigenous subjectivities.

62 Jođi lea buoret go oru. Better in Motion Than at Rest. Iver Jåks (1932–2007) Irene Snarby

63 Jođi lea buoret go oru 1 Iver Jåks was born outside Karasjok in Norwegian Sápmi in He attended the Nor- wegian State School of 1932. He died in the same village in 2007, after a long career Handicrafts and Indus- as one of Northern Norway’s most acclaimed artists. Jåks trial Arts in Oslo and 1 later studied at the State was trained as a pictorial artist during the 1950s in Oslo. Teachers’ College of Woodwork and Drawing Later, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Notodden, where he in Copenhagen. His education in Denmark brought him into trained to be a silver- smith. contact with a world of art that was far removed from what 2 he had experienced during his childhood and adolescence See Maja Dunfjeld, ‘Sárgu ja duojar. Tegner in Northern Norway. Openness and enthusiasm for og kunsthåndverker’, in B. Eilertsen, et al. non-Western art was characteristic of the avant-garde in (eds.), Ofelaš, Iver Jåks, Copenhagen during this period, and this left its mark on Veiviseren (Tromsø: Universitetsbiblioteket how Jåks thought and worked in the future. in Tromsøs skriftserie Ravnetrykk no. 28, 2002), pp. 66–74; Gunvor Guttorm, ‘Duodji- som begrep og som del av livet. Duodji – doaban ja oassi eallimis’, in I. Snarby and E.S. Vikjord (eds.), GIERDU – Beve- gelser i samisk kunstverden – Sirdimat sámi duodje- ja dáiddamáilm- mis (exh. cat. SKINN/ RiddoDuottarMuseat, 2009). 3 Iver Jåks and Nils Jern- Portrait of Iver Jåks. Photo: Kjell Fjørtoft. sletten, ‘Samisk kunst – © 2018 Tromsø Museum, UiT. samisk eller kunst?’, in B. Ekstöm (ed.), Sámi Dáid- da (Helsinki: Norrbotten The title of this essay refers to an old Sámi saying, Jođi lea Museum, 1981), p. 24. buoret go oru, which describes how it is better to be on a journey, to be in motion, than to stay put, at rest. I find this applicable to the art of Jåks. Even though it is more than a decade since he died, his works are still changing, disturbing, pushing limits and moving on. For Jåks it was natural to maintain duodji as an important and enduring part of his artistic roots. Duodji is often translated as ‘Sámi handicraft’, but the term embraces more profound layers of meaning. It reflects a holistic view of life and culture. The concept encompasses multiple practical, social and spiritual activities, from the gathering of materials to processes involving Sámi epistemologies and belief systems.2 Duodji encompasses both the production of an item and the item itself.3

64 Irene Snarby 4 For many Sámi people, duodji is one of the strongest Aslak Gaup, ‘Vi må selv forme vår kultur. Jåks indicators of their identity. The relations we have with our om samenes situasjon og traditions signify deep collective values and norms. Intan- identitet’, in Aftenposten, 12 February 1973. gible knowledge is an important part of both the process and the experience of duodji. Consequently, Sámi traditions and the practice of duodji are subject to varying degrees of knowledge and understanding. Jåks stressed that it was important not to exclusively associate duodji with memories, keepsakes and the past, and was concerned to give his art relevant content as Contemporary art. He warned that: ‘If the Sámi rigidly hang on to the old ways, we could end up as “museum folk” with a “museum culture” that lives in exhibitions and has no legitimacy in life.’4 At the same time, he worked on bringing important cultural values into the future through his work. In other words, he cautioned against limit- ing the ways in which duodji could be practised or attempts to freeze Sámi culture. Through his work, which was closely associated with a broad, holistic understanding of duodji, he gave a voice to Sámi methods, traditions, practice and experiences in an arena that had previously rejected them as ethnology rather than art.

Iver Jåks, Drawing of Knife Sheath (Knivslire), (n.d.). Pencil on paper. © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018 and 2018 Tromsø Museum, UiT.

65 Jođi lea buoret go oru 5 Jåks acquired his knowledge and experience of duodji Conversations with curator Dikka Storm, Cultural during his upbringing in a reindeer-herder family during Science Department, his early childhood in the 1930s. In the 1950s and 60s, he Tromsø Museum, UiT, May 2015. produced hundreds of detailed technical drawings of duod- 6 In 2013 The University ji-objects in the files of the Norwegian Museum for Cultural of Tromsø consolidated History and Tromsø Museum. His own village, Karasjok, with several other institutions in the North of and most of the county of Finnmark, had been burned down Norway and changed its by German soldiers in the last months of World War II. name to UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. With this brutal action, the Nazis also destroyed unknown 7 Notes from a lecture giv- amounts of valuable duodji. When Jåks worked in the en by Iver Jåks in 1982, museum archives, he gained tangible access to rare mate- found in his archive at 5 Tromsø Universtiy Lib- rial, and thereby developed a unique knowledge of duodji. rary, Privatarkiv no. 15. The artist later specialised in the subject when he worked Iver Jåks, 1932–2007. as a teacher at the Sámi University College in Karasjok. His relationship with duodji was expressed through a meticulous understanding of materials, proficiency in collecting and handling them, and the ability to add a sensual dimension to his work. The Vandrende Seide (Wandering Holystone, 1996) is a small sculpture now situated at the University of Tromsø.6 The first time I saw the stone from which it was partly made was when I visited Jåks in the 1990s at his home in Tromsø. He had placed it on a table outside the front door of his new apartment in the middle of Tromsø city. He told me that he believed it to be a genuine sieidi. Sieidis are natural formations regarded by the Sámi as holy. Earlier people made sacrifices to the sieidis in order to communicate with and worship their gods, and some have kept this tradition. At these sacrificial sites, people are expected to be decorous and not behave in a noisy or boister- ous manner. In accordance with the old Sámi belief, nothing must be removed from a place of sacrifice, but should remain there until the forces of nature have consumed it. Jåks called the sieidis ‘divine stones which could allow access to the soul of nature’.7 Jåks had not taken this very stone from such a holy place himself. He had received it as a gift, and could thereby make an exception to the old belief, since the damage of removal had already been done. I think he

66 Irene Snarby Iver Jåks, Vandrende Seide (Wandering Holystone), 1996. Stone. Photo: Irene Snarby, 2018 © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018.

67 Jođi lea buoret go oru 8 found comfort in the ancient stone, which connected him to In a picture from Gallery Dobloug documenting genuine Sámi culture, difficult to find in urban Tromsø. He the Vandrende Seide used the sieidi stone to make a sculpture, placing it on top of in Oslo in 2002, it was mounted on a square, another rock, with a curved shape, and marking the transi- black glass panel that reflected the stone like tion between the two stones with a number of pebbles. The a mirror. The glass panel stones have been formed by thousands of years in nature, is no longer part of the presentation in its cur- and retain no sharp edges. The sculpture’s circular shapes rent manifestation at the have an almost hypnotic effect, suggesting that it is spin- University of Tromsø. 9 ning. It is exhibited in a glass vitrine in a large exhibition If the sculpture had retained the black glass, hall at the University of Tromsø, where hundreds of students the mirror effect could and teachers pass by every day.8 According to the traditional have been a reference to 9 the ancient Sámi belief of Sámi perspective, it is totally decontextualised here, but this Saivo. See https://www. display context reinforces its formal connections to modern- britannica.com/topic/ saivo Accessed August ist abstract art. 2018. A significant feature of Jåks’s artistic practice was to continually change and rebuild his artworks. He often incorporated new elements into his sculptures, or removed others in the fullness of time. He encouraged disintegration, and when something collapsed in one of his installations, he simply used the objects in other works. In the Iver Jåks Archive at the University Library in Tromsø is a picture of the same sieidi stone in another setting.

Iver Jåks, Vandrende Seide Kommer Hjem (Wandering Holystone is Coming Home), ca. 1980. Stone, wood and reindeer horn. Photo: Peter Hegre © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018.

68 Irene Snarby 10 It is situated on a wooden base, embraced by a reindeer horn He worked on the piece from 1994 to 1998. and three pieces of black wood. The base is composed of two pieces. The smaller narrow part is attached to the edge of the larger piece by two wooden nails, called návli in Sámi language. The návlis have been used in traditional duodji for ages. This work probably dates from the 1980s and is called Den Vandrende Sieide kommer Hjem (The Wandering Holy Stone is Coming Home). Unlike the display at the University in 2018, nothing alien to Sámi culture surrounds the stone.

Iver Jåks, Jaskadit jorrá jurdda / Stille vender Iver Jåks, Jaskadit jorrá jurdda / Stille tanken (Silently the Thought Turns), 1994–98. vender tanken (Silently the Thought Wood, leather straps, reindeer horn. Turns), 1994–98. Wood, leather straps, Photo: Adnan Icagic, Tromsø Museum, UiT reindeer horn. Photo: Irene Snarby © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018. © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018.

The way in which nature and time change organic materials played a significant role in several works. The sculpture Jaskadit jorrá jurdda / Stille Vender Tanken (Silently the Thought Turns) took over four years to complete.10 Jåks obtained some old logs from a house that was being restored in Tromsø during the early 1990s. He left them outside, exposing them to the elements for a couple of years to allow the forces of nature to leave their mark on the wood. He then carefully treated them, without using any sharp tools. Instead of implementing a design of his own choice, he encouraged the wood to display its annual rings and fine patterns.

69 Jođi lea buoret go oru Two vertical timber logs are positioned parallel to each other and attached with a wooden bolt. Between the logs, several reindeer horns have been woven together and tied to each other with braided leather straps. These leather straps are durable and common in duodji products. Some of the horns have been painted a faint, light blue colour. The original sculpture remained like this for some years, until the artist discovered new materials. He obtained some old and decayed wood from the gunwale of an old boat. After working on the material by splitting it with wooden wedges, he produced long, sharp, spear-like wooden pieces, which he inserted between the reindeer horns on the original sculpture. In order for the sculpture to ‘live’ as Jåks intended, he did not use any preservatives, instead allowing the natural processes in the materials to take over. The sculpture was purchased by the Tromsø University in the late 1990s, and is now a public artwork at the Sámi house, Árdna, on its campus. The work is bound to change in the future. After a while, the leather straps holding the horns in place between the logs will dry out and start to decompose. No longer attached, the horns will fall out and thereby transform the sculpture. This could easily become a challenge for the owners. For how long can it be considered an artwork before it has to be removed? How much disintegration will the Uni- versity tolerate? This summer, a peculiar thing happened to the sculpture. The last time I visited Árdna it had been locked in a glass cage on a high plinth. The reindeer horns and wooden pieces seemed to be pressed down between the timer logs in order to make the sculpture fit into the vitrine. Whether or not this was done to prolong the life of the sculpture is not easy to say, but something vital had disappeared along with the new presentation. It seems to be a challenge for the owners of Jåks’s art to follow this way of thinking. Another example of how he emphasised the importance of process in his works is found outdoors in his home village, Karasjok, but sadly this story also shows how his wishes can be ignored. Throughout his

70 Irene Snarby Iver Jåks, Runebommehammeren (Ballin, the Holy Drum Hammer), 1983. Pine. The Sámi High School in Karasjok. Photo: J.A. Kalstad © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018 and Tromsø Museum, UiT, 2018.

71 Jođi lea buoret go oru 11 career, he repeatedly worked with drum hammers as motifs Runebommehammeren measures 750 x 300 x in his woodcuts, drawings and in different sculptural works. 150 cm. The largest iteration is the 7.5-meter-tall Runebommeham- 12 11 12 According to the regis- meren from 1983, originally placed in the forest close to tration of KORO.001839, 13 the sculpture was erect- the Sámi high school in Karasjok. ed in 1982–83. 13 Iver Jåks, Runebommehammeren Jåks’s colleagues assist- (Ballin, the Holy Drum Hammer), ed him in finishing the 1983. Pine. The Sámi High School in sculpture. Among them Karasjok. Photo: Irene Snarby, 2011 was the duojár (artist © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018. working with duodji) Jon Ole Andersen and the teacher J. Sebergsen. 14 Inside the construction he used metal nails. The plinth is made of concrete. 15 Jåks first considered making the sculpture in concrete. 16 Some neo-shamanistic believers have taken up the tradition of commu- nicating with the spirits by drumming, although it has not been a common A clear-cut shape dominates the composition. Four solid, religious practice in Sáp- mi since Christianisation. pinewood timber logs hold two open cylinder-like forms, 17 14 The huge format and extending horizontally in opposite directions. Pine is unexpected placement the most common tree in this particular forest and thus clashes with most expectations of both a the sculpture reflects and cooperates with its environment traditional drum hammer even though it has been debarked.15 Unless preserved or and a public artwork, thereby challenging the removed, the material would be bound to erode, disintegrate spectator to view the work from a different and become part of the forest again. Its overall shape cor- angle. responds to the Sámi drum hammer of the title, also called Ballin in the Sámi language. Traditionally, in pre-Christian times, the drum hammer was used to make sounds in order to communicate with the spirit world.16 The iconographic element of the sculpture, with references to Sámi culture and belief systems, is evident, but the monumental scale and unexpected placement is also associated with modern art history.17 Jåks touches upon several significant complexes with this work, including religion, erosion and Sámi aesthet-

72 Irene Snarby 18 ics. The sculpture was commissioned18 to be situated in the The curator Trude Schjelderup Iversen of school’s yard or in front of the entrance as a public work. KORO/Public Art Norway However, Jåks did not follow the traditional Western format wrote in an email of 19 February 2016 that for a monumental public work, and decided to place the Jåks got his assignment in 1976, and the initial sculpture in the forest. plan for the sculpture’s When the sculpture was new, in the early 1980s, it stood placement was almost identical to its new loca- out like an enormous pine-coloured fist in the landscape. tion of 2016. The struggle for Sámi rights in the form of hunger strikes and demonstrations against the damming of the Alta Kau- tokeino waterway was highly debated in Norway at the time. The piece could easily be read as a political statement. By 2013, the surrounding pines had grown bigger, and branches of willow and birch trees had begun to encroach upon the sculpture. The colour faded to grey, and the sculpture was now almost impossible to see until you were close to it. From a distance of a few metres, its lower part was hidden by moss and heath, giving the impression that the work was growing out of the ground. This effect strengthened the impression of something organic that, in ecological terms, belongs to the place. Runebommehammeren no longer seemed so politically charged, but suggested instead something mystical and sacred. Its shape and format evoked a sense of awe in the beholder standing in front of it. For more than thirty years, the Runebommehammeren remained in the forest, and over the years the sculpture was subject to the great seasonal changes in Karasjok, with twenty-four hours of daylight and sun in the summer and freezing-cold darkness in the winter. This challenging and experimental way of incorporating art and nature makes the work unique and connects it to an avant-garde thinking that is still uncommon in public artwork in Norway. The Sámi people do not have a history of erecting huge monuments for future viewers, and this sculpture was not meant to last forever. Nor does the Sámi language have equivalents for ‘sculpture’ or ‘installation’. Jåks was less interested in medial terminology than in transitions. He determined that the sculpture would one day vanish and

73 Jođi lea buoret go oru 19 become nourishment for new trees. He saw his works as Email from Kathrine Julin Pettersen, manager of cyclical. When searching for the origin of this idea, one the Property Depart- should note the key connection to an ancient Sámi aesthetic ment, Statsbygg, 27 February 2015. linked to ecological thinking and a circular notion of time. 20 2015 Astrid Helander, ‘Bázzi In , the Runebommehammeren was moved to make sirdo oidnosii’, Ávvir, 3 room for an expansion of the school. The owners of the February 2015. 21 school building, Statsbygg / The Directorate of Public Con- Svein Aamold, Elin struction and Property Management, along with the school’s Haugdal and Ulla Ankjær Jørgensen (eds.), Sámi board, decided to place it in front of one of the building’s Art and Aesthetics, 19 Contemporary Art, An- entrances. Arguments for its removal were not only to do thology by the Sámi Art with the expansion of the school, but also based on claims Research Project at UiT The Arctic University of that the sculpture would be safer and more viable in a differ- Norway (Aarhus: Aarhus ent location.20 The enigmatic, culturally related philosophy University Press, 2017). behind the work was thus eradicated. According to the plan- ners, the sculpture could not be placed anywhere in the vast forest still surrounding the school. I contend that this decision displays a total misunderstanding of the artist’s intention for the work. The Runebom- mehammeren was as connected to its site as the sieidi to the old sacred places. If they are removed they will no longer communicate, having lost their power. The Runebommeham- mer is now located in an area very close to the white cube: a tamed, clean and controlled environment in the schoolyard. Even though it is clearly not an ethnographic object in a museum, it does not belong to a classic European art tradition either. The whole concept around the sculpture is dependent on context and display strategy. In the anthology Sámi Art and Aesthetics, Contemporary Perspectives21 the German art historian Christian Spies explains how the folklorist Karl Sigismund Kramer interpreted the term Dingbeseelung (ensoulment of the thing). He believed that vitality is a result of the interaction of two basic principles of objects: material and form; the material’s original vitality is activated by the form. This bipolar focus includes a third pole, function. Spies looks for a holistic concept, for a material object, having a form and a function within a specific context. As much as a holistic perspective is fundamental to the concept of material culture and

74 Irene Snarby As of 2016, the Runebommehammeren is situated on the lawn in front of the Sámi High School. Separated from its original environment in the forest, it appears more like a random historical artefact than a genuine site-specific piece of art. Photo: Maaike Halbertsma, 2016 © Iver Jåks / BONO, Oslo 2018.

75 Jođi lea buoret go oru 22 ethnology, it does not solve the problem of how to display Christian Spies, ‘Strange Objects: Ethnograph- the object. How can the object be shown in such a way that ic Objects in Between it speaks for itself? How much isolation does it need for its Self-Presentation and 22 Contextualisation’, own vitality to be activated? And thinking about the Rune- in Svein Aamold, Elin Haugdal and Ulla Ankjær bommehammer, I ask: how much isolation can it take before Jørgensen (eds.), Sámi it loses its vitality? Staged within the empty space of the Art and Aesthetics, Contemporary Art, An- schoolyard, the Runebommehammer runs the risk of being thology by the Sámi Art perceived as a late modernist artwork. Research Project at UiT The Arctic University of The enthusiasm for non-Western art that Jåks experienced Norway (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2017), in his youth in Denmark gave him the tools to lift his cul- pp. 195–210. tural heritage into the Contemporary art scene. He did this 23 For the most recent see at such an early stage that few understood what his works Line Ulekleiv, ‘Kamprop were really about. Art historians have often underestimated langs elvebredden’, Klassekampen, 18 April his works, since their framework of understanding has been 2018. See also Gunvor Guttorm, Duodji Bálgát primarily confined to concepts of art-historical modernism / En studie i duodji: that have viewed the Sámi element as a negligible add-on. Kunsthåndverk som visuell erfaring hos Several surveys of Sámi art have focused on a distinction et urfolk, PhD thesis, Faculty of Humanities, between traditional knowledge, handicraft and duodji on the Institute of Art History, one hand, and pictorial art, autonomy and artistic freedom University of Tromsø, 23 2001; Maja Dunfjeld, on the other. A wide and holistic interpretation of duodji, Tjaalehttjimmie – Form like the one we find in Jåks’s works, can sometimes be a og innhold i sørsamisk ornamentikk (Aarhus: challenge for the spectator. His engagement with and deep Institutt for konsthisto- rie, 2001/Designtrykk, understanding of his own culture allowed him to reclaim the 2006); Charis Gullickson ancient understanding of the term duodji, without twisted and Knut Ljøgodt (eds.), Iver Jåks: Reconstructed westernisation, where creativity is intertwined with a deep (Tromsø: The Art Muse- and profound respect for nature and a circular notion of time. um of Northern Norway, 2010).

76 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua. The Permanence of Language, Prestige and Land 1 Megan Tamati-Quennell

77 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 1 This essay looks at the significance of text and language in The title of this essay is a pepeha (Māori Māori culture through the particular lens of Modern and proverb) that is credited Contemporary Māori art. The work and practice of four to Tinirau, a Rangatira (chief) from Whanganui Māori artists – Ralph Hotere, Shona Rapira Davies, Emily (central North Island of New Zealand). The 1957 Karaka and Michael Parekowhai – is explored. Each of these translation into English artists has used text and language in his or her work as sign is credited to Māori Scholar, Kingi Ihaka. The and symbol, as a semiotic device that adds meaning. In Pare- word mana is a Māori kowhai’s works, text and words are three-dimensional and concept, an intangible quality that people pos- form the artwork, his titles add further conceptual layers. sess and can increase or decrease through With the three other artists, words and language are a signif- their actions. There is icant feature of their drawings, paintings or sculptures; their no direct translation in English, but it can be titles, too, unlock further depths, dimensions and meaning. understood variously as Historically, words were regarded by Māori as having the prestige, status, authority. The pepeha speaks same spiritual power as imagery. Whakapapa (genealogy of the significance of language, status and and history) central to Māori society, and ritual and cere- land to Māori culture. Its mony were delivered in oral form through karakia (prayer), meaning is that without them, Māori culture will waiata (song), whaikorero (ceremonial speech-making) cease to exist. See Hir- ini Moko Mead and Neil and other practices. Te Reo Māori was an oral language. Grove, Nga Pepeha a Nga Written Māori was introduced, emerging from the colonial Tipuna (Victoria: Victoria University Press, 2002) process. The first written Māori was a language created p. 405. by missionaries,2 based on Māori spoken word, phonet- 2 Missionaries came ics and using some letters from the English alphabet. The from Australia to New Zealand, but they were first scriptures in Te Reo Māori, used to convert Māori to primarily from England. Christianity, were published in 1827, the first new testament There were also Cath- olic missionaries from in 1836 and Te Paipera Tapu, the first full Māori bible, in France. Peter J. Lineham, 1868.3 The potency and power of written Māori was valued ‘Story: Missions and Mis- sionaries’, Teara (5 May and understood by Māori through its genesis as a biblical 2011): https://teara.govt. nz/en/missions-and-mis- language. Words also became integrated into customary sionaries Accessed 1 Māori art. Alongside whakairo (carving) patterns and May 2018. 3 moko (facial tattoo) design that expressed the character of ‘The Bible in Māori’, New a Tupuna (Ancestor), names from our genealogies became Zealand Bible Society: https://biblesociety.org. iconography. Ancestral names in Roman lettering began nz/discover-the-bible/ the-bible-in-maori/ to be etched into figurative carvings. Words were stitched Accessed 1 May 2018. using introduced wool into kakahu, finely woven cloaks, or were incorporated into new art forms that evolved. Words were included in new naturalistic paintings used in meeting houses or hand-sewn into Māori flags, symbols appropriated by Māori as a form of counter colonisation.

78 Megan Tamati-Quennell 4 Māori understood the power of the word. Te Whaka- ‘He Whakaputanga – Declaration of Indepen- putanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni, translated into dence, 1835’, Ministry English as ‘The Declaration of Independence of the United for Culture and Heritage: https://nzhistory.govt. Tribes of New Zealand’, was a handwritten document in nz/media/interactive/ the-declaration-of-in- Te Reo Māori. Made up of four articles, the document was dependence Accessed 1 composed by a collective of chiefs and stated that the mana May 2018. 5 (authority) and sovereign power belonged solely to Māori ‘The Treaty in Brief’, and that foreigners could not make laws. It outlined that the Ministry for Culture and Heritage: https://nzhis- Confederation of United Tribes was to meet at Waitangi in tory.govt.nz/politics/ treaty/the-treaty-in-brief the far north of the North Island each year to create laws. Accessed 1 May 2018. In return for their safeguarding of British subjects in New 6 Penny Griffith, Ross Zealand, the lands over which they held sovereign power, Harvey and Keith Maslen protection from threats to the chiefs’ mana (standing) and (eds.), Book and Print in New Zealand: A tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) were sought from King Guide to Print Culture 4 in Aotearoa (Wellington: William. Te Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni Victoria University Press, was a formal agreement. It was signed by 52 Rangatira 1997): http://nzetc. victoria.ac.nz/tm/schol- (Māori chiefs) and was officially recognised by the British arly/tei-GriBook-_div3- N1082E.html Accessed 1 government. May 2018. The Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, regarded as the founding document of New Zealand, was a second written agreement made between the British Crown and Rangatira. 540 Ran- gatira signed it. Its name relates to the place in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand where it was first signed. The treaty defined the relationship between Māori and the Crown and was made up of two versions, a Te Reo Māori version and the English version. Although the Te Reo Māori version was created to convey the English version’s meaning, there are significant and important differences between them. The Māori version, which most Rangatira signed, is largely at odds with the English version.5 There are different translations of fundamental terms in the two versions and different guarantees made. Māori adoption and adaption of writing and print occurred during early colonisation, a time of intense change. Māori are said to have begun reading and writing in the 1800s.6 Letter writing, both formal and informal, was popular with Māori, who began enacting practices related to provocation, argument and challenge in written form instead

79 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 7 of orally. The independent use of print by Māori is defined In his introduction to Maori Artists of the as beginning with the publication of iwi (tribal) newspapers South Pacific (Raglan, such as Te Hokioi o Niu Tireni (1862–63). Developed as a New Zealand: Maori Artists & Writers Soc., form of self-determination and printed in Te Reo Māori, 1984), p. 9, Māori artist and educator John the papers were used to unify tribes or pan-tribal groups, to Bevan Ford states that express Māori thought and action in relation to the issues the precolonial Māori artist created within ‘the of the day, in particular colonial appetite for Māori land. constraints of a single They were also designed to educate Māori, Government and culture’, while postcolonial artists worked Pakeha (New Zealand settler cultures). within a ‘multiplicity of cultures’. Carvers moved A later act of Māori self-assertion related particularly from stone tools to metal to the arts, was the formation of the first formal Māori art tools, and storytellers, poets and composers collective, the Māori Writers and Artists Society (later added the written word Nga Puna Waihanga), established in 1973. Māori Writers to oral language and began to use English as and Artists described its members as ‘pioneers of a new well as Te Reo Māori. consciousness’.7 Patricia Grace, Hone Tuwhare and Witi Ihimaera were some of our first Māori writers to publish poems, stories and novels in English, while the visual artists, who had taken on European modernism, were inventing symbols that denoted the dilemma of a people who were once ‘the only people of the land’ but were now just part of the total. Each of the artists explored here has been influenced by this earlier history. Each has employed text and language in English, Te Reo Māori or both, or used French, German or Italian languages in their work. The use of text embodies tino rangatiratanga, sovereignty of thought and expression, and is individual, distinct and multifarious, with words used to reframe, reimagine, locate, lay claim to, lament, confront, protest and unsettle. Ralph Hotere (1931–2013) was a Māori modernist and a pioneer of the Contemporary Māori art movement. He began working in the 1950s and became one of New Zealand’s most important artists. Truly international in intellect and style, he was the first Māori artist to be accepted by the art mainstream and for a long time the only Māori artist acknowledged and supported by the New Zealand art fraternity. He was also our first Māori international, gaining a scholarship in 1961 to study at the Central School of Art in London and

80 Megan Tamati-Quennell 8 from there travelling to and working in Italy and France. A Gregory O’Brien, ‘Ploughing: Ralph Hotere’s hallmark of his practice is his use of words, particularly the “Te Whiti” Series’, in words of poets. He even stated that poets were the only ones Parihaka, The Art of Pas- sive Resistance, edited who could interpret his work. Hotere has also used words in by Te Miringa Hohaia, Gregory O’Brien and Lara his drawings and paintings to ‘expand the visual, symbolic Strongman (Wellington: and lyrical content of his art’.8 He wrote in English, Te Reo City Gallery, 2005), p. 151. Māori, French and sometimes backwards to allude to the 9 printmaking techniques like lithography that he was using, Gregory O’Brien, ‘Empty of Shadows and Making which reversed the font. His employment of words was care- a Shadow’, in his Hotere, Out the Black Window, fully considered and operated in his work conceptually and Ralph Hotere’s Work with as formal visual devices. As Gregory O’Brien has stated, New Zealand Poets (Wel- lington, New Zealand: ‘Hotere rarely uses titles to clarify a work – they tend to add City Gallery, 1997), p. 53. further layers or, like all the language he incorporates, func- 10 Gregory O’Brien, ‘The tion as a veil through which the image must be glimpsed.’9 Origin of Words’, in ibid, p. 27. Although Hotere used text from early in his practice, he 11 rarely spoke about his work, preferring to stay silent and Ibid. 10 12 allow it to ‘exist independently on its own broad terms’. Ibid. In 1973 he said, ‘No object and no painting, is seen in the same way by everyone, yet most people want unmistakeable meaning which is accessible to all in a work of art.’11 In 1996, he repeated his earlier sentiment by saying, ‘There are few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing.’12 His silence can be aligned with the Duchampian ideal that it is the audience that completes an artwork and constructs meaning. In his Polaris Series of the early 1960s, Hotere’s words made reference to the development of US Polaris nuclear warheads deployed on submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His Algerie works in 1962 responded to French colonialism and the war for Independence in Algeria, and his important Sangro paintings protested the violence of war and commemorated the loss of his brother Jack, who was killed in action in 1943 at the age of twenty-two and is buried in the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. His Malady works, which came later in the 1960s, used text graphically. The series played with the word ‘Malady’, taken from a work by New Zealand poet Bill Manhire. Hotere’s repetition of the word complicated how his paintings were

81 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 13 ‘read’ and provided an open-ended interpretation with ‘no O’Brien, ‘Voicing the 13 Landscape, Hotere & obvious place to start or place to stop’. Colin McCahon’, in ibid., Hotere’s Te Whiti works, made in 1972, featuring Māori p. 47. 14 text with English translations, were described as being O’Brien, ‘Ploughing: Ralph Hotere’s “Te Whiti” similar to illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period. Series’, p. 151. They have also been referred to as, ‘paintings to be read, 15 14 Gregory O’Brien, ‘Ralph listened to and understood’. The text employed by Hotere Hotere, New Zealand Art, included contemporary poems by his friend and leading 1970–1990’, in William McAloon (ed.), Art at Māori poet Hone Tuwhare and New Zealand poet James K. Te Papa (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2009), Baxter, historical quotes that gave voice to Māori political p. 351. and spiritual beliefs of the time and to the Māori land rights movement, which was beginning to gain momentum. The text sources were also referenced in the paintings. In 1978, Hotere left the country to spend time in Avignon, France. It was in Avignon, after Pope Paul VI died, that he began his Le Pape est Mort series, which took its title from a newspaper headline. He used the phrase in several paintings, not so much mourning the Pope, but as a remembrance of his own childhood and upbringing: his Te Aupouri papa- kainga (home community) of Mitimiti is a French Māori Catholic stronghold. A key piece of the text used in his Le Pape est Mort works was the Māori whakatauki (proverb) ‘He Hinga Atu Ana, He Tetekura, He Ara Mai Ana, He Tetekura’, which is used again in his seminal 1984–88 work Black Phoenix. The proverb is a metaphor and can be translated into English as ‘When one chief falls, another will rise to take his place’. Black Phoenix, an ambitious installation made from the charred remains of a fishing boat that Hotere salvaged, is described as ‘an antipodean rephrasing’15 of the story of the Phoenix – the magical bird in Egyptian, Arab and Greek mythology, that after setting itself on fire is reborn from its own ashes. Black Phoenix is evocative of a central Te Aupouri Iwi narrative that is said to be inherent within Hotere’s work and particularly associated with the use of the colour black. Te Aupouri, one of the iwi (tribes) to which Hotere is affiliated, was at one time named Ngati Ruanui. To avoid attack from a neighbouring tribe, they burnt everything of value, escaped under smoke and fire

82 Megan Tamati-Quennell Ralph Hotere, Les saintes maries de la mer, 1986. Lithograph. © Reproduced with permission of the Hotere Foundation Trust, 2018.

83 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua Shona Rapira Davies, Tangi, (People are All the Same), 1984. Pencil, crayon on MBM paper. © Courtesy of the artist.

84 Megan Tamati-Quennell Shona Rapira Davies, Nga Morehu, 1988. Terracotta, flax, wood. © Courtesy of the artist.

85 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua Emily Karaka, Rangitoto Eruption, 1988. Oil on two unstretched canvases with modern wooden lintel. © Courtesy of the artist.

86 Megan Tamati-Quennell 16 and reinvented themselves as Te Aupouri, which in literal Gregory O’Brien, ‘Ralph Hotere, Song of Solo- translation means ‘the people of smoke and fire’. mon, 1991’, in Margaret Works made in the 1980s by Hotere protested South Morrow, Maureen Lander and Vincent O’Sulli- African apartheid and the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour that van (eds.), Country, an Exhibition Featuring divided New Zealand. Hotere, like many others, was anti- Ralph Hotere’s ‘Song tour and was unable to separate the race-based apartheid of Solomon, (Hokianga, New Zealand: Village system in South Africa from the sport that was a national Arts, 2009), p. 5. game for both countries. An important work from the period was the reversed image of the New Zealand Flag, the Union Jack, which featured a rhetorical question ‘A black Union Jack?’ Other works protesting South African apartheid included Tears for Biko in remembrance of black political activist Steve Biko, who was murdered in prison in South Africa, and O Africa, which incorporated a poem by Hone Tuwhare. Other 1980s works protested French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Each of the paintings in the Black Rainbow series was made to mark every nuclear test carried out. Further works lamented the bombing of Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific and the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, the Greenpeace boat used to peace- fully protest French nuclear testing. Hotere’s Aramoana works were also of this period and were made in resistance to the building of an aluminium smelter on the ecologically fragile salt marshes of Aramoana near where he lived in Dunedin. Hotere continued to use text throughout his career. A final work to touch on is Song, a lithograph that was also realised as a painting titled Song of Solomon. These Song works were created around the time of the Gulf War and can be seen as ‘an indictment of that conflict and a hymn to the redemptive power of language’.16 Song juxtaposes the language of the conflict gathered by Poet Cilla McQueen from the news media, with military language and the lyrical lines of the Song of Solomon that Hotere drew from the bible. Shona Rapira Davies (born 1951) is a senior Māori woman artist. Of Ngati Wai and Ngati Hine Māori descent, she is a sculptor who also has a painting and drawing practice. Her works are often introspective and her use of text,

87 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 17 like Hotere’s, is considered and intentional, used as a formal Megan Tamati-Quennell, ‘The Tangi of Shona element, but also as a highly charged device that speaks back Rapira Davies’, Art acutely to the social impact of colonisation. Partly autobi- Monthly Australasia 156 (December 2002): http:// ographical, Rapira Davies’ work provides insight into an www.artmonthly.org.au/ copy-of-issue-157-2003/ intensely personal and private world, with text used in an agonisingly candid and powerful way to express the vulnera- bility, trauma and racism worn and carried by Māori women. Two key text works in her practice are her Tangi drawings and Nga Morehu, which in English translates as ‘The Sur- vivors’. Nga Morehu is a sculptural installation made up of life-sized ceramic women, an uncompleted whariki (woven mat) and a ceramic child, which faces the women. Made before she created Nga Morehu, but strongly connected to it, her series of ten Tangi drawings work with trace and line and are visually understated. They are made up of smudged and muted graphite images, irregular and off-centre words and faint coloured-pencil marks on paper. To read them is distressing, moving, almost voyeuristic, like reading the pages of someone’s diary. They are intimate passages that combine to create an acute lament. These personal and profound drawings articulate deep grief about the loss of a brother, the breakdown of the social structure of Māori families, the loss of connection to land and place and the expression of whakamā, a painful and paralysing sense of intense shame, particular to Māori people. In her own words:

[Tangi] are probably the most personal and most vulnerable of all the works I have done. A lot of time I like to put myself at a distance from my work, but those ones were right there. On top of being taken away, was the whole shame of it … the shame of your mother killing herself, the shame of your Māori heritage, I had actually put it all there and when I looked at them I thought I can’t show these, I don’t want this to be seen, I want this hidden. I wanted to bury them because I thought they were too close to me and could be connected to me very, very quickly.17

88 Megan Tamati-Quennell 18 With bitter honesty Rapira Davies records through her Tangi Ibid. 19 drawings the attitudes, rhetoric and assimilationist practices Ibid. of white middle New Zealand of the 1950s and 60s and the impact of those practices on Māori people and culture. Like Nga Morehu, which celebrates the strength, majesty and resilience of Māori women, her Tangi drawings transcend the individual and singular experience to eloquently express the experience of Māori women, experiences easily recognised by other Indigenous women.

I remember when I was doing Tangi, when I was going through drawing them. It was a very slow process over a period of a couple of weeks; I do like to construct and have a real hold on what I am doing. They didn’t just come out … I am not an expressionist at all. So when I look at them now, I can see past the paper to the time.18

Nga Morehu, made over thirty years ago when the artist was thirty-five, is a powerful installation that depicts the karanga, a call of welcome undertaken on ceremonial occasions by senior Māori women steeped in matauranga Māori, Māori knowledge and cultural practice. Some of the figures in Nga Morehu are inscribed with text. The kaika- ranga (woman delivering the karanga) is adorned with a waiata (song) which tells of the connections between two iwi (tribes); Ngati Hine (the artist’s own) and Te Arawa, expressing the interweaving of genealogy and history embodied in the karanga. The child’s body, positioned facing the women, is covered with the words of a contemporary poem by Northern Māori writer Christina Lyndon. Other figures wear racist insults like scars, the text emblematic of wounds created by racism, carried and concealed by Māori women. Rapira Davies presents Nga Morehu on the same level as the viewer to allow people ‘to mingle with their ancestors’.19 She cites Auguste Rodin’s 1888 sculpture The Burghers of Calais as a reference in this respect. The seated kuia (female elders) anchor the installation. By revealing the karanga, a

89 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 20 Māori ritual state rarely portrayed, she pays tribute to Māori Ranginui Walker, Ka Whaiwhai Tonu Matou: women and conveys a Māori definition of beauty, strength Struggle Without End and worth. (Aukland, New Zealand: Penguin Books, 1990). Like Rapira Davies, Emily Karaka (born 1952) is a 21 P. Johnston, and L. senior Māori woman artist; both were part of a generation Pihama, ‘What Counts described by the late Māori academic Dr Ranginui Walker as Difference and What Differences Count: Gen- as ‘the first [Māori] urban-born intelligentsia; an articulate der, Race and the Politics and eloquent anti-colonial voice which emerged to argue of Difference’, in K. Irwin & I. Ramsden (eds.), Toi for a shift in nationalism to biculturalism’.20 Both were also Wahine: The Worlds of Maori Women (Auckland: associated with Mana Wahine Māori, a movement con- Penguin, 1995), pp. cerned with ‘making visible the narratives and experiences, 75–86. 21 22 in all their diversity, of Māori women’. Witi Ihimaera, ‘Karaka’, Karaka is of Ngati Hine, Ngati Wai, Ngai Tai and Waihou Art New Zealand 60 (Spring 1991): p. 72. Māori descent. She defines herself as an abstract expression- 23 Emily Karaka, ‘Fierce Mix ist painter. Her work is characterised by its expressive inten- of Art and Politics’, Mana sity, her use of high-key colour, text, and her gritty address (12 November 1993): p. 19. of political issues related to Māori land rights, to equity, to tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty) and the Treaty of Waitangi. Before Karaka and Rapira Davies, Māori women had little or no presence in the New Zealand Contemporary art world. They were two of the first to embody issues of Māori women’s sovereignty within their work. Karaka’s art, an exploration of Māori marginalisation and dispossession, is fiercely passionate and unflinchingly political. It is described by Māori writer Witi Ihimaera as ‘an outpouring of raw emotions, guts, intellect and passion’ and as work ‘that will always be seen as political – politics are people’.22 As she herself describes it:

My work has been centred around the Treaty of Waitangi as the founding document, as the base of legislation and government in this country […] It’s to do with rangatiratanga (sovereignty), our atua (gods), our taonga (treasures), land rights, living rights, arts and cultural rights guaranteed in that foundational document.23

90 Megan Tamati-Quennell Karaka’s important painting The Treaties, created in 1984, refers to three key documents in New Zealand’s history: the Treaty of Waitangi, ANZUS – the 1952 defence pact between New Zealand, Australia and the United States – and the Gleneagles Agreement – the Commonwealth’s 1977 agreement against sporting contacts with the apartheid-era South Africa. The concept of sacrifice is depicted in the trip- tych, with each panel featuring a stylised crucifixion of an abstracted figure, and below each, sheets of paper – the three accords – torn and bloodied. In addition to the names of each document painted across the top of the three panels, there is another text, Ngati Maniapoto tribal leader Rewi Maniapoto’s famous cry of defiance ‘Ka whaiwhai tonu matou, ake, ake, ake’ (We will fight on against you forever and forever and forever), made when resisting British attacks at the Battle of Orakau in 1864. In the 1970s, Maniapoto’s declaration was adopted as a catch-cry for Māori protest. Karaka, herself an active member of Nga Tamatoa (The Young Māori Warriors), was involved in the ‘Not one more acre’ land rights movement and was part of the 1975 Māori Land March, when thousands of Māori people descended on Parliament in Welling- ton to voice their grievances. She also participated in the occupation of land at Bastion Point in Auckland in 1977. Two further works by Karaka, Rangitoto Eruption and Maunga Wae Wae use ancestral names and the Māori notion of the right to land through occupation as text. Rangitoto Eruption highlights the on-going struggle of the Ngati Whatua Iwi for land rights at Bastion Point in Auckland. The ancestral names related to Bastion Point – Takaparawha, Orakei, Rangitoto, Tamakimakarau – feature, highlighting Māori connection to those environments before colonisation. A female ancestor performing a defiant haka (war dance) and other kaitiaki (female guardians), rise from the land, reinforcing Ngati Whatua’s claim to those landscapes as Mana whenua, the people of that land. In Maunga Wae Wae, which translates as ‘Mountain Foot’, Karaka uses the Māori concept of turangawaewae (place to stand) and the

91 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua 24 words Ahi Kaa, which translates as ‘to keep the home fires Emily Karaka, Emily Karaka, waharoa o ngai burning’ to assert Māori ownership of the landscape she tai (Manukau City, New depicts. ‘The issues that I’m always discussing are economic, Zealand: Fisher Gallery, March 1997). social and environmental’, she states, ‘and land rights tie 25 For further information back to the basis of justice in our country, the covenant of on biculturalism in New the country, the korowai (cloak) of the country’.24 Zealand, see: https:// teara.govt.nz/en/bicul- Michael Parekowhai (born 1968), the final artist in this turalism Accessed 1 May essay, is a generation younger than the three previously 2018. 26 explored. He is one a group of urban Māori avant-gardists George Hubbard and Robin Craw, ‘Beyond kia who rose to prominence in the 1990s, the era of bicultural- ora: the paraesthetics ism in New Zealand, a postmodern ideological construct of Choice!’, Antic 8 (De- cember 1990): p. 28. that recognised the Treaty of Waitangi and the partnership relationship between Māori and the Crown as key to the development of New Zealand as a nation state.25 Parekowhai is a leading conceptual artist and a key figure of his generation. He is known as a trickster in Contem- porary New Zealand art, and has also been described as a magician and a master illusionist. Wordplay has been a feature of many of his works and is evident in the titles of some, as well as in some of his sculptures themselves. His artworks look deceptively simple, but in reality are conun- drums, riddling puzzles and wordplays that are conceptually layered and laden with personal and ambiguous meaning. Three early works by Parekowhai that drew attention to his importance as an artist are word sculptures. All three – Atarangi, The Indefinite Article and ‘Everyone Will Live Quietly’ Micah 4:4 – were shown at Artspace in Auckland in 1990 in Choice!, an exhibition that was small in scale but seismic in impact. Choice! attempted to expand the definition of Contemporary Māori art by showcasing Māori artists, as the curator proposed, who were more than ‘bearers of tradition and children of nature, representors of the land and the past’.26 Parekowhai’s work in Choice! irrefutably changed perceptions and reimagined what Contemporary Māori art was, what it could be and how it could be read and understood. Atarangi, with its simplified form and upbeat primary colours, can be read as a minimalist sculpture or as a vivid

92 Megan Tamati-Quennell abstracted Māori carving, a figure with upraised arms. Upsized by the artist, the assembled blocks of colour are in actuality representations of Cuisenaire rods, plastic sticks of different colours and lengths that were used in New Zealand schools in the 1960s and 70s as a way of teaching maths. The title is a reference to the adoption and use of Cuisenaire rods in Te Ataarangi, a pioneering method of teaching Te Reo Māori, the Māori language. Developed by Katerina Te Heikoko Mataira and Ngoingoi Pewhairangi, Te Ataa- rangi was designed in response to Māori urbanisation and extensive language and cultural loss. It was designed to suit Māori learners and was centred on the spoken language. The rakau, as the Cuisenaire rods were called in Te Ataarangi, were used to construct simple sentences that relayed actions and expanded vocabulary and comprehension. Atarangi, then, can be understood from one perspective as a sculpture centred on language and words. If read from its side, the work spells the word ‘He’ in block letters. ‘He’ is the mas- culine pronoun in English, a reference to a single male, but in Te Reo Māori it can be translated variously as meaning, ‘a’ or ‘some’, ‘incorrect’ or ‘wrong’. The definitive meaning of Atarangi however, like much of Parekowhai’s work, is left open-ended and for the audience to complete and construct its meaning. The second word sculpture included in the Choice! exhibition, The Indefinite Article, continued Parekowhai’s use of the word ‘He’. In this work, the words ‘I am He’ are spelt out in large cubist-style block letters. The style and phrase are appropriated from a 1954 painting by important New Zealand modernist painter Colin McCahon. In McCahon’s painting, the phrase ‘I am He’ refers to the biblical statement that names and defines God: ‘I am who I am’, Exodus 3:14. In his painting, McCahon conflates God and ‘the self’, proclaiming that he, McCahon, is perhaps ‘the one’. In his sculpture, Parekowhai reverses McCahon’s grand statement about himself by using the Te Reo Māori definition of ‘He’. So instead of being ‘the one’, Parekowhai is self-effacing: his sculptural statement says he is ‘not the one’, that he, one of

93 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua Michael Parekowhai, ‘Everyone will live quietly’ Micah 4.4, 1990. Wood and laminates. © Courtesy of the artist and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Purchased from the Monica Brewster Bequest with assistance from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand in 1991.

94 Megan Tamati-Quennell 27 many, is part of a collective, perhaps in reference to Māori Pakeha, is the name for New Zealand settler culture, which customarily functions collectively rather than cultures, but can be individually. Given the plural meanings of the word in Te read in this context as Europeans. Reo Māori, Parekowhai’s definition of ‘He’ also goes further, 28 Robert Leonard, ‘Michael suggesting that he would be incorrect or wrong to assume Parekowhai: Against that he is, or could be, ‘the one’. Purity’, available at: http://robertleonard. ‘Everyone Will Live Quietly’ Micah 4:4 is a floor-based org/michael-parekow- work made up of four sculptures that spell out the name hai-against-purity/ Accessed 8 May 2018. ‘Micah’ in three dimensional letters. This refers to the bib- Originally published in Art New Zealand 59 lical Micah, who in the Old Testament advocates followers (1991). to stay true to God, to ignore false prophets, and promises redemption after a period of exile for the faithful. The work appears to be made of pounamu, New Zealand greenstone, an exalted material within Māori culture of substantial cultural value and sourced from the South Island of New Zealand, Te Waahi Pounamu. However, the sculpture is not made of pounamu, but Formica. The four word sculptures of ‘Micah’, can therefore be read in literal terms as, ‘four Micah’s, as well as a play on the name Formica. Contempo- rary art curator Robert Leonard, describes Everyone Will Live Quietly’ Micah 4:4 as follows:

The letters of Parekowhai’s Micah rest on the floor. We stoop to read them. Small, dark, with great visual compression and the implied weight of greenstone […] while [the Biblical] Micah demands purity; Parekowhai’s Micah exempli- fies adulteration. The use of greenstone Formica foregrounds the inauthenticity. Not a Māori material, but a Pakeha27 one; not natural, but artificial; not stone, but plastic; not solid, but a laminate.28

This work is also described by Leonard as foregrounding Māori appropriation of European culture and technology, recoded for Māori purpose – a trait, he cites, as a hallmark of Parekowhai’s practice. In those terms, this work can be read as a reference to the Māori adoption of the biblical Old

95 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua Testament and to the hybrid Christian Māori religions that evolved in the 1830s–90s, often described as the Māori prophetic movements. These highly spiritual, political and artistic movements took various forms, including the Pai Marie, Ringatu and Ratana faiths. Born of a period of dramatic cultural change, the prophetic movements were an antidote to the invasion, colonisation and acculturation that Māori were experiencing. They were new templates for Māori existence. A parallel can be made with Māori adoption and adaption of words, text and language, written Te Reo Māori and English. Both were creative strategies used to ensure Māori survival, tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty) and enabling us to reimagine new Māori worlds.

96 Sovereignty over Representation. Indigenous Cinema in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Kabita Chakma

97 Sovereignty over Representation 1 This essay aims to trace the emergence of Indigenous British colonisation of undivided India ended in cinema in Bangladesh, particularly in the Chittagong Hill 1947. Tracts (CHT), positing it in the framework of the global 2 Before this, there were a Indigenous film movement known as the Fourth Cinema. It number of private institutions in Bangladesh’s links CHT cinema to a wider discussion of the representa- cinema history from tion of Indigenous subjects as ‘others’ in mainstream Bang- the time of undivided British Bengal when ladesh cinema, and discusses critical questions raised by this most of Bangladesh was representation, highlighting what might be considered sover- known as East Bengal. For example, in 1898 eignty in relation to Indigenous representation in cinema. Hiralal Sen, born in East Bengal, established the Royal Bioscope Company Cinema Production in the CHT and the in Calcutta. It was the Representation of Indigenous Pahari first cinema institution in South Asia. Some In 1957, a decade after the end of British colonisation,1 East aristocrats of the Dhaka Nawab family established Pakistan’s first national cinema institution, the East Paki- the Dhaka East Bengal Cinematograph Society stan Film Development Corporation, was established in around 1929. After the the capital, Dhaka. After Bangladesh gained independence 1947 British decolonisation, Abdul Zabbar Khan, in 1971, the East Pakistan Film Development Corporation Md. Modabber and Mr Mohiuddin established (EPFDC) was renamed Bangladesh Film Development Iqbal Films in 1954. Corporation (BFDC).2 From the very beginning of the film 3 The lake destroyed 40 industry, the CHT was used as a site of cinema production, per cent of CHT’s best for two reasons. First, for its unique landscape of hills and agricultural land. It displaced about one-third forest that contrast with most of Bangladesh’s vast deltaic of the CHT’s entire pop- 688 ulation, who were mostly plain land. And second, the square-kilometre Kaptai Chakmas, submerging lake, man-made in the 1960s, which as a result of the con- numerous villages and towns, including Ran- struction of the Kaptai hydro-electric dam, created an exotic gamati, the largest town landscape of serene water interspersed with islands. The of the CHT. As compensation, the government creation of the picturesque lake, however, brought catastro- only returned the equivalent of one-third of the phe, destroying a large number of non-Bengali Indigenous lost land, forcing many to peoples’ homes and livelihoods.3 take refuge in neighbouring India, where most For the East Pakistan government and for the new Bang- still remain stateless. ladesh government, the Kaptai hydro-electric project was a Less than 5 per cent of the electricity produced major technological feat and a signifier of the state’s entry in the Kaptai facility is used for the CHT. into modernity. Many important guests’ visits to the new nation state included a trip to Kaptai, accompanied by extensive visual documentation. The film Bangladesh I Love You documented the 1978 visit of the world heavy-weight cham- pion Mohammad Ali to the Kaptai project in the CHT.

98 Kabita Chakma 4 In this newly achieved modernity, Dhaka narrative films Willem van Schendel, Wolfgang Mey and Aditya constructed the CHT and its Indigenous inhabitants as Dewan, The Chittagong exotic ‘others’. Anthropologists and historians observed that Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland (Bangkok: ‘the “tribal beauties” supposedly inhabiting [CHT’s] slopes White Lotus, 2000), p. 268. figured frequently as picturesque elements in popular films 5 geared at a national audience’.4 Portraying such a scenario, The term pahari, however, is more neutral than the box-office hit and Pakistan’s first colour film, Sangam other derogatory terms (Confluence, 1964, Urdu) by acclaimed Bengali film director imposed on Indigenous peoples of the CHT by Zahir Raihan, was shot in the CHT. Other representations of many bureaucrats, writers and scholars in the Indigenous subjectivity, including ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, colonial and ‘postcolo- ‘villainous’ characters, subordinate to Bengali stars, are also nial’ periods (despite Bangladesh being re- evident in this era of filmmaking. garded as a postcolonial Filmmakers homogenised the diverse Indigenous peoples state, the CHT is not in a postcolonial situation. of the CHT into one single identity – pahari – meaning ‘hill It is still colonised by the 5 state’s policies of milita- people’. The depictions of these Indigenous peoples were risation, transmigration fanciful amalgamations of anything that seemed foreign, not and biased civil administration). Derogatory just to Bangladesh but to elsewhere in the world. These early terms include upajati or upa-jati (literally mean- films provide little or no insight into issues of consequence ing a ‘sub-nation’, itself to the CHT, and treat the area and its Indigenous peoples as a misnomer for the word ‘tribal’ in Bangla), and simply an exotic backdrop, as scenography. The 1976 super the recent 2011 invented hit Jokhon Bristi Elo (The Rain),6 a large portion of which belittling terms, khudra nrigoshthi (small ethnic was shot in the CHT, fits this scenographic treatment. The groups/sects), khudra jatisvattva (small races/ main female character, portrayed as a ‘pahari beauty’ and nations/peoples), or played by Bengali actor Olivia Gomez, is attired in exotic khudra sampradai (small communities), all of costumes that have no connection to any cultural group in which are rejected by the the CHT. She falls in love with a visiting Dhaka Bengali Indigenous peoples of Bangladesh. elite, played by the actor Wasim. The ‘pahari beauty’ and 6 Directed by S.M. Shafi, her father, who address the visitor with the formal epithet it was the first full- Babu, are rendered inferior to their Bengali counterparts. length colour film made in post-independence The depiction of paharis as subordinate is a continual theme Bangladesh and was in Bangladeshi cinema and television, and is commonly con- released in forty-six countries. structed around the hegemonic Bengali Babu character. 7 The title ‘Many Colours One early exception to the scenographic treatment of the of the Sky’ resonates CHT and its inhabitants is Harunur Rashid’s 1976 classic, with the rainbow that arches over the opening Megher Onek Rong (Many Colours of Clouds, or Many scene of the film. Colours of the Sky).7 It won five national awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Child Actor, Best Cinematog- raphy and Best Musical Director. It is perhaps the only

99 Sovereignty over Representation 8 significant commercially released narrative film directed by The notion, commonly depicted in national a non-Indigenous filmmaker that attempts to take seriously cinema, that sexually the portrayal of the CHT and its paharis. The film’s main abused female war- survivors must die, is characters, Dr Omor (played by Omor Elahi), a Bengali phy- critiqued by Bangladeshi feminist scholar Kaberi sician, his wife Ruma (Dr Rowshan Ara) and young child Gayen, ‘Women, War and Adnan (Master Adnan), are caught up in the violence of the Cinema: Construction of Women in the Liberation 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. In the turmoil, War Films of Bangla- Omar becomes separated from Ruma and Adnan. Ruma is desh’, French Journal for Media Research 3 gang-raped by Pakistani soldiers and left for dead with her (2015): http://french- journalformediaresearch. child. The doctor believes his family has been killed and com/index.php?id=478 begins a new married life in the CHT with a pahari nurse Accessed July 2018. named Mathin (played by Rina Sarki, who took the stage name Mathin). Ruma, who is psychologically scarred, moves with her son to the CHT for rehabilitation. She recognises her doctor husband when he visits the rehabilitation centre, but because of the ‘shame’ of being raped she feels she cannot face him. She chooses instead to anonymously leave her son with the doctor and his new wife and then commits suicide.8 Unlike other early scenographic Bengali narrative films, Megher Onek Rong seeks authenticity in the treatment of its location, inserting specific scenes of the landscape and traditional life of the CHT, including jum agriculture, and the Marma Chief Bohmong’s ceremonial procession to a Buddhist temple. Rina Sarki, who plays Mathin, is from the CHT. She has Indigenous Tripura ancestry on her mother’s side and Nepali ancestry on her father’s side. Such casting is an important shift away from using Bengali actors to play paharis. In the film, the paharis are not portrayed as subordinate or simple, but are treated respectfully, and the principal pahari characters are presented as modern and highly educated. Mathin, who dresses in fashionable Western and Bengali clothing, speaks Bengali with the intonation of the educated elite. She reads Time magazine. There is vibrant repartee between her and her husband, and neither is portrayed as subordinate to the other. However, from an Indigenous perspective, some issues in the film are problematic.

100 Kabita Chakma 9 The film raises questions about who should belong to the Kabita Chakma and Bina D’Costa, ‘The Chittagong new nation. Paharis’ allegiance to the state is brought into Hill Tracts: Diminish- doubt. In one episode, Mathin, who is caring for wounded ing Violence or Violent Peace?’, in Edward freedom fighters and is clearly committed to the new nation, Aspinall et al. (eds.), Diminishing Conflicts explains why she would fight for her country. Dr Omor ques- in Asia and the Pacific: tions her allegiance, retorting ‘Is this fight for freedom yours Why Some Subside and Other’s Don’t (London: too?’, claiming that she uses ‘borrowed ideas’. The impli- Routledge, 2013), p. 139. cation is that non-Bengalis do not have genuine reasons of their own to fight for the new nation. This denial of paharis’ contribution to Bangladesh’s independence resonates with national narratives that generally exclude the contributions and sacrifices made by CHT Indigenous peoples during the war. When Dr Omor questions her allegiance, Mathin declares, ‘You do not want to accept us as Bengali, but I belong to this land!’ This dialogue might be interpreted as Mathin’s search, as a pahari woman who has acquired almost everything – education, affluence, Western affecta- tions – for the final step in her ‘rise’ above her pahari status: to be accepted as a Bengali. This interpretation is reinforced by calls made by high-level political leaders of that time for paharis to abandon their own cultures and be integrated into Bengali culture. At a 1972 meeting between the CHT’s member of parliament, Manabendra Narayan Larma, and the founding leader and Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Rahman counselled Larma with the words ‘Tora sab Bangali hoiya ja’, meaning ‘You should all become Bengalis’.9 This Bengali hegemony was clearly reflected in the 1972 constitution, which recognises Bangladesh as a country of only one ethnicity (Bengali) and one language (the Bengali language). The conversation between Dr Omar and Mathin embodies the state’s position and negates Indige- nous peoples’ freedom unless they participate in the one-nation framework. Apart from Mathin, whose short-lived career was confined to Megher Onek Rong, the only professional Indig- enous actor in Bangladesh cinema with a sustained presence is the more recent CHT actor Jugantar Chakma, who goes

101 Sovereignty over Representation 10 by the stage name Chinese.10 Chinese’s usual role is as a Some Indigenous people are occasionally cast in supporting actor in Bengali action movies. As a martial-arts minor roles. For exam- black belt holder, he has been the fight director for many ple, a group of young Chakma people worked action films. He first appeared in the role of a smuggler in in the roles of accom- 1984 2017 plices of the villain in a the Bengali film Inspector. By , he had worked on film by actor and director about 400 films, in all of which his identity as a pahari, an Ananta Jalil. Prashanta Tripura acted in Imtiaz Indigenous person, is of little consequence. His roles have Bijon Ahmed’s Matir Pro- generally been nefarious – as a smuggler, a foreigner, or jar Deshe (Kingdom of Clay Subjects, 2016) and a villain’s accomplice. Mahtab Hossain, an entertainment Kamal Chakma in Aka Reza Gahlib’s Kaler Putul reporter, thus described Jugantar Chakma as the ‘“Chinese” (Dolls of Time, 2017). villain of the Bengali cinema’.11 11 Mahtab Hossain, Bangla In the national cinema, Indigenous subjectivity has thus chalacitrer ‘Chinese’ been constructed in various reductionist ways: as subordi- Jugantar Chakmar Katha (The Story of Jugantar nates in relation to Bengalis, as exotic others, as villains, or, Chakma, the ‘Chinese’ of Bengali Cinema): at best, educated paharis aspiring to be Bengalis. http://www.kalerkantho. com/online/entertain- Indigenous Cinema of the Chittagong Hill Tracts ment/2017/07/17/520428 Accessed 17 July 2017. 1996 12 In , Aandalat Phor/Phawr (Penumbra), a Chakma- Made in 2005, the film language stage drama written and directed by Jhimit Jhimit was premiered at the Jum Aesthetics Council’s Chakma, was remade with cooperation from the Aranyak 2006 Parbattya Chatt- Natyadal of Dhaka to become the first CHT film to be shot agram Adivasi Sanskriti Mela (Chittagong Hill outdoors. A decade later, in 2006, a full-length Chakma Tracts Indigenous Peo- ples Cultural Festival) in narrative film titled Dulu Kumuri, which tells an Indigenous Rangamati during CHT’s folk tale, was released. It was the first film to be scripted, traditional New Year in mid-April. For more produced, directed and performed by Indigenous peoples details on the film see of the CHT.12 In the twelve years from 2006 to 2018, CHT Kabita Chakma and Glen Hill, ‘Dulu Kumuri and Indigenous filmmakers have made over fifty films in the Post-national Histories’, in Naeem Mohaiemen Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Tanchangya, Bengali and English (ed.), Between Ashes languages. These include short experimental social, cultural and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind or ecological films, full-length activist documentaries, and Spot of Bangladesh Na- short to full-length feature films of various genres. They tionalism (Dhaka: Drishti- pat Writer’s Collective, vary in their quality and attitude to their subject matter, 2010), pp. 250–58. and there is no unity in the representation of the CHT or the construction of the subjectivity of the films’ characters. The themes range from the urban to the rural and the stories from the fictional to the factual. The films are, in short, as heterogeneous as the Indigenous peoples themselves.

102 Kabita Chakma 13 Made without the support of the state or of cinema phi- Barry Barclay, Our Own Image (Auckland: Long- lanthropists, most CHT films are ‘no-budget’ films in which man Paul, 1990). In a 17 the actors and technicians work with no or minimal remu- September 2002 lecture on Fourth Cinema at neration. CHT cinema is also a ‘no-profit’ cinema. Mostly the Auckland University Film and Media Studies made and consumed in the CHT, these films have neverthe- Department, Barclay less attracted national and international audiences, and some explained why he coined the term. The lecture have won praise at local, national and international film was later published as festivals. ‘Celebrating Fourth Cinema’, Illusions 35 In 1990, Māori filmmaker and cinema critic Barry (Winter 2003): pp. 7–11, New Zealand, June 2003. Barclay introduced the term ‘Indigenous Cinema’, in which 14 ‘Indigenous’ is indexed with a Capital ‘I’.13 Placing Indige- Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino, ‘To- nous Cinema in the broader cinematic discourse, he posited wards a Third Cinema: that it is a ‘Fourth Cinema’, adding to Fernando Solanas’s Notes and Experiences for the Development of a and Octavio Gettino’s framework of First, Second and Third Cinema of Liberation in the Third World’, After- cinemas. First Cinema refers to Hollywood movies. Second image 3 (Summer 1971): Cinema refers to European Art films that reject Hollywood pp. 16–30. 15 conventions. Third Cinema refers to cinema from the post- The term ‘Fourth World’ was used in 1974 by colonial world, such as the authors’ home region of Latin George Manuel and America, which portrays the particular cultural thinking Michael Posluns. See 14 Pamela Wilson and of the colonised though the eyes of the repressed. Barclay Michelle Stuart (eds.), defined the Fourth Cinema as having an ideology that does Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and not necessarily conform to the modern nation state’s cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, goals and aspirations. Barclay’s Fourth Cinema thus relates 2008), p. 9. to the older term ‘Fourth World’, coined in the late twentieth century as part of the emergence of collective international Indigenous activism,15 which also occurred in the CHT. By far the most ambitious CHT film to date, Aung Rakh- ine’s 2014 masterpiece Maw Theng Gaari (My Bicycle), demonstrates the key features of Barclay’s conception of Indigenous or Fourth Cinema. Maw Theng Gaari is the first mainstream Chakma language film. Rakhine, who both directed and scripted the film, is an Indigenous filmmaker from Cox’s Bazar, a district adjacent to the CHT. Maw Theng Gaari premiered in 2014 at Dhaka’s 13th International Short and Independent Film Festival, and has been shown in approximately twenty international film festivals. Screened as part of the main category competition, it secured the Best Screenplay award at the 2015 Silver Akbuzat International Festival of National & Ethnic Cinema.

103 Sovereignty over Representation 16 Maw Theng Gaari tells the story of an unemployed Indig- Zakir Hossain Raju, Ban- gladesh Cinema and Na- enous CHT youth, Kamal (played by Kamal Mani Chakma), tional Identity: In Search whose life revolves around his much-loved bicycle. After of the Modern? (London: Routledge, 2015). failing to find a job in the city, Kamal returns home with his bicycle, which is a novelty in his remote village. He hits upon the idea of using it to earn an income by ferrying people and goods. But his entrepreneurial endeavours are disrupted by run-ins with both the powerful locals in the village and encounters with the Bangladesh military who occupy the CHT. Eventually, Kamal’s bicycle is stolen and he finds it discarded and damaged – a metaphor for his shat- tered dreams. In a final scene, Kamal is shown leaving the CHT just as he arrived – a passenger sitting with his (now broken) bicycle in a small one-oared boat on the Kaptai lake. The one-oared boats that slowly pass him from the opposite direction carry even more contemporary technologies: one carries a motorcycle, another a television set. Thus the film sets the struggles of everyday life in the CHT against a changing cultural and technological landscape, and the unsettling backdrop of violence. However, here the primary threat is from the criminal activity of fellow Indigenous villagers, rather than the security forces. While the presence of the military is menacingly alluded to, only rarely is it actually encountered. In this way, Maw Theng Gaari demonstrates Barclay’s conception of an Indigenous Cinema that presents perspectives beyond those of the cinema of modern nation states. Mainstream Bangla- deshi cinema, described by film scholar Zakir Hossain Raju as ‘Bengali-Muslim’ cinema,16 does not usually contest the national narrative, enshrined in the Constitution, that Bang- ladesh has only ‘one people, one language, and one culture’. Maw Theng Gaari, as a non-Bangla, Chakma-language Bangladeshi film, disturbs this narrative of homogeneity. The film tells a Bangladeshi story in which the concerns of its Indigenous people are central. In other words, Indigenous people are no longer exotic ‘others’ whose role is to reinforce the normalcy of a unitary Bengali culture. Nor is it an Indig- enous story told from a Bengali perspective.

104 Kabita Chakma 17 Rather than exotic paharis, villainous paharis, or paharis A letter from the Ban- gladesh Censor Board aspiring to achieve a Bengali identity, the film reveals ordi- to the filmmaker Aung nary Indigenous peoples with ordinary lives, who are good Rakhine. Letter no. 10(9)/2014/1011, 29 June and bad, and have dreams and frustrations. Technology 2015. 18 intervenes in the lives of these Indigenous peoples, just as it Jolene Richard, ‘Visu- does everywhere. Whether it is the imposition of the Kaptai alizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric hydro-electric dam or the introduction of a bicycle, lives are Sensors’, South Atlan- affected. The film frees us from the romantic assumption tic Quarterly 110, no. 2 (Spring 2011): pp. that authentic Indigenous life should be static – stuck in 465–86. 19 some imagined exotic past. For instance, Michelle Despite Maw Theng Gaari’s international successes, the Raheja, ‘Reading Na- nook’s Smile: Visual film has not yet been commercially released in Bangladesh. Sovereignty, Indigenous The Bangladesh Censor Board has so far refused permission Revisions and Ethnogra- phy, and Atanarjuat (The for it to be released in any national cinema theatre because Fast Runner)’, Ameri- can Quarterly 59, no. 4 of a written claim from a Lieutenant Colonel in the Bangla- (December 2007): pp. desh military that it contains scenes and dialogue detrimen- 1159–85; Michelle Rahe- 17 ja, Reservation Reelism: tal to the Bangladesh government and security force. Redfacing, Visual Sover- eignty, and Representa- tion of Native Americans Visual Sovereignty in Film (Lincoln: Univer- sity of Nebraska Press, In 1995, Jolene Rickard, a Tuscarora scholar, artist and 2011); Faye Ginsburg, curator, coined the term ‘visual sovereignty’ in the context ‘Televisual Sovereignty in Contemporary Australian of North American Indigenous peoples’ artworks and films. Indigenous Media: A His- 2011 tory of Cultural Futures’, In a article, she further examined this aesthetic value, in Tufte & O. Hemer which goes beyond narrow western legalistic notions of (eds.), Voice and Matter: 18 Contemporary Challeng- sovereignty. Since then, the term has gained currency in es in Communication for the wider study of Indigenous art and cinema.19 With the Development (Goteborg: Nordic Press, 2016), pp. emergence over the last two decades of Indigenous CHT 173–88. 20 films, their makers are beginning to exert their sovereignty For a background to CHT over their own representation.20 Rather than accepting the filmmakers and their cinema see Adit Dewan, reductive constructions imposed by others, they are con- ‘Felim: Chalachittra, structing their own diverse and complex subjectivity. These Bishayan, Atmaparichoy ebang Amader Sam- films are not simply a reminder to themselves that they are ajik Sanskriti’ (Felim: Cinema, Globalisation, not misfits on the margins of another homogeneous culture Self-Identity and Our – a reminder that, as Mathin from the film Megher Onek Social Culture)’, Jum Journal: https://bn.jum- Rong says, they too belong to this land. CHT’s Indigenous journal.com/2017/04/06/ film-globalization- films, as representative of Fourth Cinema from Bangladesh, self-identity-and-our-so- also stand as a reminder to everyone that Bangladesh’s rich cial-culture/ Accessed 27 April 2017. Also see, Fe- diversity deserves to be celebrated. lim: Cinema for Identity, A Story of Film and Film Makers of CHT, Bangla- desh (2017), directed by Turin Tanchangya and Adit Dewan: https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=R870EWqdRLw. 105 Sovereignty over Representation Adholot Pohr (1996), directed by Foyaz Dulu Kumori (2006), directed by Tarun Chakma. Zahir/Jhimmit Jhimit Chakma. Poster courtesy of Poster courtesy of Adit Dewan. Adit Dewan.

106 Kabita Chakma Kamal’s wife, Indira, anticipating Kamal’s return from the city. Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courtesy of the director.

Kamal with his family, receiving blessings from a Buddhist monk as he starts an entrepreneurial endeavour: ferrying people and goods with a bicycle, a new technology in his remote CHT village. Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courtesy of the director.

107 Sovereignty over Representation Kamal with his family and the bicycle. Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courtesy of the director.

There is one soldier per forty civilians in the CHT compared to one soldier per 1,750 civilians in the rest of Bangladesh. See Militarization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh: The Slow Demise of the Region’s Indigenous Peoples, IWGIA, 2012, p.46. Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courte- sy of the director.

108 Kabita Chakma Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courtesy of the director.

The final scene in which Kamal is shown leaving his CHT home in a one-oared boat, with his broken bicycle. The other boats passing him from the opposite direction carry even more contemporary technologies: a motorcycle and a television set. Still from Maw Theng Gaari (2014), directed by Aung Rakhine. Courtesy of the director.

109 Sovereignty over Representation Statues, Maps, Stories and Laws

Critical Perspectives on Land Rights and Use Statues, Maps, Stories and Laws

Critical Perspectives on Land Rights and Use 112 How has the illusion of territorial ‘discovery’ structures systematically erased Aboriginal been facilitated and challenged through designations, and sets these observations public art? What role can Indigenous story- in a broader framework of state-led Indig- telling and contemporary literary practices enous repression. Cope further elaborates play in disrupting the bureaucratic language the critique of colonial mapping through that perpetuates colonialist land practices? references to the oral histories of her family, How have the politics of land surveys, illustrating how millennia of accumulative mapping and place-naming shaped the colo- knowledge have provided deeper insight into nial imaginary and historical memory? What changes in sea levels and geological forma- happens when the experience of relating to tions than the colonial surveys ever could. land over tens of thousands of years comes Máret Ánne Sara takes up land issues into conflict with modern notions of property through the lens of literary narrative and and ownership? What legal frameworks and Sámi story-telling, making the case for such strategies are available to us as we study, practices as ways of destabilising contem- reflect upon and activate these issues on a porary relationships to land in order to shock global scale? deeply rooted Enlightenment and colonial This section addresses these questions systems that privilege mastery and exploita- through five acute and diverse perspectives tion of nature over its guardianship. In Sara’s on Indigenous land use and rights advocacy. essay, the ‘complex cosmo-vision’ of Sámi Daniel Browning’s survey of Aboriginal art legends, as illuminated through figures such in public spaces puts work by artists such as the eahpáraš and the ulddát, becomes as Fiona Foley, Tony Albert and Reko Rennie a powerful mode of critiquing the capitalist in the context of the long history and oblit- motivations and ecocidal policies that, con- erative nature of colonial (re-)naming and cealed by the bland, systematic language of place-making. Arguing that public art, as it western colonialist bureaucracy, continue has been constituted in the colonial imag- to displace Sámi life. Her novel, which is inary, is always a form of monumentalism, excerpted here, deploys Sámi story-telling his critique suggests that when Aboriginal to reveal the swirl of familial tensions and art unfolds in public spaces, it forms a kind generational divides, exacerbated by the of negative image of the colonial monument progressive pressure of technology and that performs its operations in reverse by contemporary society, and the contentions emphasising the continuation of Aboriginal of land usage. Drawing from Sámi cosmo- presence within ancestral lands that are vision, fantasy and imagination Sara pro- today peppered by statues and plaques vides alternative routes to formulating strat- celebrating their ‘discovery’ by European egies to address these important issues. settlers. Ánde Somby moves the discussion into a Megan Cope’s essay picks up on the theory of the encounter, articulating a legal mechanisms of colonial mapping and sets framework and giving ‘shape’ to the various them in contradistinction to Aboriginal formations and possibilities for land issues relationships to land and naming, examining and cohabitation within the context of Indig- how fluctuations between these practices enous peoples’ relationship to the nation- have weighed on the formation of historical state. This becomes a useful framework memory. This forms the basis for certain for looking backwards and forwards at the strains of her own artistic research, which recurring themes of places, names, land and compares, for example, nineteenth-century sovereignty on which this section focuses parish maps of Quandamooka country in and with which this publication on the whole Southeastern Queensland to military surveys is deeply concerned. of the same area from a few decades later. The section is concluded by Sontosh The study reveals how colonial-military Bikash Tripura’s discussion of Indigenous

113 Statues, Maps, Stories and Laws peoples’ land rights in Bangladesh, a work that was developed in part under Somby’s supervision at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Tripura’s detailed explication of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) becomes an incisive case study of the legal theory presented in Somby’s overview, particularly in regards to how the many Indigenous communities of CHT relate to the governmental regimes of the Bangladeshi nation state, whose 1972 constitutional premise upheld the call for ‘one nation, one language’. In Tripura’s conclusion, certain elements of Somby’s legal analysis find a home in the practical suggestions he makes regarding the strengthening of good governance, the protection of human rights, and the new forms of democratic involvement necessary to address the critical issues of Indigenous land use in the context of contemporary political formations.

114 Hiding in Plain Sight. Decolonising Public Memory Daniel Browning

115 Hiding in Plain Sight 1 Obliteration: from Latin obliteratus, past parti- ‘Obliterate’, Online Etymology Dictionary: ciple of obliterare ‘cause to disappear, blot out, https://www.etymonline. erase, efface’, figuratively ‘cause to be forgotten’, com/word/obliterate, Accessed 27 May 2018. from ob ‘against’ (see ob-) + littera (also litera) 2 Richard Bell, speaking ‘letter, script’ (see letter (n.); abstracted from to the author on Awaye!, phrase literas scribere ‘write across letters, strike ABC Radio National, 1 broadcast on 17 April out letters.’ 2010. In the Australian context, decolonisation is at least intellectually and aesthetically possible. Postcolonial thinking and the process of reimagination are evident in public artworks in Australia. This essay attempts to draw out the ways in which public memory is being challenged to rethink the colonial meta-narratives of discovery, terra nullius and White Australia. In attempting to frame the wider debate around aesthetic or visual decolonisation I will stake a personal claim on autonomy and self-inscription by recasting the national mythos of discovery into a locus – my ancestral country on the far north coast of New South Wales – where memory, obliteration, naming and amnesia coalesce. In The Dinner Party (2013), the final instalment in a trilogy of films, the renowned Aboriginal artist Richard Bell provoked us to imagine the future after ‘victory’ – presum- ably after decolonisation and the liberation struggles that implies: ‘I believe that nothing has ever happened without it being imagined first … I believe that we Aboriginal people need to imagine victory before we can actually get it. And to get there we have to ask ourselves “what are we fighting for?”.’2 What precisely do we want? After the so-called liberation of Iraq, a failure to imagine the social, political and economic future after following the forcible removal of the regime led to an unending cycle of violence and civil disturbance. Victory is not decisive and permanent unless it engenders a future beyond reconstruction. What are the limits of decolonisation? Will Australia itself decolonise when it finally seeks independence from the British crown? If you consider that the continent before invasion was a network of interlacing hereditary clan estates and the

116 Daniel Browning territories of sovereign peoples who exercised a form of diplomacy and trade, Australia the nation state is a colonial power. Colonialism transmutes and in finding a way to maintain its power and hegemony, it shifts and rebalances. The impetus to challenge historical amnesia through public art is being driven by arts funding bodies with philanthropic money from the resource and urban development sectors. But you could argue that this trend is at some level cursory and disingenuous. My criticism of the trend towards aesthetic or visual decolonisation is not personal – it is jux- taposed against the structural inability of the nation state to negotiate honestly with the First People and confront its brutal past beyond the aesthetic and immaterial. Decolonisation is defined by its opposite, its precursor. Decolonisation is the afterimage of colonisation, and both are transitory phases. Both are active, almost physical processes; colonialism is in this sense the sublimation or ful- filment of colonisation, it’s end, a stasis. Colonisation is an ecstatic process that terminates, while colonialism is a philosophy – with an ideology and an imaginary – and a set of imperatives by which colonisation is justified. Colonialism is fixed and entrenched in a way that colonisation is not. At this point I would like to move towards a personal decolonisation narrative based on my family history and the relationship of my ancestors to the meta-narrative of discovery. When the first tall ships – often thought by Aboriginal people to be floating islands – passed the coastline of my country in far northern New South Wales in 1770, the bot- anist Sir Joseph Banks was aboard. The man reputed to have discovered a continent that had in fact been settled for thousands of years, Captain James Cook, was at the helm of the bark Endeavour. His orders from the British king George III were unequivocal: the journey was a scientific expedition of the Royal Society, which was under the king’s patronage. Cook and his crew were to map the Transit of Venus across the southern sky. Cook’s sealed, secret orders, though, were to search for the Great Southern Land, the unknown continent of Terra Australis Incognita, about which

117 Hiding in Plain Sight 3 European mapmakers had postulated for hundreds of The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, years. His crewman, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks, sighted manuscript held by the land between what is now Mallacoota and Orbost, in the State Library of New South Wales, entry dated south-eastern part of the continent. Obligingly, Cook 15 May 1770, p. 263. 4 renamed the site Point Hicks, inscribing a public memory in Ibid. a decisive moment of obliteration. As he moved north into my country around the easternmost point of the continent, Cook was guided by the rise of a volcanic mountain, which he renamed Mount Warning. As he mapped the sinuous coastline and charted the rocky outcrops, islets and headlands of Australia’s eastern coast, he was no doubt closely watched from the shore. Banks, later knighted for his diligence as an observer of botanical species, recorded an ‘encounter’ with the Bundjalung ancestors he watched from the deck of the Endeavour as they rounded Cape Byron (also renamed on this same voyage).

Some people were seen, about 20, each of which carried upon his back a large bundle of something which we conjecturd to be palm leaves for covering their houses; we observd them with glasses for near an hour during which time they walkd upon the beach and then up a path over a gently sloping hill, behind which we lost sight of them. Not one was once observd to stop and look towards the ship; they pursued their way in all appearance intirely unmovd by the neighbour- hood of so remarkable an object as a ship must necessarily be to people who have never seen one.3

So, despite this ‘remarkable object’ passing the coast, the Bundjalung ancestors were ‘in all appearance unmoved’. 4 The colonial imaginary is staked on naming, on describing and observing things. It is possessive and proprietorial and names are proprietary signs that stake a claim to ownership and result in dispossession. If Cook’s naming of some of the physical features along this coastline is any guide,

118 Daniel Browning his mission might have foundered here in the easternmost part of the Australian continent. There was a hidden threat lurking in the green shoals. Beneath the surface of the glinting seas, just off a beautiful volcanic island that would later acquire his name, was a maze of treacherous reefs. The Endeavour lurched and its sails billowed as the command went up to quickly change course. Cook’s journey went on, and the near-miss off the coast on that day in 1770 unleashed a cataclysm for these same ‘unmoved’ people. Just as he had imperiously renamed the peak Mount Warning, Cook named the outcrop Point Danger. Warning and danger now stalked the traditional land of the Bundjalung-speaking clans, the descendants of three brothers who populated the country after being washed ashore in a storm raised by the fury of their abandoned mother. There is an islet just off the coast, which along with a peaked hill across the river mouth in Tweed Heads, was known to the first people as the ceremonial place of the jungar or pelican. The volcanic islet, colonised by a healthy population of jungar and sea birds, was later renamed Cook Island. The name of the fishing village where my ancestors permanently settled in the late nineteenth century, Fingal Head, was officially gazetted late in the twentieth century, but the name Fingal had been used for many years. It comes from Fingal’s Cave, another basalt formation on the unin- habited island of Staffa, off the west coast of Scotland. As well as being the name of a mythological giant who strode the channel between the causeway off the coast of Antrim to that basalt cave in the Inner Hebrides, Fingal is said to be derived from a Gaelic term for ‘white stranger’. The maritime danger was still apparent well into the nineteenth century. Many ships foundered, wrecked on the reefs or the treacherous Tweed Bar. The English explorer John Oxley even noted the remains of a wreck off Cook Island. It is no coincidence that the oldest public building on the Tweed is the historic Fingal lighthouse, built in 1879. The mountain that guided Cook and those who followed him was the highest point of an extinct volcano. The basalt headland at

119 Hiding in Plain Sight Fingal is a lava flow, the remnant of an explosion or seismic activity twenty million years ago. To the Bundjalung, the headland was known as Booninybah – place of the booniny, or echidna. The name, though, might have been used to describe any such place where echidna were plentiful. It was not proprietorial but mnemonic – suggestive of what game might be found where. I have seen antique sepia postcards etched with a derivation of the same name, at a river cross- ing further up the coast. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the peninsula was known generally as ‘The Caves’, or Cave Point. There were caves here, said to be an Aboriginal burial place, but they were quarried mercilessly, even broken with gelignite. The igneous rock was then used to construct training walls to stem the tide of the Tweed River along the western side of the peninsula. It was during this quarrying that the bones of our ancestors were dislodged from their resting places deep in the sand, rising to the surface. The Australian writer and political adviser Bob Ellis, who spent many summers at Fingal in a concrete and fibro shack on Wommin Lagoon, once wrote that his mother had tiptoed into the caves in the 1920s. In lilting prose, he wrote that at twilight ‘you could hear the dead screaming out, very distinctly, “my land, my brothers, my home”’. Today, the abandoned quarry site is strangely quiet, even disorienting. Although some people might pass the mutilated face of the rock that now props up luxury homes and not be disturbed by it, I have only ever walked there by mistake. I spent the first years of my life at Fingal in an army hut put up in 1946 by my grandfather Noel, a returned service- man, to house his wife Mary and their children. Fingal sits on the land of my ancestors. As a child, I could wander fearlessly from house to house along the spit. There were Brownings everywhere. When the first missionary came, by accident, it was my great-great grandmother Mary, a Bun- djalung woman born across the river, who welcomed him. The missionary, Leslie Grant Ogilvie, was surprised to find a community of people living out of the eye of the bustling

120 Daniel Browning township of Tweed Heads – hiding in plain sight. At the time that the evangelist Ogilvie first visited, the second decade of the twentieth century, Fingal was populated by Aboriginal people and South Sea Islanders, who intermarried freely. The South Sea Islanders were the first and second generations of successive waves of indentured labourers from across Melanesia who slaved in the cane fields of northern New South Wales and Queensland. They lived more or less unmolested. There were, however, stories of the light- skinned children in my family being daubed with ashes when a white stranger made his way down the track past the fishing village, to the ‘darktown settlement’ or ‘black’s camp’ as it was sometimes known. Despite the warning and danger that seemed to bear down on them, Fingal was a refuge. It was a special place. In 2012, when racist vandals spray-painted swastikas and the acronym for ‘white power’ on the only permanent markers in the cemetery, I was physically sick. I said to myself, ‘Only the impotent attack the dead.’ Erosion and king tides now threaten the tranquil beach cemetery where my ancestors lie. In my lifetime, I have seen the spinifex-lined dunes rise magnificently. To a five-year old, they seemed to roll like undulating waves. There are no dunes here anymore. There is only a vertical drop, and the sheoaks are strewn across the beach like tumbleweed. There is no whistle or hum in the trees – there is an eerie silence. Every time Aboriginal people state their own personal and family histories, or speak their language, they are rein- scribing public memory and reckoning with the obliteration of our collective history as the sovereign First People of the continent. History is, as they say, a weapon. In this context, public art produced by Aboriginal artists interrupts a version of Australian history that was until fairly recently, unilateral. It hinged on a certain imperative: that colonisation, however brutal and one-sided, was ultimately the right thing to do. The philosophical ideal of manifest destiny, of righteousness and freedom from religious persecution, has no parallel in the Australian context simply because colonial brutality and

121 Hiding in Plain Sight dispossession did not require such intellectual heft. There is an offensive meme that is widely circulated on online racist networks in Australia. Its logic is simple: the image of a boomerang is superimposed with words to the effect that in 60,000 years on the continent – I am paraphrasing here – ‘All they invented was a stick’. When asked by Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran about the poor economic status of Indigenous communities as Australia prepared to host the lavish 2000 Olympic Games, the former Indige- nous Affairs Minister (and later Attorney-General) Philip Ruddock replied: ‘They didn’t have chariots. I don’t think they invented the wheel.’ I would argue that the careless remark of a senior government minister and the racist meme are logically the same. The argument – such as it is – that insulates colonial brutality is that Aboriginal people were intellectually minor, and despite their ingenuity in a hostile environment, they did not build structures – moreover, they did not express their dominion over the land (in codes that the European could identify), harvest its wealth beyond subsistence, enslave each other for industrial purposes and nor did they resort to monumentalism. Public art is monumentalism. Entrenched in the architectural language of Greek and Roman classicism, monumentalism is a form of self-worship. It inflates the national ego, inoculates the mind and anaesthetises dissent. Think of the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument (Altare della Patria – the Alter of the Fatherland) in central Rome, with its bronze- winged Victories summoning the glory (and cruelty) of ancient Rome. The evocation of a glorious imperial past invokes a kind of wilful amnesia that forgets the excesses and violence of the Roman empire – the wholesale human suffering of slavery, religious persecution and patriarchy. Broadly speaking, Aboriginal people did not build monuments. We did build permanent structures – the fish traps at Brewarrina in north-western New South Wales and the aquaculture systems of the Budj Bim lava flow in south-western Victoria are two examples. These structures are not monuments but working agricultural systems that

122 Daniel Browning 5 were maintained and improved by generations of the same Sean Kelly, speaking to the author on Awaye!, people over thousands of years. Generally, rock engravings ABC Radio National, were used in a didactic way to teach certain beliefs and broadcast on 9 Septem- ber 2017. origin stories and to invoke the spiritual. Their permanence is obvious. In certain parts of the country, temporary grave markers such as hollow log coffins bearing clan designs painted in ochres, burial platforms and mnemonic tree carvings function in a monumental way – but these structures make no claim to permanence. The claim to historical truth made by public monuments in Australia, however, is now widely questioned. In 2017, the journalist Stan Grant stated the obvious when he questioned the inscription on a highly visible statue of Captain Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Engraved in gold across the base of the statue are the bold, capitalised words ‘DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY 1770’. In an opinion piece for ABC News, Grant wrote of the disconnection between the words and the objective fact that Aboriginal people had discovered and settled the continent at least 60,000 years before Cook set sail from Plymouth in 1768. Grant was condemned by a rabid conservative media, but his comments provoked an entirely healthy debate about historical accuracy and the unreconstructed, one-sided version of Australian history that such monuments propagate. Sean Kelly, the politics editor of The Monthly magazine, argues that ‘it is impossible to both believe – and understand, as we do now – that Indige- nous people have been on this land for tens of thousands of years and to believe that a white man discovered the land. Those two facts don’t sit by side.’5 The then Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull even felt compelled to pass judgement on Grant’s commentary. Although Grant never proposed that the statue be removed or substantially altered save for a counter-inscription, the former Prime Minister leapt to characterise those who would prefer to see such monuments defaced or dismantled as Stalinists. It is a given that as Abo- riginal people we experience a kind of cognitive dissonance when we approach these monuments to erasure or at best, elision. Aboriginal artists who make public art challenge the authority of these monuments, sometimes plainly or more obliquely.

123 Hiding in Plain Sight 6 The foray of contemporary Aboriginal art into public L. Martin-Chew, ‘The Guerrilla Operative in space seems to begin with the work of the Badtjala artist Fiona Foley’s Public Art’, Fiona Foley, whose family originate on what is known as in Christine Morrow, Michele Helmrich and Fraser Island off the Queensland coast. Foley is widely Rachel A. Kent (eds.), Fiona Foley: Forbid- regarded as the most experienced Aboriginal maker of public den (Sydney: Museum art – her first commission was in 1995 with non-Indigenous of Contemporary Art, 2009), p. 98. artist Janet Laurence for the sculpture Edge of the Trees in the forecourt of the Museum of Sydney. Her approach to the 2001 commission to create a public artwork in the legal and judicial district outside the Brisbane Magistrates’ Court can only be described as guerrilla. Foley wanted to create a work that dealt with the massacres of Aboriginal people across the entire state of Queensland – a vast territory with many frontiers. She claimed, however, that the work would relate to the ravages of fire and flood – the human impact of natural disasters and extreme weather events to which the state is prone. This was almost true. As the artist explained later, the methods used to dispose of the corpses of those massacred in Queensland and thus to destroy the evidence was to set them on fire or to throw them into rivers and creeks, sometimes both. Witnessing to Silence (2004) is composed of two groups of structures: mirror-like stainless-steel columns filled with ash – which is visible through one glass side – and a clutch of lotus plants in cast bronze, arranged in a circle. Both structures sit atop granite stones inscribed with 94 geographical place names – places not of natural disasters but of massacre sites. Foley, according to freelance arts writer Louise Martin-Chew, is part of a continuing tradition set by her Badtjala ancestors in their twenty-year war of attrition against the invaders: ‘Foley is … utilising her opportunities as an artist to mount forays from unexpected places into the public imagination, thereby challenging the cultural psyche and memory not only of Australians, but also of a growing international audience.’6 The artist Tony Albert lives and works in Sydney, although his heritage is Girramay from the tropical rainfor- est country of north Queensland. In 2013, he won a highly prized civic commission to create a monument to the war

124 Daniel Browning 7 service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people The title of the artwork is a word from the language to sit opposite the triumphal Art Deco Cenotaph in Hyde spoken by the Aboriginal Park. But instead of making a public artwork that sought to people of Sydney and recorded by the naval of- universalise that experience, Albert chose to recount – in ficer William Dawes, who was instructed by the oblique visual terms – the personal story of his grandfa- young woman Patyeg- ther Eddie Albert, a veteran of World War II. Eddie was arang in the summer of 1790–1. captured in Libya in 1941 and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. He escaped from a prison camp in Vercelli in northern Italy in 1943 and remained a fugitive for several months. In April 1944, he and six other Allied troops were discovered sheltering in Biella in the foothills of the Italian Alps. His grandson’s artwork is an allusion to what happened next. Italian troops executed three of Eddie’s comrades before a commanding officer halted the executions on the grounds that they were not enemy combatants but German prisoners of war. Albert’s artwork, based on his grandfather’s story and in collaboration with architecture firm Cracknell and Loner- gan, was unveiled in 2015. Yininmadyemi (Thou Didst Let Fall)7 features four standing bullets and three fallen shell casings forged from corten steel, painted aluminium and black marble. For Albert, his grandfather’s story is emblematic of the unacknowledged role that Aboriginal servicemen and women have played in the defence of the country in wartime. Some, though, have complained that the work is too oblique and its meaning too encoded to be a memorial. Others have suggested that the use of bullets as a motif or universal signifier of declared wars fought overseas elides their use in massacres on Australian soil. Whatever your view, Yininmadyemi (Thou Didst Let Fall) is an evocative permanent memorial that personalises Aboriginal wartime experience in a story the artist feels entitled to recount – that of his grandfather. Among other motifs, Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie is known for his use of recurring geometric designs. Tradition- ally, geometric and linear designs were incised on trees to mark out ceremonial sites and are a potent signifier of Kamilaroi identity for Rennie, who lives and works in

125 Hiding in Plain Sight 8 Melbourne. In 2012 he created a temporary artwork on a Oodgeroo Noonuccal, ‘The Past’, in her My former bank at a highly visible junction on Oxford Street People: a Kath Walker in inner Sydney, perhaps best known as a nightclub strip Collection (London: John Wiley and Sons, 1970). and the route of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. His commission was to create a site-specific work that would adorn the façade of a former Commonwealth Bank building also known as T2 at Taylor Square. The entire building was painted pink, black and blue and emblazoned with a neon sign with the refrain ‘Always was always will be’. This phrase is often recited in full at marches, protests and demonstrations like a mantra. But the full statement is unequivocal: ‘Always was, always will be Aboriginal land’. The work occupied the site from 2012 until 2017, when the City of Sydney opted to sell the building and remove the artwork, which was always intended to be temporary. In this straightforward commission, Rennie beautified a highly visible but architecturally unremarkable corner building and inflected it – however temporarily – with an abiding message about the continuity of Aboriginal presence. The past is contemporaneous, it exists today and will abide into the future. The contemporaneity of the past is a key philosophical difference between Aboriginal belief and colonialism and post-Enlightenment philosophy, which have an upwards trajectory – of moving beyond, away and in contradistinction to the past, which is generally considered to be outmoded and primitive. To return briefly to Sir Joseph Banks’ note in his journal on the appearance and behaviour of the Bundjalung ancestors whom he spied on the shore: the ancestors were not surprised, nor were they impressed by the hulking ship with its billowing white sails. That state of being unmoved by the Endeavour as it lurked off the coastline resonates for me in the present. The poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (known until 1988 as Kath Walker) expressed this idea of the contemporaneous past superbly: ‘Let no one say the past is dead/The past is all about us and within’.8

126 Daniel Browning Tony Albert, Yininmadyemi (Thou Didst Let Fall), 2015. Aluminium, black marble, corten steel. Hyde Park, Sydney. Image courtesy of City of Sydney.

127 Hiding in Plain Sight Reko Rennie, Always Was Always Will Be, 2012–17. Site-specific work installed on the T2 building in Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, Sydney. Image courtesy of City of Sydney.

128 Daniel Browning Yarabinja Bujarang. Beautiful Sea Country Megan Cope

129 Yarabinja Bujarang 1 I’d like to start by acknowledging the Bengali peoples and Robert Anderson, History, Life and Times the thirty-five Indigenous groups that are deeply rooted in of Robert Anderson: this country. I pledge my alliance to you as a Quandamooka Gheebelum, Ngugi, Mulgumpin (Brisbane: woman and acknowledge the many hardships you have faced Uniikup Productions Ltd, 2001), p. 29. with the rise of nationalism; these hardships echo our experience across the seas to the great southern land. Thank you also to the crews at OCA and Artspace and for the incredible opportunity to be here to share our Sovereign Words. I pay my respects to my Elders past and present and acknowledge that without their hard work for justice, equality and recognition of our culture, I wouldn’t be here in Dhaka today and be the person I am. Yura! Mooroomba Biggee. I’m Megan Cope. My father’s family is from Minjerribah. We’re Noonuccal, Ngugi and Goenpul people of Quanda- mooka country. Overall, my practice is very much informed by place, environment, concepts of ownership and identity and how these intersect, relate to each other and inform us of who we are as Aboriginal peoples and where this sits within the concept of Australia. I’ve found that over the last eight years or so, each development in my practice has informed the next work just as much as I’ve informed it, if not more. The work After the Flood (minjerribah) shows the Myora Mission on Minjerribah. It was a Christian mission and many of our family members were moved there with the expansion of white settlement in 1843–47 and 1891–1941. The Moreton Bay penal settlement, with Brisbane town as its centre, was closed in 1842, and Quandamooka country

Megan Cope, After was opened to free settlement in 1842. The first permanent The Flood (minjerribah), white settlers, however, came to Pulan Pulan/Amity Point 2012. Mixed media. Image Courtesy of before free settlement, in 1825, to run a pilot station. the Artist. In 1824, the penal settlement at Moreton Bay was a place of secondary punishment to house hardened criminals and recidivist prisoners. At this time, there was a strong British Military presence in Quandamooka country and in 1833 they were responsible for the massacre of our Ngugi peoples on Moorgumpin.1 Survivors of the massacre were moved to the Myora Mission in 1847.

130 Megan Cope I want my practice to address decolonisation through our lived memories of our families, country and history. When thinking about what this could look like in a visual language, I naturally began to reflect on the critical role that language has in our lives. At the present time, our people are going through a process to reclaim and revive our mother tongue, Jandai. Maps have had a critical role as colonial tools of dispossession. I wanted the world to see my country in the way that our Quandamooka peoples, our families, know and feel it. I wanted to imagine our country as if we were 97 per cent of the population – not the 3 per cent that we are – and see what that could look like.

Megan Cope, Twice Removed (winnam), 2014. Parish maps, Indian ink and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

I started to think about the importance of toponyms and toponymy for us as Aboriginal people. Place names are often indicative of resources connected with land, sea and sky as well as creation stories, trade routes and family lines both traditional and contemporary. Toponyms are an important aspect of culture and identity because within them history, events, landscapes and people are remembered, celebrated and most importantly, continued.

131 Yarabinja Bujarang 2 I began researching early maps of Quandamooka country, The Aboriginal Protec- tion Act 1869 was a mostly Parish maps that were first made throughout the document which made 1800s, and then military surveys that were commissioned by Victoria the first Colony to schematically regulate the government in the early 1900s and during World Wars the lives of Aboriginal peoples. The Act gave I and II. When comparing the Parish and military maps, I the colonisers power noticed that many Aboriginal place names that were present to control Aboriginal peoples’ lives, including in the Parish maps had been replaced with English names. regulation of residence, To me, it was no coincidence: at the time during which these employment, marriage and social life. See maps were created, our people were living under The Act ‘Aboriginal Protection Act 2 1869’, Parliament House and subject to the White Australia Policy. Place names on Victoria, https://www. a map are almost always indicative of the dominant culture foundingdocs.gov.au/ item-did-86.html and current economic beneficiaries within a geopolitical Accessed 8 October landscape. Ironically, this was also a time when many Aus- 2018. In 1901, the Immigration Restriction tralians feared invasion from Russia and Japan. Act came into law. It was specifically designed to I wanted to decolonise our country further and connect limit non-British migra- with our tradition of oral histories that tell of the time when tion to Australia and allowed for the deportation the sea level rose to that which we know today. I began to of ‘undesirable’ people. It represented the formal trace, overlay and map a further five-metre sea-level rise establishment of the over military maps as a way of decolonising our futures and ‘White Australia Policy’. See http://www.nma.gov. reminding viewers that we’re all vulnerable in the land of au/defining-moments/ fire and flood. resources/white-australia-policy Accessed 23 October 2018.

Work in Progress, ‘Colour Theory’ S2 Ep4, National Indigenous Television (Australia), 2014. Image Courtesy of No Coincidence Media and the Artist.

132 Megan Cope 3 Our families have stories from a time when the area we Ian Walters, ‘Antiquity of Marine Fishing in now know as Moreton Bay was in fact a valley, knowledge South-east Queensland’, that has been passed down through generations orally and Queensland Archaeolog- ical Research 9 (1992): through art and music for centuries. This knowledge has p. 35: https://journals. jcu.edu.au/qar/article/ been verified by geologists, who estimate that the valley view/108 Accessed Au- began flooding 18,000 years ago and reached its present state gust 2018. 3 4 approximately 6,500 years ago. Archaeological evidence Robert Neal and Errol shows that our people, our ancestors, were living in South Stock, ‘Pleistocene Oc- cupation in the South- East Queensland at least 20,000 years ago at a conservative east Queensland Coastal 4 Region’, Nature 323 minimum. (1986): p. 618: http:// Since the expansion of the British Empire and occupation www.nature.com/nature/ journal/v323/n6089/ of its colony, our Quandamooka country has witnessed and pdf/323618a0.pdf Ac- endured immense exploitation from extractive industries cessed August 2018. and a reduction of natural resources that our ancestors had maintained in pristine conditions for the last 20,000 years. I have attempted to illustrate this throughout my art practice and in recent years moved beyond cartography as a means to communicate and document it. More recently, my research and art has focused primarily on oysters and industries connected to this humble mollusc, which in the Jandai language we call Kinyinyarra. The period of early European settlement from 1824 up to the 1863 Oyster Act saw the over-exploitation and decimation of many Moreton Bay oyster beds. The government took a laissez-faire attitude to the oyster fishery, with no licensing, regulations or control in any form. Hand-built oyster beds maintained by Quandamooka peoples were allowed to run their course, with individuals helping themselves where, when and how they chose, often with the recruitment of local Aborigines, who were paid by the number of sacks they filled. The long history of oyster harvesting in Moreton Bay originates with the traditional custodians – the Quanda- mooka people – whose shellfish-rich diet is evident from the middens that can be found on the bay side of the island. The Moreton Bay Oyster Company operated from 1874 to the 1950s, drawing on the expertise of the Quandamooka people. In the nineteenth century the company had a high profile

133 Yarabinja Bujarang 5 and delivered oysters throughout Australia. At its height, Glen S. Smith, ‘Southern Queensland’s Oyster over 200 men were officially employed by the Moreton Bay Industry’, The Journal Oyster Company, and in one year (1891) more than 21,000 of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland sacks of oysters, worth about 29,100 pounds, were exported. XI, no. 3 (1981–82): pp. 45–46. Approximately two thirds of the crop was exported to 6 Sydney, Melbourne and as far as Perth, with Melbourne Dr B.K. Diggles, ‘His- torical Epidemiology taking the largest portion. In those cities, the oysters were Indicates Water Quality marketed under the name of ‘Queensland’ or ‘Moreton Bay’ Decline Drives Loss of Oyster (Saccostrea rock oysters.5 glomerata) Reefs in Moreton Bay, Australia’, Within a very short space of time (approximately forty New Zealand Journal of years) oyster stocks had been pushed to the verge of extinc- Marine and Freshwater Research 47, issue 4 tion. The Southern Queensland oyster industry flourished (2012): https://www. from the 1870s to around 1920; it peaked soon after the turn tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ 10.1080/00288330.2013 of the century and declined from approximately 1910. Euro- .781511 Accessed August 2018. pean land-use practices caused large increases in sediment 7 flux into inshore regions by 1870. This may explain why Anderson, History, Life and Times of Robert sub-tidal oyster reefs declined after major flood events in Anderson, p. 28. the late nineteenth century, associated with infestations by spionid polychaete mudworms.6 Today, subtidal oyster reefs are extinct, and around 96 per cent of the vertical zonation suitable for oyster habitation has been lost. Most of the oyster exploitation was not for food, but for the production of lime to make the mortar used in the construction of the houses and buildings of early Brisbane. From the time of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 until the end of the nineteenth century at least, lime was produced in a number of ways, including simple heap-burning or pit-burning processes. Until the 1920s, when local supplies of lime- stone began to be utilised, most of the lime was produced from sea shells. This practice continued late into the century across most of Australia’s East Coast. The early dependence on shell, which is a scattered and limited resource and occurring as Aboriginal shell middens, necessitated either transport of shell to a central kiln, or the use of simple and cheap burning methods at the location of the shell deposits.7 Since they were more accessible, oysters growing in the inter-tidal zone were exploited long before oysters growing below the low water mark. The oysters were

134 Megan Cope gathered, piled into heaps or in lime kilns located on St Helena Island and burnt. Live oysters were also scraped from the beds and were preferred by some builders since they were claimed to give the lime more ‘body’. In archaeological terms, a midden is a mound or deposit containing shells, animal bones and other refuse that indicates the site of human occupation. They are like maps, which show the lay of the land between cycles of seasonal hunting and mark the movement of our old peoples, as well as demonstrating effective management of food stocks from the land and sea. The remnants of our ancestors’ middens are still to be found throughout our country, but the hand-built shell piles once standing with high visibility and grandeur have been reduced to faint scatterings. Only recently, with community discussions about the closure of the mine that extracted mineral sands from Minjerribah, did I start to research pre-existing industries, which led me to understand the full scale that our old middens must have reached.

Main Beach Midden, c.1960, Minjerribah. Photo: Ellie Durbidge. Courtesy of North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerribah.

135 Yarabinja Bujarang Megan Cope, RE FORMATION III (Dubbagullee), 2017. Hard-cast concrete Sydney rock oysters, copper slag. Image Courtesy of the Artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY dianne tanzer + nicola stein. The perpetual reinforcement of the perception of our lands as empty lands has created a vitriolic establishment of denial. The resulting framework supports only the invasive settler colonial society, obscuring, submerging and erasing Aboriginal presence on the land. The artworks I’ve developed in response to this research have moved beyond painting, topographical and cartographic expressions and into sculptural forms connecting with audiences through the materials, the objects and their stories. To date, there have been several iterations of the midden and lime-burning works titled RE FORMATION I & II, RE FOR- MATION III (Dubbagullee) and Foundations I & II. The removal of Aboriginal architectural forms such as middens and the continued mining and excavation of our sacred sites renders a landscape void of markers once used to navigate through our country, to find our way home.

136 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival Máret Ánne Sara

137 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival There were numerous choices that led to my first novel, Ilmmiid gaskkas (In Between Worlds, 2013), many of them my own personal ones. I come from a traditional Sámi reindeer-herding society, and both sides of my family are reindeer herders. The tundra is our home, in addition to our life in Guovdageaidnu. As a child, following my father and the reindeer through the tundra, between the winter pastures in the south and the summer pastures on the northern coast, I learned to see nature and animals as an unquestioned and superior priority to our common existence. As I became older, I gradually came to see a very different world once we reached our summer grazing lands in Fála/Kvaløya, where the city of Hammerfest is rapidly encroaching upon us due to the major oil and gas industry based in the area. While our reindeer grazed on the island of Fála, I followed my father to meetings with the police, the municipality and industries situated on our traditional summer-grazing lands, where reindeers and reindeer herders have become foreign and unwanted obstacles in the context of modern living and capitalistic/industrial expansion. These meetings gave me my first and deepest impression of the very different values and priorities of western society compared to ours, and the deep conflicts that spring out of the collision of these two worlds. I witnessed from an early age the distress of these conflicts and the many intricate bureaucratic and political struggles for survival, the negative attitudes in the press and the population, leading to legal trials concerning our livelihood. The western society is still rapidly growing around us, and I still feel, as I did as a child, that my father and our people are being displaced by the language and power of bureaucracy. We are almost helpless against the political strategies, systems and forces that the western democracy harnesses to reach its capitalistic aims. Coming back to the choices I made in order to begin the process of writing, I trained as a journalist basically to have a voice in crucial issues concerning a fragile Indigenous community that in most cases is neither heard nor understood. My later choice

138 Máret Ánne Sara to leave journalism to pursue the arts came out of my realisation of the dimensions of our fights, and the restrictions of the journalistic voice. The third choice, to adopt the narrative form used in traditional children’s stories to deliver a strong political message, came instinctively. When I started writing my first novel, I was mainly concerned about our many fights to protect our land against state and capitalistic interests. After finishing the novel, our fight had switched to an even more problematic one. An invisible battle was upon us, neither seen, understood nor debated by anyone outside the core reindeer-herding Sámi community. Now, instead of addressing physical destruction, we were all of a sudden facing a powerful and face- less enemy. There has always been a conflict of interests regarding our lands: on the one hand my people need clean lands and waters in order to maintain our Sámi lifestyle of nomadic reindeer-herding, fishing and small-scale farming; on the other hand, the state pursues capitalistic, large-scale industrial development in what it sees as vast and unused lands. To this end, the Norwegian state activated a forced culling of our reindeer herds. The official narrative was no longer about the destruction of the land through the implementation of their planned industries, but an accusation that Sámi people were destroying the land by herding too many reindeers. This one-sided official narrative offered a moral and defence for the forced cullings. The state then, was free to adjust the law to legally pursue the forced cullings that threaten not only our livelihoods but also the future of Sámi reindeer-herding. Without having a voice in the public media, without anyone knowing your side of the story, how do you bring to the notice of an uninformed audience these manipulative political double standards? How do you bring about a serious discussion about systematic abuse in what is supposed to be a fair democracy? This is almost impossible in a nation coloured by political prejudice regarding its colonial history and an almost blind trust in the justice of the Scandinavian authorities. The immediate obstacles for my community are simple: to be heard, to be understood and to be believed.

139 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival In many ways, my latest visual art project Pile o´Sápmi (2016–17), a pile of hundreds of reindeer heads, which I originally built in front of the Indre Finnmark District Court following my brother’s trial against the Norwegian government in the case of the forced culling of his herd, can be read as a continuation of my novels. They both tell the story of colonialisation on so many levels and layers, prejudice in the political sphere, a misuse of democratic systems and the adjustments of laws to dismantle our rights and existence. But for this introduction, I will focus on my novels and my writing practice, in particular, my reasons for promoting ancient Indigenous children’s stories to the world. In terms of modern literature, my books would probably be categorised as fantasy fiction, though I have never been aware of genres while writing. My writing is based on my experience of the storytelling of our people, whereby I mix ancient traditional Sámi stories with contemporary politics and reality. The two main traditional legends or stories that I use are about the eahpáraš and ulddát. The eahpáraš (myling) is the spirit of a dead, unbaptised child, left to die in the wilderness. Reasons for abandoning them in this way could be that they were born with disabilities that couldn’t be coped with in a nomadic lifestyle and a harsh climate. It could also have been related to shame if children were born outside of marriages. Nevertheless, these spirits deserve respect and as characters have the ability to provoke attention and focus in children and even in adults. The other traditional story or legend that I use as a base for my novels is about ulddát, the underworld people. I refer to these traditional tales as legends or simply stories, but neither word fully describes their position and importance in our culture. Our stories are not fairy tales in the western sense of the term, but rather parts of a complex cosmo- vision. The stories are kept credible and alive through fearanat, a genre of short stories that are basically retellings of happenings, for instance of meetings with mylings or ulddát. We are taught that we share all land and waters with the ulddát. They live underneath the surface of the earth

140 Máret Ánne Sara in a parallel world that is similar to ours, and are invisible to us unless they want to be seen. We are taught an awareness of their presence, even though we do not see them and might never see them. It is said that the underworld people look just like us humans, and they live similar lives to ours, except they tend herds of magnificent snow white and speckled reindeer. The similarity of our appearance, nature and lives nourishes a sympathy and understanding of the consequences of our behaviour for others. I still remember a short fearan that my grandfather heard from an old lady in his childhood. This old woman had a small farm with a few cows, but she had a problem with one of the cows, which wouldn’t stay in its stall. She would tie the cow into its stall every evening, only to find it wandering loose in the barn the following morning. She tried all types of ties and ropes but nothing helped. She couldn’t understand how it was getting loose until one night, when she was asleep, another small old lady came to see her in her dreams. This lady was disturbed and annoyed, and told my grandfather’s friend to move that particular cow because its stall was positioned in such a way that it was peeing straight onto her kitchen table. This story for me is a brilliant image of how closely and naturally our worlds are connected and how instant and physical the consequences of our actions are, as read or manifested through the Sámi ‘story world’ and the ‘real’ world. These short and realistic stories are imprinted in our everyday life and world view, and they have been passed on for so many generations that no one can really confirm or deny their reality, or that of the mylings and the ulddát. Instead, you are taught to live in a mixture of fear, solidarity, curiosity and respect for the other beings, creatures or spirits with whom you coexist. As a child, listening to these stories, I never thought of them in a deeper analytic sense, but as an adult, I realise the great value of unknowingly developing a natural and humble respect for your surroundings, and an understanding of the consequences of your actions further down the line, even for beings that you might not see or truly believe in.

141 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival The Sámi have a saying that you need to think seven generations ahead, meaning that you need to respect and consider all lives and existence, even of those whom you will never see for yourself. The stories of the ulddát do not teach you what to do or not to do, but rather challenge you to think in an independent, responsible and wide manner. We are not looking at a moral guide, but rather a tool for developing an understanding of the human position in the universe, and the many consequences to consider beyond the immediate and visible. It has been said that we are all Indigenous to human kind, but since human kind seems to have developed too far away from its common and natural origin, we need to relearn our submissive position to nature, to understand and respect its superiority yet fragility to carry all life on this planet. Like children, it seems we need to relearn a basic consciousness of sustainable and communal thinking and existence. Written languages have not been in the tradition of Indigenous communities, so stories have served the purpose of passing on important knowledge. The stories still exist and contain this same knowledge that can and should be read as a basic survival guide for the modern human species on a shared and threatened globe.

142 Máret Ánne Sara Máret Ánne Sara, Pile o’Sápmi (Tana), 2016. Reindeer heads, Norwegian flag. Photo: Iris Egilsdatter © Máret Ánne Sara / BONO, Oslo 2018.

143 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival Máret Ánne Sara, in front of Pile o’Sápmi Supreme, 2017. Curtain made from reindeer skulls. Photo: Matti Aikio © Máret Ánne Sara / BONO, Oslo 2018.

144 Máret Ánne Sara Can it be true, what they say?

Sami legends say that there are mylings everywhere. The unbaptized children of shame, who were once hidden in the ground and abandoned to eternal suffering. They have suffered neglect, confusion, sorrow, desertion, fear, and hunger, until all they have left is anger and malice. They live in between worlds, and are never seen or heard unless something disturbs them. The something can be you or me. It is entirely a matter of chance, but whoever it is, the myling will haunt them relentlessly, to take revenge for its sufferings.

Is it really so?

They also say that we share the ground and the water with more beings than we know. It is said that the ulda-people, inhabitants of the underworld, wander among us. That they live and look just like us humans, that they tend herds of snow-white and speckled reindeer, but are not seen except by the eyes of the chosen.

Can this be true?

2 “Wait here.” Juho, who was already late for his meeting, disappeared through the doorway. Sanne was left outside. She wasn’t entirely sure what kind of meeting it was, she had just overheard dad mumbling about some building permit and quickly made a deal with him to get a ride home from him instead of taking the bus. That way she managed to get to spend several extra hours in town and of course she spent them shopping. She was pretty pleased by the deal and quite sure that if only it wasn’t so hard to get her hands on the damned money, shop-

145 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival ping would be her favorite pastime. Wait here? For how long?! Autumn had already put a chill in the air and Sanne pulled her jacket up over her bare neck, which by this time of year should have been covered by a scarf. Of course she knew that there was no point in going anywhere unless she wanted to get stuck in town and then have to hitch a ride or walk the eight kilometers home, and -- even worse -- miss this year’s annual reindeer slaughter. After dad’s meeting they would just pick up Lemme from practice and then take off for the corral where today they would slaughter reindeer for the winter. Sanne was looking forward to that. Working with the reindeer was always fun. So much fun that she didn’t mind leaving her friends to do the rest of the shopping without her on this autumn afternoon. But first dad had to finish up his business…! What on earth am I supposed to do until then? She sat on a swing and kicked at the sand. Boring! She stared at the new Converse sneaker she was using to push the sand around. It’s totally cool that there are stars on the laces too! I’m so glad I didn’t take the red ones with the… Suddenly a bare foot appeared next to her sneaker. Sanne’s eyes followed that bare foot up to the bulging eyes of a strange man that kept blinking continually. His brown hair was matted together on his head and his hands scratched the scalp under that clump of hair. All of a sudden he started waving about in the empty air. “Our Father! The devil-child, an evil child, everywhere! Our Father…! Three times, three times. Amen, backwards! Amen!” Sanne jumped off the swing and was about to run away, but the bare feet weren’t following after her, they just turned the other way.

146 Máret Ánne Sara “Our Father, oh no, Amen! A little kid! Don’t let it go around!” The man suddenly turned back toward Sanne. He grabbed the collar of her jacket and yanked her right up to his face. His wide eyes suddenly deepened and he looked straight into Sanne’s pupils while lifting her up. “Don’t let it go around, do you hear me?” Just as suddenly his eyes seemed to lose their focus and he started staring into empty space again. He let go of Sanne and began waving his arms around again. He scratched his head again and pulled his hair. “Amen. Three times. Backwards…” Sanne, who had fallen down when the man let go of her, jumped up and was about to run away, but the man was already walking away, ignoring her completely. He limped as he stepped on the gravel with his bare feet. “AMEN! Unto the ages of ages… Backwards.” It wasn’t long before she couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore. All she saw was his back as he went limping away.

“Come on!” Dad was at the car. Thank God! Sanne ran to the car and jumped inside. She was out of breath by the time she looked back. The man had disappeared. “Dad, that man grabbed me… He was barefoot and he was praying… he pulled me up and I fell down…” Juho looked at Sanne while she told him what had just happened. “Did you get hurt?” He stroked Sanne’s blond hair and asked in a serious voice: “Did he do anything else to you?” “No-o…”

147 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival Juho heaved a sigh when he heard that drawn-out syllable. His shoulders dropped and he started the car. “Don’t be afraid. There’s a hospital nearby. There are some mentally ill people there and they often escape from the staff. There’s no reason to be afraid of them, but it’s probably better to avoid them as best you can.” A nod was enough of an answer to satisfy Juho. “Lemme’s waiting. Let’s go now so that we won’t be late.”

6 Freshly cooked blood sausages were steaming on the table. Lemme went straight for the reindeer intestine, held it out for Sanne and laughed. “Stop that! Shame on you!” Rija was quick to stop her son when she saw that he was fooling around, insinuating nasty things about the stiff sausage. Sanne restrained herself but couldn’t help giggling at the blood sausage. “And you, Sanne, put away your telephone when we’re eating!” Sanne grabbed her phone, which had just then started beeping again on the table. She peeked at it to make sure that it was just the battery, not a message, before she put it in her pocket. “Dad. Have you heard the news? We’re gonna get a brand-new dirt bike track.” “Oh yeah?” Juho wasn’t really interested, but he let his son talk. “It’s going to be as big as ten soccer fields, and it will be really close to us, right between the town and our neighborhood. They started clearing and leveling the land last week already, and when they build it, it won’t be more than a few kilometers away from here, so I’ll be able to ride over there right from home, and…”

148 Máret Ánne Sara Juho dropped the vertebra that he was scraping meat off of. “Where?” He was suddenly sincerely interested. “Right between the town and our neighborhood, about four kilometers away on either side.” “And what are you saying… the size of ten soccer fields… they’ve already started digging??” “Yeah.” Our memorandum, they promised to wait. Lemme was still smiling, but when he saw his father’s face, the corners of his mouth drooped. Juho’s cheeks turned red. “Are you complete idiots? Utterly out of your minds?! A dirt bike track the size of ten soccer fields? A place that will be booming with noise around the clock, all year long? With a road there? And a parking lot? And big lights… and electric lines?” “Well, yeah…” “And what were you planning to do with your reindeer when there are bad winters? Now that the climate is changing so unpredictably, and the snow melts and freezes over and over until layers of ice lock up the grazing grounds? Do you think that the reindeer will go anywhere near such a site? A dirt bike track?! Where people buzz around like drunken flies?” Juho pounded his fist on the table so hard that a glass of water tipped over and spilled down Chorre’s back and onto the floor. Chorre got startled and ran away, and at the same instant the telephone that Rija had commented on started beeping as if on purpose. Everyone felt instinctively that the atmosphere around the table was seriously heating up. “Can’t our reindeer be somewhere else? They’re never there anyway, except for this year…” Lemme was speaking in a low voice. He was trying

149 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival to explain and restore calm, but Juho wasn’t listening anymore. “Our own kids, just as stupid as the colonists!” Juho was really furious. “Does one really have to explain everything for them? They’re like little children! Don’t you understand that we’re talking about the most essential piece of land that we have as backup? The one that will rescue us if such winters keep coming? If the winter grazing lands are covered with ice? All…locked…up!” Juho was speaking slowly, emphasizing each word as if he was talking to someone who was mentally handicapped. “But it’s not…” Rija tried to head off the approaching storm, but before she managed to say anything, Lemme threw his fork down on his plate, jumped up from his chair, and ran out through the door. The bike was heard revving up outside and Sanne ran after him. “Where are you going?” “Away from here.” “Wait, I’m going with you.” Sanne jumped on the back and Lemme took off through the forest toward the town.

7 “Let’s go.” Sanne was pulling on the arm of her brother’s jacket. When the roar of the motor stopped, everything grew quiet and the darkness that suddenly crept in was eerie. Lemme had driven to the new dirt bike track, which was far from finished. There were excavators and bulldozers on the site. All around were just piles of sand, which Lemme had driven ruts in until he ran out of gas. Sanne was poking at her phone again. She tried to turn it on but the battery was completely dead. “Try taking it out and warming it up in your hand,”

150 Máret Ánne Sara Lemme suggested. “I tried that already and it’s no use!” Sanne wanted to slam the phone on the ground, but she tucked it into her pocket instead. “All because you wouldn’t lend me your crappy precious charger…!” Lemme didn’t answer. He didn’t know how many times he had repeated that Sanne, like everyone else, should get and take care of her own things, but he also knew that he could easily have let her borrow his charger. At any rate, there was no point in arguing about it now. Now they had more important problems to solve. “What should we do with the bike?” Lemme had his own worries. He didn’t want to leave his new bike behind, after bringing it here in an angry outburst and without permission. “Dad will understand if we put it to him nicely. He’ll come and pick it up…” Sanne tried to talk her brother into leaving the bike there until tomorrow. She didn’t want to stay here, but she quickly understood that Lemme wasn’t going to leave his new dirt bike behind no matter what. “Take the handle from the other side. We’ll push it!” Lemme shoved Sanne over to the other side of the bike. The same vehicle that a moment ago had been showing off all of its horsepower, was now a heavy dead weight.

All around were abandoned backhoes and dump trucks like huge shadows in the darkness. It was a long way home. Especially now that they had to push a dead dirt bike. Lemme reasoned that there would be some streetlights along the road to light the way, but that was a detour. “It will take us at least an hour to get there. We can take a shortcut along the path through the forest.”

151 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival Sanne didn’t really like that suggestion, but given that they had gotten themselves into trouble, it was best to choose the quickest and simplest solution. The construction site had been placed outside of town because the builders wanted to take advantage of the empty forest instead of tearing down buildings in town. Besides, dirt bikes were too noisy to be in people’s earshot. Here on the other hand, in the empty wilderness where there wasn’t a single soul, the darkness was free to level out all the mounds and bumps in the entire forest. Lemme had ridden along this way so many times that he knew the way almost by heart, even though he couldn’t see the path. Once we get through this little piece of forest, it will be easier to follow the path over to the hills that lead up to the houses. He glanced over his shoulder, to make sure that the town was to the north and they were headed south. All the while he kept talking to Sanne so that she wouldn’t think too much about the darkness and lose courage. “Did you hear that they’re planning to open a McDonald’s and a movie theater in the new shopping center that they’re building in town? And in the base- ment they’re supposed to open a bowling alley…” The darkness was nearly forgotten and the dirt bike wasn’t so heavy anymore. “Really? When will it be ready?” Sanne was curious because Lemme promised to treat her to a movie and a burger, since he was the one who got them into this mess by losing his temper. This was enough of an incentive for Sanne, who got so excited that she started to push the bike a little too fast. The wheel sank down into a little cleft between two mounds and put a stop to their progress. “Dammit! Pull it back!” Lemme was in a hurry now. It was almost completely

152 Máret Ánne Sara dark and it was hard to see which way to go in the forest. He didn’t want to have to make any detours. The excavation vehicles still loomed large behind them at the site, but in front of them was nothing but pitch-black forest. Sanne bent down in order to pull on the front wheel, but she stiffened up as she grabbed ahold of it.

“EEEEEEEYAAAAAAAH!!”

Something let out a hideous shout that went right through their bones. What’s that…? A fox? An animal in danger? Sanne looked at her brother who was standing completely still and staring into the darkness. Neither of them made a sound. Now was no time for conversations or discussions. “Hurry up!” Lemme yelled while trying to yank the bike loose. “It’s stuck on a bush, you come do it yourself!” Sanne yelled back. Lemme took a step, but with each step he took, there came a rustling in the bushes a little way off. He took another step and there was that rustling again. “Holler at it to scare it away,” Sanne suggested anx- iously. She had seen enough times how hungry wolves, bears, and wolverines had torn up reindeer as if they were paper bags. Lemme flapped his arms, yelled and ran a few steps toward the sound. Just then something moved. It flew out of the bushes and hid behind a nearby rock. Lemme ran back, and at the same time the something slipped from the rock to hide behind a nearby tree. “EEEEEEEYAAAAAAAH!!” The sound raised all the hair on his neck and Lemme stiffened up. He didn’t dare to move anymore. Sanne was still holding onto the bike, but she let it fall to the ground when she ran over to her brother.

153 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival “EEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” It howled again and flew from the tree to another rock even closer. A moment ago it was on their right, now it was to the left of them, and they could see its movements out of the corners of their eyes. “If it’s an animal, it sure isn’t afraid of us,” Lemme whispered. Sanne agreed. We have to get out of here. The bike would have to be left behind, that was clear now. “Let’s run back to the dirt bike track. Dad might be there looking for us…” Sanne nodded and swallowed hard. The dirt bike track was closer than home and she knew that if they ran as fast as they could, hardly anyone could catch up with them. “One… two… three!” Sanne almost tripped as she ran, but she managed to follow her brother. They were fast, but the thing that was moving in front of them was faster than either of them. The tree that it had been hiding behind a moment ago was quite far away from the nearest bush, rock, or any other hiding place. That something was extremely fast, but now the distance was great enough that Sanne and Lemme got a glimpse of it. It was a little creature on two legs. It had a voice that could crush your bones and it moved with a speed that left the wind behind. Lemme and Sanne held hands. For an instant they were petrified by fear and struck by the same thought: We have to get away from here, now! They held each other’s hands tight and ran. They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, but the faster they ran, the wilder the screaming became. The howl went around them, from a rock to a tree, from a tree to a mound of earth, from there to another mound. It wasn’t

154 Máret Ánne Sara rushing from one hiding place to another anymore. It was flying fast, counterclockwise. It was circling around them. Although it was far away, it had already gotten around them once. Now it was closer. It was behind them again, going around a second time. Suddenly it moved directly in front of them. It was very close, and its voice was so harsh that Lemme closed his eyes and had to cover his ears. What the…? Sanne, who was right behind him, shrieked when she saw what came into view in front of Lemme. She grabbed Lemme’s jacket and yanked him back. “What?” Sanne didn’t have time to answer, she didn’t want to try to explain what she had seen. She just yelled at her brother to sit down. She was all out of breath and frightened. “That mental patient… this is what he was talking about. The devil-child… goes around three times!” “What? Why are you blabbering about that now? We have to get away from here!” Lemme yelled. “Hush! I think that old guy saw the same thing we are seeing now, and he said something more about it. He talked about reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It goes around three times… Amen, Our Father… He was trying to tell me something, but what was it?” Sanne grabbed her brother’s jacket again, but this time she wasn’t joking. “Don’t let it go around three times! That’s what he said.” Lemme jumped up and pulled Sanne along with him. “We can’t play games here, come on!” Right when Lemme jumped up, the sound moved again. By now it was terrifyingly close. It seemed to be coming from all directions. It screamed and howled fiercely and moved like a bird in flight. Soon it would

155 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival complete the third circle around them. “Stop!” Sanne yelled. She got left behind when Lemme started running. “We have to recite the Lord’s Prayer…” Sanne wasn’t quite certain what to do, but she knew that this was no joke, and that the crazy man by the swings had been telling the truth. Lemme was so frightened that he couldn’t focus enough to stop. He ran toward the excavation site as fast as he could, and the sound flew along at his side even faster. It went counterclockwise and it was catching up. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy…” Sanne tried to hurry. She knew the prayer by heart, but in this situation it was hard to think straight. Lemme ran so fast that he tripped and fell. He jumped up and called to Sanne to come FAST! “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” Sanne didn’t manage to recite any more before she saw it. A pale, little naked child vanished behind one of the excavation vehicles right in front of Lemme. It had completed the third counterclockwise circle and that was the last thing that either of them saw before everything went dark.

8 The clock on the wall struck seven. Juho and Rija had been awake all night but the two kids hadn’t come back or called since yesterday’s outburst. “I have to go and look again.” Juho was restless. All evening he had called all of his children’s friends and acquaintances, and he had spent the night walking through the forest and calling their names. “Hi, this is Sanne, you know what to do…” Juho ended the call, and even though he was holding

156 Máret Ánne Sara Lemme’s dead telephone in his hand, he called that one too. “It’s Lemme here, call again later.”

Are they still angry? Rija burst out crying. What if something happened? Fear was beginning to eat away at their strength, and their patience was running thin. “Did you have to be so tough on him? He’s just a child! It would have been possible to reason with him if only you had talked with him on a sane level. You could have explained and he would have understood… but now maybe…” Rija wiped away her tears and Juho’s heart sank. He sat down, leaned his elbows against his knees, and took his head between his hands. Chorre crept quietly up to his side and nudged Juho’s hand with his nose. “Forgive me, dear… of course it’s not your fault.” Rija bent down and pressed Juho’s head against her chest. Juho straightened up his back. “I’ll go to the dirt bike track, maybe there’s someone there now.” He put his hat on his head and went outside. Chorre followed after.

The coach had just gotten to the construction site where soon there would be a brand-new dirt bike track. He was satisfied, in a good mood. We’re going to be the most popular dirt biking club in the whole country. Ha! You can’t put up a track this size just anyplace! Just then he saw the ruts that someone had made riding around and he guessed who that someone might be. Who might be that enthusiastic and also lived nearby.

157 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival That’s exactly how they become the best. By showing real interest. He smiled to himself and stared at the beautiful spot they had found for the dirt bike track.

“Have you seen Lemme and Sanne?” The coach was startled to suddenly find someone there. Who’s that? I’ve seen him before… As Juho came up closer, the coach recognized him. Juho Joansu! “No, I haven’t. Are you guys playing hide-and-seek? Haha…” Juho was in no mood for jokes, and he shouted once more. “Have you seen them?” The coach, who of course had no idea about the seriousness of the situation, was taken aback, but after he had a chance to collect his thoughts and saw Juho’s despair, he shook his head. “No, but somebody left some tracks here. I was just thinking that perhaps it was Lemme who had…” Juho took a look at the tracks that crisscrossed over the sand piles and open land. The tracks were fresh. “But you haven’t seen them?” “I just got here, and they aren’t here.” Juho started following the tracks. “Follow around the edges and see if you can figure out which way they came and went in this god-forsaken mess!” The coach was going to protest, but he held it in when he saw the man’s desperation and followed after him. They walked single file and examined and reexamined every track that could have led out of the sand-covered site. “All for some damned entertainment. For such child-

158 Máret Ánne Sara ish waste!” Juho started mumbling again. “For the sake of some damned idiotic wasteful entertainment…” He felt the fear and grief clenching his throat so firmly that he could hardly breathe. “It’s all your fault!” he roared. “What?” “That you people encourage our children with wasteful nonsense and make them rebel against us!” The coach had had enough. He didn’t understand what the matter was, but he wasn’t going to put up with some stranger yelling at him and making a scene. “What the hell are you talking about?” “This damned project!” Juho snarled. He pointed at the ravaged earth and waved in every direction where the machines had felled trees and torn up the ground. “You people are destroying our livelihood with this diabolical hole! And you didn’t even ask for permission! You’re doing it illegally!” The coach was clueless. “You mean the dirt bike track? What’s been destroyed? There’s nothing here. Just a completely empty piece of birch forest that isn’t used for anything!” Juho spat on the ground and shook his head in rage. “There’s no use talking to you people. You’re all idiots. Don’t understand a thing. And don’t give a damn either!” “Give a damn about WHAT? We got all kinds of permits from the municipality, and there wasn’t ANY- THING here before. The closest house is several kilometers away… This site isn’t being used for anything. And what’s more, we live in the most empty place in the world, if you count the number of square kilometers per person. Of course we should make use of this empty wilderness, which is otherwise wasted! I don’t understand what you’re whining about. Your own children will get to come and train here. They’ll have lots of fun!”

159 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival Juho was about to let him have it. “What good is having fun if we lose the means to earn our living? When we run out of money to buy dirt bikes and other playthings? When we don’t have anything anymore! Do you get my message? No, of course not!” Now the coach lost his cool. “You think I don’t understand? You people have everything you need! The whole wilderness is yours. The rest of us can’t even go near it! And what’s more, you get money from the government, so you can buy everything you need. The newest dirt bikes, snowmobiles, big cars. And cabins all over the place!” “I know what you think. But you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground! Do you think that I buy dirt bikes and snowmobiles for fun? NO! Do you think that I buy a big car in order to show off? NO! I need a new snowmobile and a good motorbike because I have to go wandering miles away from civilization, in places where there often isn’t any telephone coverage. A new snowmobile is what keeps me safe! And I NEED a big car because I have to transport reindeer and dirt bikes and snowmobiles.” “Why can’t you walk or ski along with your reindeer like real Sami people did in the old days..?” “Do you think that the reindeer we have today just stand around waiting for people to come near? That’s impossible … and why should we … in that case you should also sell everything and move into a turf hut!” Juho was on the verge of exploding. He was in no state to continue the argument. It’s hard work educating people who are totally igno- rant. It takes time, and that’s exactly what I don’t have right now. “I don’t have the patience to fill empty skulls,” Juho growled at the coach and went to the car.

160 Máret Ánne Sara The coach gave him the finger. Damned greedy Samis. They’re never satisfied!

Juho took a few long strides toward the car and then stopped short. There were tracks that led into the forest. He rushed after them. Ran until he found the bike in a cleft between two mounds, stuck on a shrub of dwarf birch.

9 “Sanne!” It was hard to understand what was going on when they came to again. An unpleasant smell pricked their noses and fear penetrated the air. Lemme knew that smell, but he couldn’t put his finger on it right away. His head was swirling and his mind was in a commotion. It took a few seconds before he could gather his thoughts and look around him. The ground was muddy, hundreds of hooves were clawing up the clay. In every direction he looked, sun- light was glinting off of large antlers, and that smell… it was awful. Dreadful. He knew that smell. I’m in a slaughtering corral. Trotting around and around, out of breath. He didn’t know how long he had been running, but his legs were getting weak and his mouth was dry. Lemme was in the middle of a flock in the central corral and there were unfamiliar people standing all along the fence. They all looked deadly serious. Some of them were focusing intensely. They made their choice before they came closer and grabbed an animal. Two of them took a reindeer by the horns. The buck they had taken hold of put up a struggle for all he was worth. He whipped his head around with all the strength he had in his neck and kicked back with all four legs. The two men held on as best they could and a third one came to help them. He

161 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival threw a lasso around one of the back legs. The buck was caught. He tried to kick his leg free, but the lasso tightened, and the buck was completely stuck. He couldn’t move anymore. A fourth man came to his side, pulled something from his belt, and stabbed him in the neck. The lasso loosened up when the buck’s legs gave in and he fell to the ground. His eyes glazed over and the man who was still standing by his side pulled the knife out of his neck. The other three grabbed the antlers and dragged the buck out of the corral. Warm steam filtered through the burlap. The stench of blood. Death.

Lemme’s legs started shaking. He had been in the slaughtering corral many times before, but he had never felt so terrified as now. He had never experienced such fear before. They’re coming back. The people were strangers. They all had black hair and brown eyes. They were short, but fast and efficient. Their movements were decisive and confident. The three men who had just dragged the speckled buck out filed back in one by one. As they entered, they started scanning around. They were making a selection. A new round had begun. Lemme was completely confused. Am I dreaming? I want to wake up! Are they choosing me? Should I hide? They aren’t going to kill me, right…? And where is Sanne? Whether it was a dream or not, there was no escap- ing from it. He was in the slaughtering corral. Circling around in desperation. The bucks in the corral didn’t grunt, but their misery filled the air. “SAAANNE!” No one seemed to hear him, and the sound that came out of his mouth wasn’t the shout that he had planned to

162 Máret Ánne Sara make. Nobody paid any attention to him. They just continued with their work. Two of them closed in again on the flock that was trotting along the fence line. Lemme followed. He was in the middle of the flock and he thought, or at least hoped, that no one had seen him. Two more people appeared along the fence line, and the flock turned back. Lemme couldn’t keep up with what was happening, he just ran along with the flock. He didn’t notice when a hand reached out in his direction. The fingers were aiming for his head, but just when they were about to grab him, he saw them and ducked. He stopped, turned around, and ran in the opposite direction. He came toward the flock and snuck in among the largest males. He hid. Oh Lord, they’ve spotted me. “Lemme!” Suddenly he heard a familiar voice. It wasn’t her usual way of calling him, but Lemme understood that his sister was nearby. “Lemme, where are you? And what’s going on?” He could hear Sanne, but he couldn’t see her. The men in the enclosure were working fast, and the flock was beginning to thin out. The reindeer became increasingly nervous as their numbers dwindled. They all tried to stay as far away from the people as possible, but the fence held them in. Lemme pressed himself against the fence. “I want to get out of here. Lemme, where are you?” It sounded like Sanne was very close by, but still he couldn’t see her. “I’m among the reindeer,” Lemme hastily replied. “Me too.” “Where are you?” “Behind that big buck.” Lemme peeked around and found that the big buck was right by his side.

163 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival “Me too… I’m right nearby. Come over to the fence,” he whispered. Sanne pushed her way through the panting bucks and crept over to the edge of the fence. “Lemme, where are you?” Sanne, who was usually tough and fearless, was now terrified and her voice was shaking. Lemme was there waiting for her, but words failed him when he saw her. Sanne kept calling out to him, and burst out crying when she couldn’t find her brother. Everything was just too awful. “It’s me,” Lemme whispered in a trembling voice. Sanne lifted her head in the direction of the voice and stared into the eyes of a terrified young buck, trembling by the fence line.

10 I must be dreaming! Sanne looked at her brother, but words failed her. The terrified young buck stared back. He couldn’t find anything to say either. The crazy truth, or whatever else one might call it, now sank into both of their heads. They had turned into reindeer?! That meant that they were in just as much danger as all the other reindeer in the corral, which had either been stabbed to death already or were still awaiting the knife. Neither of them had any idea how long they had been standing there looking at each other. It had been a while, and the flock had hardly moved in the meantime. Smoke wafted up from outside the corral and they guessed that the people had stopped to have a bite to eat. There was no talking to be heard. Those people didn’t waste their breath blabbering nonsense. “There has to be some logical explanation… after all, they can’t kill us when they hear that… can’t we go and

164 Máret Ánne Sara talk to them?” Sanne was trying to figure out the situation while randomly proposing various solutions, but her suggestion died as fast as it had been conceived. Nobody could hear them here and even if someone could hear them, what about their appearance… It’s hopeless. “Or what if it’s just a dream… you usually wake up before it gets too bad…” I sure hope so! But… what if it isn’t? Lemme had to agree. He didn’t want to fall into their hands. He felt instinctively that if he got too close to the knife in this dream, he might never wake up again. They looked around. The reindeer were standing still, but none of them had calmed down enough to lie down. They stood motionless, just breathing. They tried to listen. They kept their eyes on the gate. There was a fence made of wooden posts around them, and it was covered with some burlap. Burlap! Sanne’s brain sprang to life. They hung burlap up here. The fence has a weak spot! “Lemme, I think we cou…” Lemme lifted his head, but not in Sanne’s direction. He looked the other way. Toward the gate. He had heard something, and so had the other reindeer. The flock became restless. The people got right down to business as soon as the gate opened. Two of them came back inside and a third one followed them. Now the people who had been standing outside, along the fence, came inside too. They started walking toward the flock, which was standing still but ready to flee. Earlier it had been possible to run away from the bare hands that reached out, but now it was worse because many of them held lassos in their hands. From a distance it was hard to see who was in

165 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival danger before a lasso came flying through the air and got tangled in some antlers. The biggest buck was caught, and five men ran over to help the guy who cast the lasso. Strong as the buck was, soon he was being dragged out through the gate. Not a hoof was moving any more. There were only a few reindeer left in the central corral now, and the people talked to each other before they coiled up their lassos. They were going to lasso the rest of the animals all at once to prevent the last ones from panicking. The flock was now forced all the way up to the fence, and they started running. They ran along the fence, from one end to the other. They leapt over the lassos, jumped desperately in all directions and then turned around, regrouped, and ran back. There was no rhyme or reason to their movements, they just ran this way and that, here and there, back and forth.

“Avoid the people who have their lassos coiled up and ready to toss!” Lemme ran in front, Sanne was behind him. Lassos rained down from every direction, and every time they managed to avoid a lasso, Lemme ran toward the guy who hadn’t managed to coil up his lasso yet. Sanne followed right after. Other reindeer ran after them, but when Sanne and Lemme ran toward the people, the reindeer turned away. They ran off to places where no people were standing. That was the natural thing to do if one was frightened and trying to escape, but they didn’t know what Sanne and Lemme knew. That’s what we do when we’re going to trick the last reindeer into getting caught. The people in the corral cleared open paths for the reindeer. It looked safe, but in fact it was a trap. Swish! And a young buck was caught. Now there were only three animals left in the flock

166 Máret Ánne Sara and people were coming from every direction. Sanne’s throat tightened when she saw that. They’re surrounding us. “We have to get out of here!” Sanne didn’t really know what it would take, but she remembered what had happened before they wound up here and she knew that if the people surrounded them, it would be nearly impossible to escape. “Don’t let them get around you!” Lemme looked around and instantly understood what Sanne meant. They didn’t need words to communicate anymore, they just ran in opposite directions. Lemme dashed toward the man who was standing closest to him. His lasso is coiled all the way up. That meant that the closer he got, the harder it would be for that guy to catch him with his lasso. The man was startled when a reindeer started running straight for him and jumped out of the way. He tried to throw his lasso, but it flew over the reindeer, fell to the ground, and got stuck on a rock. Sanne saw that her brother almost got caught. She was out of breath and felt that she couldn’t keep running for much longer. “We have to get out of here. Now!” Lemme was also frightened and out of breath, but he didn’t know what to do. “When I come back, run after me. Don’t stop no matter what,” Sanne yelled before she ran to the other side of the corral and stopped. It seemed that she was waiting and the people started gathering around her. Lemme wasn’t sure what was going on, but he stood still when all the people around him turned toward Sanne. Does she know what she’s doing? The people started to aim their lassos, but Sanne zigzagged. It was as if she hesitated, until she had gotten

167 Indigenous Stories, Indigenous to Global Survival all of the people’s attention. They all coiled up their lassos and aimed. They waited one more second before they threw the lassos. The lassos were already in the air, but Sanne waited an instant longer so that she could see where each lasso would fall. She jumped to one side and then to the other before she ran off for all she was worth to the other end of the corral. “Follow me!” Lemme ran after her and together they galloped straight toward the fence. “We’re gonna knock down the fence!” Sanne managed to yell before she leapt at full speed against the fence. The dry wood hit her hard and scraped her belly as she jumped onto the fence pole. Lemme came right after and leapt on top of her at full speed. The pole snapped and the fence fell down. “Damn!”

Lemme and Sanne didn’t even look behind them, but they heard two-legged creatures running about in anger. They yelled and shouted until something howled.

Excerpts from Máret Ánne Sara, In Between Worlds, translated from Northern Sámi to English by Laura A. Janda (Guovdageaidnu: DAT, 2016). The original Northern Sámi version was published by DAT as Ilmmiid Gaskkas in 2013. www.dat.net.

168 Where the Hard Meets the Soft Ánde Somby

169 Where the Hard Meets the Soft 1 I started this presentation by performing the yoik1 of A Sámi form of vocal music. Davvinjárga – the North Cape. That is where the Polar ocean meets the rock of the European continent. We are going to look at meetings between hard and soft bodies. We are going to look at the different ways in which these meetings can happen. There is a state. A nation state. It contains Indigenous peoples. And then the question arises, how can they coexist? That is the big question, but we are going to look at a smaller part of that big question. We will be focusing on the legal shapes of that meeting. How can the nation state and the Indigenous peoples communicate? How should the Indigenous peoples be treated? Can they exist legally at all? Do they have rights? Should they be informed? Do they have anything to say? These are some of the questions that arise as a result of the meeting between a nation state and an Indigenous people. I am Ánde Somby, and I am an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the Norwegian Arctic University, UiT. My formal training is a legal one, but I am a nomad. Nomads have many different kinds of professionalisms. I am also a traditional yoiker. But here I will be speaking with my legal voice. When you start to study law, one of the first things to understand is that law is not love. Law is not happiness. Law is not luck. Law is there to meet indecency. Stubbornness. Inhumanity. The seven deadly sins and all their cousins. It’s when the shadow-side of people and institutions appears. Legal norms, legal institutions and legal procedures: that is the framework that determines the legal shape. So who is this about? The Indigenous peoples. Who are they? Are they the noble Māoris? Are they the authentic Aborigines? The real Indians? Or the happy Laplanders? The Indigenous country is a huge country, with 370 million people around the globe. But we are not all living in the same spot. We are situated in different parts of the world. Since we have had to face the things that makes one call for

170 Ánde Somby law, a legal characterisation of Indigenous peoples has developed. That characterisation has four criteria: Historical presence: Indigenous peoples were situated in the territory in question before the nation state was established there. Distinctiveness: Indigenous peoples are different from the general population of the nation state. This can be a matter of having a different history, different language, different clothing, different traditions of livelihood or different musical traditions. For example, my hat is a four-winds hat, denoting the four winds north, south, east and west, which is a heritage from our pre-Christian religion and which we still wear today in everyday life. Marginalisation: often, we are very tiny minorities in the nation states where we reside. This criterion can appear in other forms as well. There can be marginalisation in terms of education, or social phenomena like domestic violence. Self Identification: Indigenous peoples identify themselves as a people. In imagining that meeting between the nation state and the Indigenous peoples, questions that often arise are: what kind of a world are we living in? What do we know and how can we know it? What is important? What is valuable? What is beautiful? These questions can be organised into three types.

The ontological question The epistemological question The axiological question.

The ontological question deals with how the world is. Do we live on a flat pancake or on a round ball? Is the world purely material or is it spiritual? Are humans good or evil? Are humans equal or unequal? When we meet the ontological question in the legal context, it takes the form of asking whether human rights apply to everybody or if Indigenous peoples are exempt from human rights.

171 Where the Hard Meets the Soft The epistemological question deals with what demarcates valid knowledge from invalid knowledge. When this question appears, it takes the form of asking if only scientific and bureaucratic knowledge – that which is acknowledged by either scientific or bureaucratic procedures – is valid, or if knowledge that is accumulated through the traditions of the Indigenous peoples’ so-called traditional knowledge can also be valid. The axiological question appears when people share time and space. Here, questions arise about values and reciprocity. Should there be a balance between the parties sharing time and space? And when it is a matter of sharing, then the question arises as to how the sharing should happen. Should the strongest take it all, or should things be shared according to principles that in some sense can be said to be fair? If you destroy something, do you have to compensate for the loss that you cause? In the context of Indigenous peoples, those questions are about sharing resources. Is it fair that the nation state, due to military or propagandic strength, can grab the resources from Indigenous peoples’ areas without compensating them? Or should nation states that have destroyed parts of Indigenous cultures compensate for the losses and try to repair what has been destroyed?

Let us look at the different shapes of these meetings.

The first shape is that when the nation state enters the areas that are populated by Indigenous peoples, they can take the resources they want and also use the people themselves as resources. There are examples of this shape in many different parts of the world. When the Spaniards found silver in Bolivia in the fifteenth century, they not only took the silver for themselves, but also enslaved the Indigenous people there. We also have the Nasafjäll silver mines in Sweden in 1632. In that shape, the nation state takes both the resources and the people. We can characterise this as the most extreme shape.

172 Ánde Somby The second shape is that the nation state simply clears the people away. The nation state massacres the people or turns a blind eye towards those who do. That shape we have seen both in Australia and in the US.

The third shape is that the nation state simply criminalises the presence of Indigenous peoples. The nation state prohibits Indigenous peoples from being in given places and violation of that prohibition can be met with punishment.

The fourth shape is the variety of measures that can be taken by the nation state. You remember the beautiful song that had the title ‘Killing Me Softly’ back in the day? Nation states can do that to Indigenous people: they kill them in a softer manner. This can be done by undermining their existence. The nation states might confiscate the Indige- nous peoples’ land and thereby hinder them from leading their lives there. Or the nation states can undermine their livelihood. That approach was described very well in the previous essay by Máret Ánne Sara. The nation state can also attack the Indigenous peoples’ religion, or jam their cognitive systems. The nation state can prohibit their language, so that communication as well as sense perception is damaged. This little catalogue of strategies has been used against Indigenous peoples in many different places across the globe. I will tell you a little secret. I was born in 1958. In 1957, the official prohibition of the Sámi language in Norwe- gian schools was lifted. One year before I was born. The nation state could also take children away from Indige- nous peoples. Then the generational continuity of their cultures is interrupted, since the new generations are alienated from their language and other cultural knowledge. This can be done by establishing a boarding-school system, like the ones founded in the US and in Canada and the Nordic countries. I will tell you another secret. I was twelve years old when I was sent off to a boarding school, and I never returned home.

173 Where the Hard Meets the Soft The fifth shape is that the nation state can expose the Indigenous peoples to racism. One can use three different instru- ments to do so: structural violence, cultural violence or direct violence. Often, a nation state expresses racism through structural violence. For example, the rest of the populace in the country where you live is not given any education whatsoever about you, so that you become a mystical person and it is very easy to target you. In Tromsø, the city in Norway where I live, a political coalition ran for office and based their election campaign on a hostile policy against the use of the Sámi languages in 2011. That campaign led to a massive debate, during which the Sámi community learned that explicit racism against them had not disappeared but was even being refuelled on the internet. The nation state can choose to deny, deny and deny all the things that have been done to the Indigenous peoples. The facts can be contested. The deeds can be rational- ised with reference to good intentions or ignorance at the particular time when the actions against the Indigenous peoples took place. In order to sort out and investigate the conflicting information, the nation state can launch committees. If the nation state isn’t satisfied with the conclusions, new investigations can be launched, and so on. The most eloquent example is in Finland, where the issue of land confiscation and its eventual consequences have been investigated by a relay of committees. Every time, the Finnish government declares itself dissatisfied with the committees’ findings and they launch a new committee. Most of the individuals who raised these questions in the first place are now dead.

The sixth shape is that the nation state can tolerate the presence of Indigenous peoples. This means that the Indigenous peoples can remain there, but as soon as other interests arise, the Indigenous peoples have to give way. In the so-called Marsfjell case in 1955, the Norwegian Supreme Court ordered that the Marsfjell people must give away

174 Ánde Somby their ancestral lands and they were denied economic compensation for their loss. As a matter of law, the Nor- wegian constitution protects private property, but the Supreme Court argued that the Marsfjell presence was only tolerated and therefore did not constitute any form of legal protection. When a similar case, the Altevann case, appeared before the Supreme Court in 1968, it again ordered the Saarivuomi Siida to give way, but on this occasion ruled that the people must receive financial compensation for their loss.

The seventh shape is that the Indigenous peoples are given the right to be ‘informed’. The right to be informed is the right to be told what plans exist about you and the environment in which you live. But it is a situation where you just sit there. You have two ears but no mouth. That is the current situation for the Sámi Parliaments in both Sweden and Finland. They, of course, have the same freedom of expression as anybody else and can raise their voices accordingly, but in their capacity as the democratically elected representative bodies for the Sámi people, they only have the right to be informed.

The eighth shape is when the state has an obligation to consult the Indigenous peoples. Your right to consultation is your right to be informed, and you can come to the hearing with your reflections and arguments. After the consultation has taken place, the government is free to decide whatever they want, regardless of what you have voiced during the consultation. That is the current situation of the Norwegian Sámi Parliament.

The ninth shape is that the Indigenous peoples can be given veto power. Veto power is where you get a package packed by the nation state and you have the freedom either to accept the package or reject it. Hopefully, you have the right to say no without guilt. This is the standard known in Indig- enous law as the ‘principal of free and informed consent’,

175 Where the Hard Meets the Soft expressed in, for example, UNDRIP – the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, article 19.

The tenth shape is that the Indigenous peoples can initiate policies within the nation state. That would imply that they are not limited to defending themselves with veto power, but that they can have a say in initial phases when policies are designed. We don’t have any examples of policies designed according to that shape. Greenland, perhaps, is the case that comes closest. It has a home-rule government that gives Indigenous peoples the authority to decide in most fields, except for foreign policy and military matters.

Summing up, one could ask what the nation state and the Indigenous peoples could achieve in their coexistence. There are, of course, different ways to think about this. It will depend on how many resources there are in the Indig- enous territories and how hungry the nation state is. But imagine, if seen in the micro perspective, that you are an Indigenous person for whom it is of no interest whether you are Indigenous or not, because your legal protection is unquestioned. Imagine if you are a parent and your child is starting at school, and the Sámi language programme is in place and this is an ordinary aspect of your everyday life, as opposed to showing up at school with your little kid, and finding no mention made of the Sámi language and its place in the school’s schedule. When you ask why not, the reply is ‘Oh, we forgot about that. But we can fix it. Can you please help us to fix it?’ So that all of a sudden, the problem is privatised. It becomes your problem, not the problem of the structure.

176 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh. An Overview of Chittagong Hill Tracts Sontosh Bikash Tripura

177 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh 1 Background Chandra Roy, Land Rights of the Indige- The survival and existence of Indigenous peoples is closely nous Peoples of the associated with the lands on which they have been living Chittagong Hill Tracts (Bangladesh: IWGIA since time immemorial. These lands are important not only Document No.99, 2000), p. 50. for their survival but also for the practice of their culture, since they have a spiritual and emotional nexus with the earth and its fruits. The right to own their land is the basis of the security, economic viability and wellbeing of communities. Therefore, land is the central issue in relation to the survival and empowerment of Indigenous peoples. The pattern of land ownership and management is based on customary laws, which consider land more or less a collective property. However, since the establishment of the colonial regime, these customs have changed over time. The main cause of the Indigenous peoples’ landlessness and displacement was the imposition of the principle of terra nullius, a doctrine that saw Indigenous inhabited territory as land belonging to nobody before the colonists arrived in the region. Based on this doctrine, settlers could either ignore Indigenous peoples or stereotype them as backward and uncivilised.1 This notion has not been eroded in the postcolonial era. The Bangladeshi authorities have enlisted the concept of ‘nomadism’ to deny the rights of Indigenous peoples. In order to identify the root causes of the dispossession of the lands of Indigenous peoples, I will offer a brief glimpse of Indigenous peoples’ land rights in Bangladesh, analysing the historical background of land alienation in Chittagong Hill Tracts and the provision, promotion and protection of Indigenous peoples’ land rights under national and international law.

Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh Indigenous peoples consist of diverse ethnic groups, living across the country. However, they are mostly concentrated in certain regions, mainly in the northwest, north-central, northeast, south and southeast. The largest concentration of Indigenous peoples is found in the hilly area of

178 Sontosh Bikash Tripura 2 southeastern Bangladesh known as the Chittagong Hill http://iwgia.org/images/ stories/sections/re- Tracts (CHT). There are eleven ethnic groups among the gions/asia/documents/ Indigenous communities in CHT: Bawm, Chak, Chakma, short-country-profiles/ bangladesh.pdf Khayang, Khumi, Lushai, Marma, Mro/Mru, Pangkhua, Accessed July 2018. Tanchangya and Tripura. The parts of Bangladesh outside of the CHT are generally referred to as the ‘plains’ region, in contrast to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, even though these areas also contain hilly land. In the north and northeast of Bangladesh live the Hajong, Garos and Khasi. The majority of the Hajong live in Sunamgonj (Greater Sylhet) and Netrokona (Greater Maymansingh), and a smaller community in Sherpur and adjacent districts. The Khasi mainly reside in the hilly areas of the northeastern province of Sylhet. The majority of Garos live in the Garo hills in the north of the country and across the border in India, and a large number also reside in the Modhupur Forest in central Bangladesh. The remaining Adivasis live in the northwestern plains districts. They include several ethnic groups such as Banais, Bhuiya, Bhumijie, Ho, Kharia, Kharwar, Kora, Oraon, Munda, Mahali, Mal Paharia, Munija, Santal, Sauria Paharia and Turi. The Santals are the largest group, num- bering over 200,000 people. A much larger population of these Adivasi groups live across the border in neighbouring India.2 The smaller number of Rakhaine communities live in the southern coastal districts of Barguna and Patuakhali, as well as in Coxsbazar. Alarmingly, many of these Indigenous communities are landless, having been denied the collective rights of Indigenous peoples by the state. Here, I will discuss the historical process of land alienation in the CHT.

Historical Background of Land Alienation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts As in other major parts of the Indian subcontinent, the Chit- tagong Hill Tracts were subjected to British colonisation and to direct rule by the British administration in 1860. However, there had been interference with the CHT peoples by the British East India Company since the 1760s. Initially, there was no direct administrative structure in place and local

179 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh 3 Indigenous peoples enjoyed their lives based on their own Amena Mohsin, The politics of Nationalism –The internal arrangements. Some years later, however, company Case of the Chittagong agents began to interfere with their livelihoods, imposing a Hill Tracts Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University tax on jum cultivation, a traditional agricultural process also Press Limited, 1997), p. 97. known as ‘shifting cultivation’. While the British company 4 did not confiscate lands, this excessive jum tax formed the Jeremie Gilbert, Indig- enous Peoples Land basis for the century-long economic exploitation of local Rights Under Interna- people. From 1776–87, the people revolted against the tax,3 tional Law, From Victim to Actors (Ardsley, NY: until they were forced to sign a peace agreement with the Transnational Publishers, 2006), p. 26. company. The outcome of the agreement was the imposition 5 of a 100 KG Cotton Tax for each male-headed household, R.H. Sneyd Hutchinson, Eastern Bengal and As- and the local chiefs were made responsible for collecting sam District Gazetteers: it. In 1789 the tax was made in cash instead of cotton. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (Pioneer Press, 1909), Accord recognised the autonomy of the CHT’s Indigenous p. 72; Sontosh Tripura, ‘Blaming Jhum Denying peoples while restricting the presence of those who did not Jhumia, Challenges of reside permanently in the territory. Indigenous Peoples Land rights in the Chittagong The imposition of the British administration in the CHT Hill Tracts’, Master’s 1860 Thesis in Indigenous region made a major impact. In , the British designated Studies (University of CHT as a separate district, a region of 5,146 square miles. Tromsø, Norway, 2008), p. 39. One of the main bases of the demarcation of the boundary was to allow the jum cultivation within the region to continue. However, in 1868 the British administration took control of the land by invoking the terra nullius doctrine.4 In 1880–83, more than 26 per cent of land (1,356 square miles) in certain selected areas was declared a Reserved Forest, including Kassalong (736 square miles), Rainkhyong (213 square miles), Sangu (145 square miles), Sitapahar (11 square miles) and Matamuhuri (251 square miles).5 The main purpose of the declaration was to restrict jum cultivation and extract the forest resources. The remaining land in the CHT was declared government-owned (khas) land under the CHT Regulation Act of 1900 made by the British Administration. Through this regulation, the restriction of jum cultivation and other forms of land use was categorically established. The main reason given for controlling jum cultivation was to prevent excessive use of the forests’ resources. However, it was actually initiated in order to divert CHT’s production from jum to plough cultivation. Furthermore, financial

180 Sontosh Bikash Tripura 6 incentives were given to the plough cultivators, such as tax Chittagong Hill Tracts District Gazetteer, sta- exemption. The main reason for controlling jum cultivation tistics, 1901–1902 (Cal- was that it generated less revenue compared to the Reserved cutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1905), p. 7. Forest (66.92 per cent) and the Land Revenue (11.47 per cent), 7 6 82 6 Sneyd Hutchinson, whereas the jum Tax only yielded . per cent. Despite Eastern Bengal, p. 66; these government policies encouraging plough cultivation, Tripura, ‘Blaming Jhum Denying Jhumia’, p. 44. this type of agriculture failed for three decades due to lack of sufficient land for such cultivation and the peoples’ strong cultural tie with jum cultivation. As a result, in 1901 it was estimated that 86 per cent of the CHT people (109,360 out of 124,760) were still dependent on jum cultivation.7 In the ‘postcolonial’ period, other forms of economic exploitation of CHT land emerged. In 1960, the government of Pakistan, with financial assistance from USAID, constructed the hydro-electric Kaptai Dam and submerged a 407 square-mile (655 square-kilometre) area, both flat land and foot-hills. An estimated 20 per cent of the total area (84 square mile or 54,000 acres) was cultivatable CHT land. However, prior to the construction of the dam, no impact assessment was conducted. As a result, it was estimated that around 18,000 Indigenous families were displaced. Only 4,938 (27 per cent) were rehabilitated on a 24,801-acre flat land area in another area of CHT. The majority of the non-compensated families were jum cultivators. The trend of land alienation continued in post-independence Bangladesh. In the 1970s, the government rehabilitated more than 500,000 people from the plains, allocating 5 acres of CHT land (both plough land and hill land) to each family. This settlement programme was the root cause of the ethnic conflict between Indigenous Hill Peoples and Bengalis in the CHT over land ownership.

Recognition of the Indigenous Peoples Land Rights in the CHT The continuous alienation from their land over the course of the century since the colonial period had a highly negative impact on the CHT Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and survival. A common voice has been raised in protest against these damaging state policies, such as the construction of the

181 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh hydroelectric dam and Bengali settlement from the plains to CHT. The ultimate outcome of the two-decades-long political movement was the CHT Accord, signed in 1997 by the government of Bangladesh and the PCJSS (a political party of CHT Indigenous peoples). This offered hope that land management provisions had been recognised to some extent. The Accord made provision to recover the Indigenous peoples’ lands that had been taken away by the government and illegally occupied by Bengalis from the plains. In 2003, the Land Dispute Resolution Commission was formed, based on the Commission’s Act of 2001. However, the Commission is not yet functioning due to disagreement between the government and the Indigenous peoples on the provisions of the Act. The Commission has not been able to resolve the land dispute and those who were displaced have not been rehabilitated because of a lack of government initiatives.

The Protection of the Indigenous Peoples Land Rights Under International Law The land rights of Indigenous peoples were recognised by the United Nations (UN) through what is commonly known as the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal populations of 1957 (Convention No. 107). This convention was ratified by the government of Bangladesh in 1972, a year after it gained independence from Pakistan. The unitary Pakistan also ratified it in 1960. Among the multilateral human rights treaties ratified by Bangladesh, the ILO Convention No. 107 is of the utmost importance to the Indigenous peoples of Bangladesh, since it is the only treaty dealing directly and substantively with their rights. These land rights are recognised in part two of the convention, consisting of four specific articles (Article 11–14). Article 11 addresses ownership rights to land that has traditionally been occupied by members of the population both collectively and individually. It states that if populations are displaced from their habitual territories without their free consent, provisions for compensation must be made, in the form of lands whose quality is at least equal to that of the lands they previously

182 Sontosh Bikash Tripura occupied. It also states that they must be provided with alternative employment opportunities, unless the populations concerned prefer to receive compensation in money or kind for their present needs and future development, under appropriate guarantees. Article 12 also recognises that physical and other property losses due to displacement or removal by the state must be fully compensated. Article 13 states that the customary laws and procedures of the population must be followed for the transmission of rights of ownership and use of land. Further, their customary practices must be respected and reflected in the framework of national laws and regulations in order to satisfy the needs of these populations and not to hinder their economic and social development. Moreover, appropriate measures must be taken to prevent land grabbing or any other kind of exploitation by non-Indigenous people taking advantage of a lack of understanding of the laws. Article 14 states that sufficient land must be allocated to the Indigenous populations as it is essential for them to continue their normal existence and this should take into consideration any possible increase in their numbers and the development of their lands. This must be taken into account in any national policy formulation related to land or development, including the national agrarian programme. However, these provisions were not reflected during the regime of the Pakistan period as well as the successive government. Displacement and dispossession continued to be the fate of Indigenous peoples in CHT. Additionally, the UN Declaration on the rights of Indig- enous Peoples, commonly known as UNDRIP, addresses Indigenous Peoples’ land rights under Articles 25–28. The Conventions contain a series of provisions to protect their right to ownership and possession based on the recognition of the historical displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands and territories; the dependency of their traditional way of life on land; and the long occupancy that they have practised. Given the crucial importance of lands and territories for Indigenous peoples, it is obvious that any non- voluntary or forced displacement will have a severe impact,

183 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh The hills of Chittagong Hill Tracts. Photo: Sontosh Bikash Tripura.

184 Sontosh Bikash Tripura The hills of Chittagong Hill Tracts. Photo: Sontosh Bikash Tripura.

185 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Bangladesh 8 not only on their economies and livelihood but also on their Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Rights in survival as distinct cultures with distinct languages, insti- Practice: A Guide to tutions, beliefs etc.8 The law requires governments to adopt ILO Convention No. 169, (Geneva: International these provisions at a national level and to adopt appropriate Labour Organization, 2009), pp. 91–99. measures to fulfil them.

Conclusion The recognition and protection of cultural diversity and the empowerment of Indigenous peoples is dependent on whether or not specific governments take positive initiatives for its people. In CHT, the starting point for the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ land rights is the implementation of the CHT Accord and activation of the CHT Land Commis- sion following the Accord. To establish good governance and to protect human rights, the government of Bangladesh could play a positive role in adopting policy by harmonis- ing the national and international laws and strengthening their enforcement system. To achieve this, the government could create a platform where representatives of Indigenous Sovereign World-Building peoples, researchers, policy makers and government representatives could address the issues jointly and take appropri- Acting Within and Beyond ate initiatives to fill the gaps that are critically important for Notions of the Curatorial the empowerment of Indigenous peoples in Bangladesh.

186 Sovereign World-Building

Acting Within and Beyond Notions of the Curatorial 1 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Method- ologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London/New York: Zed Books/Dunedin: Universi- ty of Otago Press, 1999).

188 The 1970s and 1980s heralded new Indig- this section, her antipodal peer Kimber- enous futures across the globe, with the ley Moulton, Senior Curator of Aboriginal advent of massive mobilisations of First Collections in the Museums Victoria, Aus- Peoples demanding cultural and environ- tralia, calls for a personal standpoint in this mental rights. Notable amongst them were regard, eschewing the supposed neutrality the 1973 Wounded Knee incident in South of Modernist museologies. She pledges to Dakota, Turtle Island (USA); the occupation ‘recontextualise cultural material and further of Bastion Point by the Orakei Māori Action agency when thinking about the sovereignty Committee in Aotearoa (New Zealand) of our objects’. Simultaneously, she contests between 1977–78; the Alta Action hunger the terms ‘museum curator’ or ‘curator of strikes in Norway led by Sámi peoples contemporary art’ for her practice, high- (whose territory, Sápmi, spans the Nordic lighting instead the need to connect cul- region) between 1978–82; and the massive tures, communities and the objects made demonstrations of 1981, at Ottowa Parlia- by them. If repatriation is at the core of her ment Hill, convened by First Nations in Turtle endeavour, so is the bid, in the interim, to Island (Canada), to mention but a few. employ methodologies and knowledges from These ground-breaking events catalysed her community that will disrupt the enforced new processes for the creation of Indige- hibernation of cultural material deep in the nous cultural infrastructures, which are still museum stores by the colonial apparatus. In on-going today. Yet it was only as from 1999 so doing Moulton highlights the relevance of with the publication of Indigenous Methodol- a cultural continuum between pasts, pre- ogies by Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, sents and futures as a form of survivance that the call for critical Indigenous episte- (survival, resistance, presence) against mologies emerged, defined as, ‘Decolonizing colonising curatorial practices. Methodologies [that] explore the ways in Artist Venkat Raman Singh Shyam which imperialism is embedded in disciplines presents a deeply personal narration of of knowledge, and argue that the decoloni- his self-taught artistic career. Questioning zation of research methods will help reclaim Modernist genealogies, in particular the control over Indigenous ways of knowing and definition of conceptual art, Singh Shyam being’.1 Despite the two decades that have inverts the terms of address and re-frames ensued since Tuhiwai Smith’s ground-break- them within Gond practices rooted in his ing formulations, then as now the need to ancestral lands, known today as Bihar, radically question the power mechanisms Orissa and other neighbouring states in subjacent in academia, research, criticism, India. The artist also draws attention to the curation, conservation, artistic process as grammar of disempowerment that charac- well as in broader societal processes, stands terise modern museologies, remarking that paramount. Indeed, more often than not, the their invention of terms such as ‘craft’ and cultural apparatus and the working methods ‘traditional’ have led to the relegation of implied within these sectors were and still Indigenous practices to static subjects of are defined by a Modernist grammar. an irrelevant past. Around the world today, Indigenous In the third essay of this section, the practitioners are highlighting this chal- artist and writer Hannah Donnelly, hailing lenge through languages and processes. from Wiradjuri country in Australia, combats For example, one of Turtle Island’s leading some of the challenges addressed in the art professionals Wanda Nanibush defines previous essays through an unapologetic her practice, within the space including practice of Indigenous Futurisms. Deploying and beyond art institutions, to be that of a ‘speculative fiction to challenge colonial- a ‘warrior of words and images’ rather ism and envisage Indigenous futures’, than that of a curator. In the first essay in Donnelly sets out a methodology that

189 Sovereign World-Building intervenes into the persisting colonial actions’ to address patterns of cultural apparatus affecting the ways in which loss, recovery and activation. Claiming Indigenous peoples are studied, written site-specific performances as tools for about or addressed in dialogue. Moreover, resistance, curatorial activism and alter- she refutes the Modernist construction of native spaces for Indigenous intervention, an irreversible linear time, pointedly pro- Ismahasan roots his writing within the claiming the power of timeless people as advent of the Indigenous Arts Movement opposed to people without time. With the since the 1990s in his ancestral lands of declaration that ‘there is no postcolonial today’s Taiwan. From a curatorial perspec- in Australia’, she also opposes any form tive Ismahasan explores essentialism as a of reconciliation process that entails the fruitful tool, which nevertheless contests imposition of forgiveness and acceptance of perceptions of primitivism and primordialism. a continued colonial occupation. In Indige- With this in mind, he refers to ethno- nous Futurisms, sovereignty is a practice of spatiality as a form of experimentation with world-building, a place in the future where and expansion of Taiwanese Indigenous First Peoples take back control. curation, opening up spaces for Indigenous The essay by Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i discursivity that negotiate trans-local Eshrāghi parallels the infinite potential of systems of power and knowledge. the future invoked by Donnelly by addressing the oceans as vast matrices of Indige- nous relationships. As a diasporic scholar and artist based in Australia with multiple islander Indigenous and land-locked non-Indigenous ancestors, Eshrāghi’s work gives agency to diasporic histories from an Indigenous perspective, plotting ‘ways of knowing and being in neo-colonial times’. Modernism’s regime of illumination is undermined by drawing attention to the obscurity it imposed upon millennia of earth- and water-centred philosophies and ceremonial knowledges. As a result, it sal- vages and generates decolonising images and words through a curatorial practice that focuses on reclaiming histories, presents and futures as well as advocates Sāmoan concepts of cultural organisation, defined by the new term tautuanaga ‘o fa’āliga ata. By unlocking the ‘radical sovereign potential of large exhibitions such as biennials where local, and global Indig- enous and non-European art histories and practices are centred and not marginalized’ Eshrāghi enacts sovereign deployments of subjacent and new exhibitory formats. Closing this section Biung Ismahasan, a scholar and artist, points to the practices of Indigenous artists who ‘fashion and refashion identities through self-conscious reflectivity, embodied speech and immersive

190 I Can Still Hear Them Calling. Echoes of My Ancestors Kimberley Moulton

191 I Can Still Hear Them Calling This essay is my personal and reflective piece as a Yorta Yorta woman working and researching in museums. Drawing from my experience of collections, it critically considers what it means for museums and galleries to have collected and to continue collecting historical and contemporary cultural material from Australian First Peoples. My approach to the subject matter is through a personal storyline narrative that aims to unpack the colonial stream of Western learning and communication through writing in which I have been educated and to which First Peoples are expected to adhere. I work in Australia and have visited collections and museums across the world. I constantly think about how the legacy of collecting institutions and the representation of First Peoples has affected the space of contemporary art today. With the intersection of art and the ‘artefact’ expanding beyond their historical binary, and an increase in First Peoples working in these spaces, how can we recontextualise cultural material and further our agency and thinking around the sovereignty of our objects?

‘What is in the heavens is reflected on the earth. We must try to understand what is in between’ I am a curator of culture, of the old and the new. I write and I dream up ways in which our stories can be shared and our cultural materials accessed. I do not define myself as a museum curator or a curator of contemporary art. I work in culture, with communities and with objects that hold the energies of the people who made and used them. I have worked at the Melbourne Museum, which is one of several institutions of Museums Victoria, for ten years, and through fellowships and travel I have been connected with Ancestral belongings held across the world. For some of them I have been the first Aboriginal person to connect with them since they were taken. When I leave for a trip and when I’m working in my role at Melbourne Museum, I often think about a story that was told to me by Boon Wurrung Elder Arweet Carolyn Briggs: ‘What is in the heavens is

192 Kimberley Moulton reflected on the earth. We must try to understand what’s in between.’ This ‘in between’ and the calling I have to our Ancestral belongings is what I am still trying to understand. As an Aboriginal woman working in an institution, my responsibility is not only to my employer but importantly to my community. My connection to the collection is both professional and personal, since it holds photographs of my grandparents and family and is currently displaying a ball gown worn by my grandmother. It holds the collections made by my Old People and the Ancestral (human) remains of brothers and sisters from across the country. Through my Ancestors, I am in fact, part of the collection. My storyline begins with my Ancestral people, the Yorta Yorta. My country is in the southern region of Aus- tralia, along the Dungalah River now known as the Murray River. I come from a family of activists and teachers and of people trying to survive, which has its roots in Yorta Yorta country and extends to Mauritius and Chennai, my great-great-grandfather Thomas Shadrach James having travelled many years ago from India. He was the school teacher, doctor and political advocate for our people and married my Yorta Yorta Grannie Ada. My great uncle, William Cooper (Grannie Ada’s brother), was an activist and political leader. My great nan Beccy (Rebecca), a matriarch of the community until her death in 1986, and my nan Claire and father Murray are proud Yorta Yorta people. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I start here with this story-line approach to ground my presentation in time, Ancestors and place. It is a teaching method that my cousin Dr Wayne Atkinson has developed for his On Country Learning (Indigenous studies) for many years. It is also a First Peoples way of being and doing that has been instilled in me. The beginning of my international research came from wanting to connect with objects that have been displaced from their country, to understand their role within institutions and how they are engaged with. I wanted to see the ways in which non-Indigenous curators and collection man-

193 I Can Still Hear Them Calling agers understand cultural material in collections and the way in which our cultural belongings and histories are presented. My area of interest also extends to contemporary artists who have utilised the archive for practice and revival. I have spent time at large institutions like the British Museum to the smallest of country museums in the middle of England, to empires like the Smithsonian in Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Natural History museums across the UK and USA and to a museum in Rome that I can only describe as a mausoleum for cultural materials. I have seen and held objects made by people from many nations of my country. I have seen objects that we no longer have in Australia, things that should be at home and objects that should not be seen. These experiences have led me to question our histories and the current status of colonisation both in our homelands and in the form of the diaspora of cultural belongings overseas, and how this trauma may repeat and continue. I believe there is a need for visibility in the institution, but not through the on-going hoarding of our historical cultural materials (Ancestral belongings). Many of these objects are no longer made by First Peoples, who have not had access to such items to begin the process of revival. As long as these objects remain dislo- cated from their peoples, there will be no end to the trauma suffered by First Peoples communities in relation to this displacement and history of stolen goods or traded goods under exploitative social structures. The longer non-Indigenous people continue to have control, and First Peoples cannot engage, the longer this trauma will recycle. This dislocation is strengthened by the non-Indigenous ‘experts’, who are researching, writing their books and journal articles on our cultural material and experiences, more often than not with the absence of our voices. My resolution to this cycle of trauma and disconnection of our cultural materials is to repatriate them. But it is not as simple as just handing them back; more building of resources and strengthening needs to be done in some of our

194 Kimberley Moulton own communities, which takes time and process. However, it is time to start these conversations. I believe meaningful relationships between institution and community must be nurtured. I would like to see an increase in engagement with contemporary artists and makers, who should be commissioned to create objects for the collections that would ensure that the history of our peoples is still a part of the of the world’s histories displayed in museums with the continuum of culture at the fore, rather than the historic past. This commissioning and acquisition of contemporary makers extends to art galleries that need to address the lack of First Nations work in their collections. Engaging the collection with community so that our voices can be heard is the first step in healing this history. Our old shields and possum-skin cloaks or precious shell necklaces could be replaced with newly made items by First Peoples artists, with a shared process of collaboration and teaching and learning. However, the handing back of our materials must not be at a cost to our communities; nor should it inscribe emotional or physical labour. Creating new objects for replacement is not the only way we can repatriate – it may not always be a case of replacing the old with the new. It is about the conversation and the relationships that bring us to the point of exchange, whether handing back or negotiating long-term loans, that is crucial. New ways of telling old stories that go beyond the traditional roles of museums and galleries should be accepted into the institutions. Why can’t we have a work by a contemporary photographer or painter within a museum collection sitting beside the historical Ancestral belongings, or ‘ethnography’ as it has been so crudely classed in the past? Why is it that institutions and the people within them often find it so hard to change their way of thinking? That being said, institutions in Australia and particularly Museums Victoria are shifting the paradigm of the traditional museum space, but I want to explore this further, challenging both the institution’s and the public’s expectation of what is Indigenous today, what should be in a museum, and

195 I Can Still Hear Them Calling what is authentic. I would like to share our culture in new ways, where the community owns the space. This may be a dream that will take time, but for now, our focus of insurgence should be on the curators and the keepers of these collections, forming strong relationships, working with the institutions for our voices to be present with our objects and artworks. One of the most obvious changes is to correct the didactic and display labels and the information that is associated with the object in the collection databases. A museum I visited in the UK had South Eastern cultural material on display with images of central desert people, along with incorrect information that positioned our cultures in Australia as homogenous. This is not only factually wrong, but is also insulting to the diversity of who we are as a people and it does a great injustice to our histories and the objects on display. The solution could be as simple as changing the display methodology and working with a First Peoples curator. Providing the space and capacity for First Peoples to have autonomy over the representation and the development of content is the first step to building relationships and healing the past. The valuing of different knowledge systems must also be considered. It is not only the curator who can speak about these objects and their stories; they can act as a conduit for the community, with its range of cultural experts and the eldership and wisdom that First Peoples hold, with or without a Western education. Engaging First Peoples to write about the collection with the organisation, for the publications and websites, and not expecting them to fit within a Western paradigm of thought or methodology, is valuing First Peoples’ knowledge, respecting First Peoples’ space, history and choice to represent. It is also actively improving both the collection and the visitors’ experience of that work. I have taken thousands of photos and seen hundreds of objects, and from these experiences I have become increasingly interested in how the legacies of ‘ethnographic’ collecting have influenced the contemporary art space today, and in

196 Kimberley Moulton looking critically at curatorial practice in these spaces. What links the collection of our materials and Ancestral remains to the way our culture is acquired, catalogued and written into (or out of) the canon today? Through the absence of our voices and through the diffi- culty of gaining access to these objects, particularly if we are not associated with a museum or university, the impression that was given by these spaces is that First Peoples are not considered intellectually equal to the white anthropologist or art historian. Many of the collections had been researched or used for a particular Phd study, but I found very little First Peoples’ engagement or even the chance for this, because if you are not an academic or affiliated to an institution it is extremely hard (not to mention often intimidating) to get access or space to research. This has made me question what makes First Peoples’ knowledge less valid than that of our non-Indigenous peers in the museum, university or white cube. I have also questioned whether we want to be equals, or if we should strive for our own spaces, ways of being and doing, galleries and museums for us and by us. As Yamatji Australian First Nations curator Stephen Gilchrist has advocated, ‘create space for Indigeneity not just of Indigeneity’. Visiting these spaces and working within the institution has encouraged me to pursue self-determination, to remove the pen from the hand of the anthropologist and pass it to my elders and community. As my family say ‘use the spear of the pen’. Entering into the institution has led me to think about my sovereignty and my identity. The digging sticks my Matriarchs once held, the stone tools my Ancestors used – have these very objects been laid in front of me in London or Rome? It’s highly possible. The collection drawers and the plastics that hide our objects suffocate me. I lament when the time comes and my visit ends and I have to cover them again. I say goodbye and tell them that I will be back for them. It haunts me that I may not be able to keep that promise.

197 I Can Still Hear Them Calling Kimberley Moulton in collections, Berlin, 2017. Photo courtesy of Kimberley Moulton.

198 Kimberley Moulton Kimberley Moulton in collections, Berlin, 2017. Photo courtesy of Kimberley Moulton.

199 I Can Still Hear Them Calling Kimberley Moulton holding Yorta Yorta Stone Tool, Glasgow, 2017. Photo courtesy of Kimberley Moulton.

200 Kimberley Moulton I’m Your Venus, I’m Your Fire, at Your Desire My first experiences in international collections were at the British Museum London, Pitt-Rivers Museum Oxford Uni- versity and Cambridge University Museum. My research also led me to Tate Liverpool, the Serpentine Gallery and the Museum of Transatlantic Slavery, Liverpool, looking at community-driven projects and artistic interventions within the archive. I was at the British Museum to see one Ancestral belonging in particular, a most prized trophy of the institution. A shield once held by a warrior was placed in a small case in the gallery called ‘The Room of Enlightenment’. It has been missing from home for close to 250 years. This is the Gweagal shield taken by Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks on the first landing in Australia – the initial contact between the British colonisers and the First Peoples. As I stood there looking at this shield, it was as if a bullet had pierced my heart. I physically felt something shift in my body. I looked closer, and I saw that there was a bullet hole piercing its heart too. This long proud shield was one of the first items ever taken from the First Peoples of Australia by the Western world. It was taken along with spears and other items from the camp upon which the British intruded. Captain Cook and his crew set off on the official journey to record the transit of Venus, but Cook’s secret mission and desire was to find Terra Australis Incognita – the unknown southern land. This moment of bearing witness to the shield’s magnif- icence quickly ended as I was hurled through a storyline of time and my own existence. Standing in the museum in the middle of London, I saw over 200 years of taking our objects, writing about our cultures, extracting knowledge and regurgitating it in the white paradigm. My awe at everything around me soon turned to anger and grief. This grief came with me on my journey to Cambridge University, which also has material collected by Cook and Banks, as well as important South Eastern Australian collections. It was a mid-nineteenth-century handwritten object

201 I Can Still Hear Them Calling label that sparked my thinking on the influence of these collecting histories and the effect on First Peoples’ cultural history and contemporary practice. I realised that a major factor in all of it was the notion of authenticity. The label attached to the shield read ‘A good specimen of a parrying shield, but the value by some degree impaired by having been incised by the white man’s tool, the colouring is white man’s material as the blacks had no such colour as blue.’ This suggestion that the object is only authentic if it is not ‘impaired’ by the white man’s tool is a method of classi- fication that denies the cultural knowledge of the object’s making, the significance of the lines, and the skills passed on for sixty thousand years and more. It also dismisses the innovative practice of the maker, using the new materials available to them in continuing a cultural practice. At this moment, I saw the legacy of this one simple comment and its ripple effect today: What is authentic? Who is authentic? Recently I returned to the British Museum, and spent time with the belongings held there. I walked into a room of nineteenth-century emu-feather skirts, shields and baskets, necklaces and the only known bark etchings from Victoria. I held one of these gently, thinking of my Dja Dja Wurrung cousins, whose Ancestors would have engraved the barks. We cannot progress our realities unless we acknowledge our past histories and this is something that has been a problem within museums, particularly in Australia, for many years: the histories of these institutions are not understood or widely known. It is often not known how collections were acquired, including Ancestral remains or the emphasis has been on the collector, not the collected. We continue to be designated within the canon of retro- spective nostalgia, within the historical past. If you look at major museum collections across Australia and globally they are primarily based on nineteenth- and early twentieth- century objects, with gaps in contemporary objects. They have been void of First Peoples’ voices. Some of these places continue to re-inscribe the colonial ‘other’ narrative through non-Indigenous curators still holding the key, apparently

202 Kimberley Moulton unlocking our history but in fact perpetuating three con- venient lies: one, that we have suffered irreparable cultural loss (knowledge and craftsmanship); two, that the object is dormant; and three, that the Western/non-Indigenous lens is the right lens (the white way is the right way). This is particularly problematic because it has impacted the contemporary art discourse and market, where there is an expectation of what Aboriginal art should be. The value of Aboriginal art is also often based on prescribed tropes of what the ‘real’ Aboriginal experience should be. Often this standard is the art from remote communities of the central, western and northern parts of Australia, which in many cases have become the ‘approved’ Aboriginal aesthetic, while the southeast and ‘urban’ based artists are seen as purely political or in a process of revival. Art from the desert to the north and down to the south east is all valid and important, but we must question why this is not reflected in collections evenly. The ripple-effect of these legacies influ- ences art history and critical space, where white men seem to dominate and continue to question First Peoples’ space within the contemporary canon. Such histories and critiques neglect to include the strong voices of Aboriginal curators and writers who have been working and advocating for decades. The absence, or at best minimal presence, of contemporary First Peoples/Nations’ artwork is a failing of major art institutions around the globe. Collections speak louder than words: they show legacy and history. Often, for First Peoples, museum collections say ‘You do not exist today, only in the past, and your voices do not belong in this space.’ I witnessed the belief in the dormancy of objects in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington DC in 2015. I was there to see the South Eastern Australian First Peoples material that forms part of the foundation of the Smithsonian, having been taken during the 1840 Americas expedition that formed the first collection for the institution. I was there to see a possum-skin cloak, collected from the Eastern coast of Australia and the oldest in existence.

203 I Can Still Hear Them Calling We had our cloaks from birth and they were made by the men and women of our clan. As we grew, so would the cloak. They were designed with maps of country and held the markings of our identity. The curator of the Oceanic collection was very accom- modating, but her work at the institution of nearly forty years had focused on Papua New Guinea, and although she had been the ‘keeper’ of the Australian collection over those many, many years, she had not engaged with it. As we walked through the room, it was as if she were seeing some of these items for the first time, partly because she had never focused on the collection, but perhaps because she was seeing them with someone who had an Ancestral connection to them. The cloak was in a draw on the bottom shelf. I sat on the floor to be close and for my gulpa ngawul – deep listening. I studied the lines, the sewn sinew holding the pelts together. I breathed in the stale smell of old things and I spoke to it. When it was time to go, the curator slowly closed the draw and said, ‘Time to go back to sleep now.’ I was startled by this comment. It came from care, like a grandmother tucking her grandchild into bed, but it deeply disturbed me. I wondered, if it was going to sleep, when would be the next time it might wake up? The notion that all of the objects were sleeping and dormant made me consider their purpose, locked away in the dark halls of these institutions. I believe cultural belongings, whether old or new, are constantly awake, and recharged when they have community with them. There is a reciprocal channel that is opened when community connect. In discussing the significance of the object and the possibility of a long-term loan, any suggestion of repatriation was not welcomed. It was explained to me that this cloak was part of a collection ‘too important to the American history of the Smithsonian’ ever to be released, even though it has never once been on display, and will remain ‘asleep’ forever.

204 Kimberley Moulton Strung Up Like Cured Meat In 2017, I connected to our Ancestral belongings in Rome, London, Berlin, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and although I’m still understanding my calling in this space of the in between, I felt I was exactly where I should be and getting closer to what I don’t even know I’m looking for. For the first time in my international research, I held the objects taken from my country. I began in Rome at the Pigorni museum. The institution was cold and harsh, but the people were warm and giving. We used Google Translate to communicate. There were several trolleys set up in a light-filled auditorium because I was not allowed to go into the collections stores. The room was cavernous and lonely. The objects I saw were specifically provenanced to clans and regions in Victoria, some of them from my people, from the areas in which I grew up: boomerangs, clubs, shields, stone tools and grinding stones, they felt familiar, as if reaching out to me, grasping what they could of home before going back to their grey archival boxes. I was scared to get too close for fear of losing myself in them. There were two remarkable Tasmanian shell necklaces so long that they could be wrapped two or three times around the neck. They were knotted and stuffed into little plastic bags. I spent hours unknotting and laying them flat, paying respects to the Pakana peoples who made them. I left with more questions than answers. Berlin was my next stop – the Museum of Ethnography. I was there to meet a colleague and we were to look at material from William Blandowski, the first curator for Mel- bourne Museum. I was also there to see the South Eastern material and two very special objects that are thought to have come from Captain James Cook’s voyage, another stolen shield and a boomerang. The museum’s registry book from the time these objects came in to the collection, states that they were taken from Botany Bay by Cook, and there are further signs pointing to Cook, but the museum has made no conclusive comment either way.

205 I Can Still Hear Them Calling The Ancestral belongings were waiting for me as I entered the gallery, the shield so large it nearly overspilled the trolley. This is my journal entry from that day:

When I saw the Cook shield my heart skipped a beat. Sitting there in the clinical trolley, its strength beamed back at me. It is full of memory and power. As I touched it and picked it up, I spoke to it silently, saying hello, who I was and paying my respects. I studied every crack and crevice, the white ochre just visible in places, the red still just there. How striking it must have been, a warrior shield. I feel guilty having to leave it.

After my time with these items, I journeyed down the hall- ways lined with objects from across the pacific, with their many smells, many energies, but I focused on what was ahead of me. We came to the cabinets with the Australian material. I could see through the glass Victorian shields, many of them. The curator opened the cupboard door and I took a step back. Clubs, walking sticks, boomerangs strung up on butcher’s hooks. I think she noticed my look of horror: ‘Space-saving technique’, she said. I’m not sure what disturbed me the most – the way in which our objects where housed, or the fact that some of them are so extremely rare and the oldest I have seen from the South East. The cabinets were overflowing. I also travelled to Glasgow. There I unwrapped stone tools taken from my Yorta Yorta country in Shepparton in 1867. Although they had been sitting in the mild, temper- ature-controlled room, they were ice cold when I touched them. They held on to my finger prints, warm impressions appearing as I squeezed them tight, like hugging a long-lost relative. After my touch, they almost instantly felt warm. My home-sickness was strong, as was theirs, and I departed Scotland, also the home of some of my Ancestors, leaving part of me behind.

206 Kimberley Moulton This is the reality of my work and that of many other First Peoples who have a role in museums and galleries. A large part of it has been researching and connecting to objects, but with this comes my passion for story and voice through art and intervention in the archive. I am interested in how creative practice and artists re-contextualise historical material, and how we as sovereign peoples can challenge the Western art canon and academic and ethnographic museum practice by supporting these intersections further. Sparked by seeing the ground-breaking exhibition Insur- gence/Resurgence at Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada (curated by Métis and First Nation women Julie Nagem and Jaimie Isaac), I have been considering in what ways First Peoples communities from Australia can further our insurgence into museums and galleries on an international level. Our resurgence of cultural practice and engagement with historical collections is growing – artists, curators and community have been using the archive for decades, but what is our methodology for strengthening our presence in these spaces, particularly overseas? How do we break the barriers that have been formed by the collecting, classifying and direct- ing of our histories by white institutions that have a lasting legacy on contemporary space today? First Nations presence and persistence is just the beginning. There must be a collaboration between the institution in supporting the transformation of these spaces, and creating opportunity for agency with the communities. Engaging and building relationships with First Peoples curators must have actual work outcomes: it is not enough to just talk; we need action. A question I constantly ask myself is how to direct my experiences and knowledge into positive experiences for my community and to help build relationships with the people who currently have control. I want to create an insurgence that is healthy, strong and that will dismantle the systems we are constantly attempting to ‘un-learn’ from. I want to challenge what a museum and art gallery is and what it can be. My goal is to facilitate space for my community and other First Nations in international collections for the telling

207 I Can Still Hear Them Calling of true histories with contemporary makers and artists, and to work on bringing the objects home. I stand in between the heavens and the earth, with the memory of our Ancestors and the living culture of my people. I work with and connect to our belongings new and old. Every day I work in collections, I am listening. I imagine our futures, where I see our artists represented across the world, strong in culture and presence. I meditate on our lost belongings over the seas and what our Old People might think. I see them when I close my eyes. I can still hear them calling.

208 People Call Me Venkat Venkat Raman Singh Shyam

209 People Call Me Venkat Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Mother Earth, 2018. Acrylic and ink on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

210 Venkat Raman Singh Shyam Wearing clothes like you, and speaking in a language that is foreign to both you and me, I have come a long way in life. My journey has been like that of a pinwheel, what we call a firki in our village. It has been a story of constant change – a change that has driven me, and a change that I have often driven. People call me Venkat. My full name is a mouthful: Venkat Raman Singh Shyam. I was born into a Pardhan Gond family in the village of Sijhora. A few kilometres from my home lies the Kanha forest, where Rudyard Kipling set his Jungle Book. I now live in the state capital of Bhopal, and I claim inheritance also from the oldest rock-art site in this part of the world, Bhimbetka, which archaeologists trace back to the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras. This gallery of cave art is 25,000 years old. It is housed in the dyke along the oldest river in the subcontinent, Narmada. Over four years, I worked with my friend S. Anand on telling the story of my life and of my community, which was published in 2016 in the form of a book called Finding My Way. In this book, and in my life in general, I have drawn an arc from my village Sijhora and the cave art of Bhimbetka, and claimed kinship with Gaudí and Dalí in Europe as well as with the Aboriginal artists of Australia. Just as much as I owe a debt to masters like M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza in India, they owe an unacknowledged intellectual and artistic debt to scores of lesser known Adivasi artists like me.

How did what we call modern Gond art come about? In the mid-1980s and 1990s, Jangarh Singh Shyam, my uncle, my father’s younger brother, single-handedly and single-mindedly gave Pardhan Gond art its name and identity in the international world. Today, if I speak before you, it is because of Jangarh and the encouragement and support his genius received from another famous Indian artist, the late Jagdish Swaminathan, who promoted not only Jangarh but many tribal artists like him in the 1980s in Bhopal. Gond

211 People Call Me Venkat and other tribal art that was made on the walls of homes now started to appear on paper, on canvas, in the market and in galleries. Today, I am here before you because my uncle Jangarh infamously committed suicide in Niigata, Japan, in the year 2001. His death temporarily paralysed the world of Gond art. But it was his death that allowed artists like myself, Ram Singh Urveti, Bhajju Shyam, Durgabai Vyam and others to make a name for ourselves. Being invited to Dhaka gives me both pleasure and pride, for I represent not just myself but my community, which is otherwise mostly invisible on platforms like this, though I believe I belong to one of the oldest tribes of this land. My community, Gond, shares its name with this ancient Gondwana land: we may well have been the first people of India, but surely over millennia we must also have become a very mixed people. People ask me: where exactly do you come from? I don’t look or sound Adivasi enough for them. Adivasis are not just our first people, but they are our first artists too. The Gond school I represent believes in conceptual art. All life and all art is about the coming together of the line and the dot. Some dots are places; when joined they can assume any shape, they can be given any colour, they become lines and turn into rivers. Gond art seeks to astound and astonish. Until some decades ago, Gond art was drawn on the walls of homes for life-cycle rituals and festivals. It was not owned or sold in galleries. It existed in and for itself. The Gond belief is that the land owns us; the art we make owns us. We cannot own the land or art.

How did I become an artist? Does merely belonging to a tradition make me an artist? I did not learn from schools and books. I often skipped school and barely managed to matriculate. I fished in the river Halon that ran by my village; I stole corncobs; I learnt to plough. I heard the bana: the stringed instrument on which my ancestors sang our oral history, myths and legends, our karma songs. I also heard mendicant singers

212 Venkat Raman Singh Shyam passing by our village singing the songs of Kabir during my childhood and since then I have had an abiding interest in Kabir and music. Before we Pardhan Gonds came to be called artists in the urban-modern sense of the word, we were the record keepers of our community. There has also been an age-old tradition of making murals and paintings on the walls of our villages. This is called Dighna and Chowka. It is still done in homes in villages. The patterns are mostly abstract. Until some thirty years ago, only natural dyes, all extracted locally, were used. It was a mural by Jangarh on the walls of Patan- garh that attracted the urban painter who went native, J. Swaminathan. He invited Jangarh to Bhopal in 1982 to make a professional career out of art. By then, the Bharat Bhavan art complex had been established in Bhopal. Thus the Gonds (and other tribals like the Baigas and Bhils) started working with paper and artificial colours only in the 1980s. Jangarh represented a dramatic change – he represented Gond art the way the modern world came to perceive it. What you see now as Gond art is thus both contemporary and ancient. It is from now, and from forever. Jangarh won the highest state award for art, Shikhar Samman, in 1986. In 1988, my father forced me to go to Bhopal to work with and learn from Uncle Jangarh. I was his disciple for three years, and following some ego clashes and owing to lack of independence, I left for the metropolis of New Delhi. I initially worked like a slave for a year at a senior police officer’s house in Sarvapriya Vihar for a pit- tance of 225 Rupees a month. I then quit the job and became a painter of houses. I did any and every job that came my way – I soon became a daily wage labourer in Delhi. At one point, I began to ply a cycle rickshaw. I became very sick in Delhi from cerebral malaria, and I returned to my village to recover. I then went back to Bhopal again and worked as a signboard artist. I climbed scaffolds and painted hoardings of 10 x 20 feet. I learnt a lot about brushes and technique during this period. My art today reflects a confluence – a sangam – of the many kinds of art

213 People Call Me Venkat I have seen, though I think I retain an aesthetic and stylistic sensibility that can be seen as distinctly Pardhan Gond. Meanwhile, I fell in love with a woman called Saroj, eloped, got married, and had children. Saroj is now an artist in her own right. In 2001, the disastrous news of Jangarh’s suicide in faraway Japan shocked not just the Pardhan Gond artistic community but the entire world of arts and letters in India. But Jangarh’s death also brought renewed interest in the Pardhan Gond art form. Publishers wanted these artists to illustrate children’s books; Adivasi artists were sent to festivals of art abroad. Thanks to the curator Rajeev Sethi – best known for organising Indian festivals abroad during Rajiv Gandhi’s times – I managed, along with four other artists like myself, to travel to Barcelona in 2004 to participate in Forum, an international arts and culture festival. This is also where I saw the work of Gaudí and Dalí for the first time and felt a kinship with them. I, and at least a half a dozen Pardhan Gond artists like me, have today exhibited widely in India and abroad. We seem to have arrived, but even today most of the art world – gallerists, curators, other artists and critics – view us as ‘traditional’ artists. We still find it difficult to be recognised and accepted as contemporary artists by the arts establishment in India. Both private galleries and state-run organisations tend to dismiss Adivasi art as exotic and primitive. We are often told our place is in the Dastkari Haat Samiti, in Dilli Haat, Surajkund, the Crafts Museum and Crafts Council of India. If and when a high-end private gallery offers us a chance, we are offered group shows – as if Adivasi artists lack individuality. After the publication of Finding My Way, a feature in the Economic Times quoted Rajeev Lochan, the director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, as saying: ‘The NGMA is for modern and contemporary art. There is the Crafts Museum to cater to Adivasi and tribal art. If it needs to be changed, that decision has to be taken by the ministry [of culture].’

214 Venkat Raman Singh Shyam This is an unfair hierarchy. I am a Gond and my work has elements of Gond art. Otherwise I would be rootless. But my work is contemporary art. I am painting here and now about the here and now.

The famous doha of Kabir perhaps best reflects the knowledge tradition that I represent:

पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग म ुआ, पंडि त भया न कोय, ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडि त होय। Rote reading won’t make a pandit. If you can’t spell love, you just won’t get it.

Thank you and Johar!

215 People Call Me Venkat 216 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty. Curating Performative Encounters with Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art Biung Ismahasan

217 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty Biung Ismahasan, Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part I, 2017. Curatorial experiment in collaboration with contemporary dancer Hsueh Yu-Hsien. Dakanuwa community public cemetery, Namasia, Southern Taiwan. Photo: Rich John Matheson. Courtesy of the artist.

1 ‘Indigeneity’ and ‘In- This essay explores the ethno-aesthetic nature of Taiwanese digenous’ have been Indigenous performative art through the works of Truku capitalised throughout this essay in order to performance artist and activist Don Don Hounwn, Rukai demonstrate the cen- trality of cultural identity sculptor Eleng Luluan and myself, a Bunun curator (Turku, and suggest the rights of Ruaki and Bunun are three of Taiwan’s sixteen Indige- sovereignty. nous groups).1 Our performative approaches and curatorial strategies are examined as Indigenous artistic practices, particularly those pertinent to cultural loss, recovery and activation, and in relation to the discourse surrounding Indigenous and cultural sovereignty. The site-specific performance, for example, is presented as an alternative space for Indigenous intervention and curatorial activism. The essay begins by looking at how Hounwn performs Indigeneity, sorrow and solitude, exposing hybrid identities. It goes on to demonstrate how Luluan uses her Indigenous minimalist installations to explore intrinsic and extrinsic performativity, material objects and soft sculptures. Finally, it looks at how I structured a performative encounter with Taiwanese Indige- nous contemporary art by curating in an off-site and culturally resonant space.

218 Biung Ismahasan 2 Introduction One of the most significant phenomena is the Since the democratisation of Taiwan’s politics and the advent emergence of Indigenous of the Indigenous Art Movement,2 Taiwanese Indigenous artist, Yuma Taru, who tends to use the binary Curatorial Practice (henceforth ICP) has experienced great terms ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary’ and/or ‘two expansion and transformation, effectively voicing issues worlds’ that are often surrounding decolonisation.3 Performance and performativ- associated with an Indig- enous background and ity are fundamental to understanding the emergent, pro- artistic content since the cessual and contextual nature of Indigeneity, which is for 1990s. Her works have taken a series of themes many a politically enabling construct in resisting ongoing including: the individual in an unequal society, colonialisms and expropriations – Indigeneity expressed as the breakdown of tribal performance as a form of radical resistance. Even as this communities, gender, educational turns, hu- essay explores essentialism, it defies expectations of primi- man-environmental rela- tivism and primordialism. It emphasises how artists fashion tionships, and the results of colonial struggle with and refashion identities through self-conscious experience the mainstream society of Taiwan. and reflexivity, embodied speech and immersive action 3 expressed as Indigenous performance and installation. The attempt is to decolonise Indigenous practice The essay emphasises ‘ethno-spatiality’ as one of many in order to achieve an authentic understand- productive ways of approaching Indigenous curation. In ing of it, which requires this context, ‘ethno-spatiality’ refers to a systematic exper- more resources than are currently available. imentation with and expansion of Taiwanese Indigenous curation. The aim is to produce knowledge about Indige- nous/decolonial aesthetics and to create a discursive space for performative exhibitions. It not only harks back to the radical/performative art spirit of the 1990s, but also reveals how performance can be a tool to rethink ICP uses and aesthetics, mobilising the ethno-aesthetic nature of Taiwan- ese Indigenous cultures and the ephemerality of performing as a means to voice issues around the theme of decolonisation. In order to debate their specific desire for recognition, self-determination and cultural sovereignty, artists perform Indigeneity, including the remediation of Indigenous representations and the on-going processes of inventing modernity within ICP. By going back and forth between my own participation as an independent curator and engagement in critique as a researcher, I ask: in contemporary works of performance and installation arts – where culture and art have already become self-defined categories – how do the concepts of Indigeneity

219 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 4 and Indigenous performance negotiate trans-local systems This phrase is borrowed from Indigenous literary of power and knowledge, linked to specific colonial histories theorist Chadwick Allen. and contemporary cultural flows? How might Indigenous Drawing on his work, we can contextualise curating serve as a mediator to open up spaces for process- Indigenous relational art in the broader field based performative art? With this in mind, what could it of ‘trans-Indigenous’ mean to curate Indigenously and why should artists and cultural practices asserting that ‘centring the curators, whether Indigenous or settler, be cautious of using Indigenous has become a words like ‘Indigenise’ and ‘decolonialise’ when describing new standard’. Chadwick Allen, Trans-Indigenous: their work? Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (University of Minneso- Trans-Indigenous Essentialism4 and Modernity in Don Don Hounwn’s Smapux.5 ta Press: Minneapolis, Performance as Aesthetic Expression 2012). 5 On 8 December 2012, Don Don Hounwn’s The Face of the Smapux is the name in eastern Taiwanese Road was performed for the opening of the first PULIMA Indigenous communities 6 of the ancient magician Art Award (henceforth PAA) exhibition at Taipei Songshan Truku. I use it here to Cultural Park. Hounwn, dressed up as a utopian wanderer, emphasise the complexity of Indigeneity interacts with his aboriginal self, depicted in the accompany- defined by Hounwn. He is the inheritor of several ing video installation, to create a performance art piece that traditional arts and cul- presents Indigenous identities in their many manifestations. tures in his tribe, such as this magician who can connect the spirituality between ancestor and tribal people in the Truku language. 6 This biennial competition is the first national art award for Indigenous artists and has been dedicated to Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art since 2012.

Don Don Hounwn, The Face of the Road, 2012. Video installation. 1st PULIMA Art Award exhibition, Taipei, Taiwan. Photo: Biung Ismahasan. Courtesy of the artist.

220 Biung Ismahasan 7 Hounwn’s performance art creates a space for transcultural Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny, ‘Perform- discursive encounters between Indigenous and non-Indige- ing Indigeneity’, in their nous audiences. ‘Performing Indigeneity’, as described by Performing Indigeneity: Global Histories and scholars Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny, is a sophis- Contemporary Experi- ence (Lincoln: Univer- ticated treatment of the cross-cultural politics embodied in sity of Nebraska Press, the productive but hard-to-define category ‘Indigeneity’7 and 2014), p. I. 8 creates new aesthetic models for the performance of Indige- I use the terms Aborig- nous cultures and identities. Graham and Penny consolidate inal, Indigenous, Native and Tribal in this essay in our understanding of how Hounwn performs his conscious- order to express different identities based on ness of Indigeneity and the hybrid relationships among his multi-cultural trajecto- homeland, the tribal and the global, whilst at the same time ries and contemporary art development of participating in the decolonial practice of Indigenous curato- Taiwanese Indigenous rial studies. curatorial practice (ICP) since the 1990s. These This performance took place in a large, dark, atmospheric different terms describe different levels of space, in which Hounwn performed the symbolic identity artistic expression and of an alternative ethnic people, the lost vagrant or searcher, various tribal cultures. For example, to express whose skin was white, and who has various incarnations, the trajectories of art development I would use attributes and names among Native Truku hunting cultures. the sequence: Tribal  Hounwn wore clothing that he designed according to the tra- Aboriginal  Native  Indigenous. ditional weaving techniques of his people, the Truku nation. In this way he differentiated himself from the Aboriginal8 Truku person wearing traditional warrior’s clothing in the video. At the end of the performance, the artist interacted with the audiences, guiding their reactions. Footage from video cameras directed at the front of the stage, zooming in and out from spectators to performers, were projected onto screens, creating a montage of documentary images accompanied by electronic music. The piece represented the cultural hybridity, migration, existence, settlement, survival and adaptation of the Truku people in the mountainous region east of Taiwan.

221 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 9 Or as art critic and curator Claire Bishop has elsewhere called it, the ‘social turn’: an interest in working collaboratively and long-term with specific communities. Specifically, it ties together two genealogies of exhibition making c. 1993: the rise of ‘performative’ exhibition making, the focus of this essay, and the socially engaged, site-specific exhibition. Both of these genealogies establish a new relationship to temporality by expanding the duration of the exhibition. Claire Bishop, ‘Performative Exhibi- Don Don Hounwn, The Face of the Road, 2012. Video installation. st tions: The Problem of 1 PULIMA Art Award exhibition, Taipei, Taiwan. Photo: Biung Ismahasan. Open-Endedness’, in Courtesy of the artist. Rike Frank, Beatrice von Bismarck et al (eds.), Culture of the Curatorial: Timing On the Temporal The Face of the Road also demonstrated the modernity Dimension of Exhibiting of Indigenous performance art and relational art in an open- (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), p. 240. ended space by working without a prescribed goal beyond 10 participation in a performance art piece that was improvisa- ‘The exhibition setting is not merely a whim on tional and intergenerational. Hounwn rendered the exhibi- the part of the curator but simply an attempt to tion structure less fixed by determining his own theme and correspond the model producing work specifically for this show. of the show with that of the artworks’. Erick Hounwn’s ‘performing Indigeneity’ discards any outward Troncy, ‘No Man’s Time’, acts of performance that might fall back on older notions 168. In the Guggenheim catalogue entry on this of primitivism. Instead, he uses his bodily movement to exhibition, Michael Ar- cher explicitly connects express cross-gender, the discovery of roots and ethnicity. In ‘No man’s Time’ to Fran- this context, he transfers cultural knowledge into a radical cis Fukuyama’s eulogy 9 to liberalism: Francis strategy of ‘performative exhibition’. One of the key ideas Fukuyama, ‘The End of to emerge was that of the exhibition as a process-based History?’ National Inter- est 16 (Summer, 1989): documentary, with various works taking the form of actors – pp. 3–18. some with starring roles, others as extras. This is akin to the transfer of Indigenous aesthetics and to the performance of modernity, which introduces the agency of cultural politics and decolonial curatorial practice. Hounwn has repeatedly stressed that his curatorial experimentation derives from his own interests in ‘open-endedness’,10 which he pursued

222 Biung Ismahasan 11 for the duration of this expanded performative exhibition. This term covers sixteen different tribes and is the Driven by his specific desire for self-determination, cultural official name promul- sovereignty and artistic resistance, he performs Indigeneity gated by the Taiwanese Government, such as in public as well as in intimate spaces for his own particular ‘First Nations’ in Canada, ‘Māori People’ in New purpose of disseminative ideologies. Zealand, ‘Aboriginal Australians’, ‘Native Locating the Cultural Sovereignty of the Truku Nation Americans’ in the US or ‘Ainu People’ in Japan. The experience of performing Indigeneity is not always 12 Ric Knowles spells the spectacular. The emotive experience inherent in The Face word that is the subject of this issue using medial of the Road often has the greatest impact on participants capitalisation and no hy- and audiences. For Taiwanese Indigenous groups,11 cultural phen: ‘transIndigenous’. However, mindful of the performance is constitutive of both contemporary Truku sensitivity and fluidity of identity and the Truku people in an urban context. The the issue and of different usage by writers in individual practices become dissolved and therefore it is different geographical and cultural locations, impossible to identify authorship clearly. Hounwn, as an he respects throughout Indigenous artist-curator, aims to blur the boundaries that the issue of conventions, capitalisations and usually divide exhibition and production, off-site space, terminology employed by the authors rather than studio and museum. With the significant ‘Indigenisation’ imposing a uniform style. of the international art world – as Indigenous voices are Ric Knowles, ‘Editorial Comment: TransIndig- increasingly sought after for biennials, artist-in-residence enous Performance’, In programmes, exhibitions and art fairs – art institutions are PROJECT MUSE Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (2015): facing the challenge of engaging meaningfully with Indige- pp. IX–XV. nous thinking. I am allergic to fellow Indigenous and especially non- Indigenous people using radically hegemonic terms, such as ‘homogenisation of culture’ or ‘globalisation in the art world’. These are based on a Eurocentric race hierarchy that has no understanding of our complex genealogies and responsibilities to ancestral and resident territories. In the current globalised world, Indigenous communities continue to engage in performative exchange, and Indigenous performance practices and research methodologies, both traditional and contemporary, often model a progressive and bracingly cosmopolitan transnationalism – or better, ‘tran- sIndigeneity’.12 My analysis of Hounwn’s performative curatorial practice seeks to highlight the utility of Taiwan’s ICP as a strategic approach for reclaiming cultural traditions, asserting

223 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 13 sovereignty and embracing identity-based philosophies. The Ford Foundation’s unpublished ‘Indigenous This performance of Indigenous authority has implications Knowledge and Expres- that are critical for the maintenance of cultural sovereignty sive Culture Portfolio Final Report: Advancing and the kinds of cultural self-determination identified by the Dialogue on Native American Arts in Society Hounwn’s improvisational and symbolic sacrificial ceremo- Initiative Convening’ held nious acts. Therefore, this curatorial space is not about the at the Ford Foundation on 29 April 2008. inclusion of another ethnic group into the broader arts and 14 cultural landscape. It is rather about carving out a space of Founded in 2002 by the Taishin Bank Foundation ethno-spatiality where contemporary and traditional Taiwan- for Arts and Culture, sponsored and support- ese Indigenous artists and art scholars can be a creative and ed by the Taishin Inter- intellectual force for the nation as a whole to examine and national Bank. The award 13 acknowledges creative further understand its cultural meaning. Moreover, locating achievements in works and promoting cultural sovereignty can no longer be char- of visual, performing and inter-disciplinary arts, a acterised as simply embracing counter-hegemonic positions pioneering idea among arts awards at home and against dominant mainstream cultures. abroad. Its unique selection process includes nominations year-round Between Object and Sculpture. The Indigeneity and by professionals, release Performativity of Eleng Luluan’s Installation Art of observations and art reviews, as well as the Eleng Luluan was born in the Haocha village of the Rukai yearly involvement of international jurors. In Tribe in Pingtung County, Southern Taiwan. She started addition to its impor- her search for a space for self-determination, self-realisation tance in recognising the professional creative and artistic life in 2002, at the age of twenty-eight, when she achievements in Taiwan, the Taishin Arts Award moved to the Dulan community in Taitung, Eastern Taiwan. is also dedicated to In 2011, she was nominated for the tenth Taishin Arts establishing a platform 14 enabling international Award competition. In 2012, she was invited to attend an networking for contem- artist-in-residence programme in New Caledonia and partici- porary Taiwanese artists. pated in the exhibition Beyond the Boundary: Contemporary Indigenous Art of Taiwan. In the same year, she had her first solo exhibition, Fractures in the Memories of Life: Silently Awaiting. I will take some specific installation works by Luluan as examples to explore how she has invented the concept of Indigenous conceptual installation. This expanded form of Indigenous contemporary sculpture seeks to expose the essence of performing Indigeneity by eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts, like the traditional woodcraft sculpture or the totem pole. This is an example of the postcolonial or transnational turn in contemporary art,

224 Biung Ismahasan 15 which according to Terry Smith draws upon ‘local traditions Terry Smith, Contempo- 15 rary Art: World Currents but stand[s] alongside modern art’. The Last Sigh Before (London: Laurence King Gone (6 November 2016) is an example of such Indigenous Publishing, 2002), pp. 10–13. performative installation, which involves three types of Indigenous contemporary art forms: soft sculpture, tribal environment and Indigenous minimalist installation. The expanded series of works made from strapping and elastic cords, babelengayane ki ina (Mother’s Garden, 23 March 2014), show Luluan’s ambition to expand her Indigenous sculpture and to curate her works as an installation in an aesthetically organised space.

Eleng Luluan, Mother’s Garden, 2014. Strapping and elastic cords. Dulan community, Taitung County, Eastern Taiwan. Photo: Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Taiwan. Courtesy of the artist.

Eleng Luluan, babelengayane ki ina, 2016. Strapping and elastic cords. 3rd PULIMA Art Award exhibition, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan. Photo: Biung Ismahasan. Courtesy of the artist.

225 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 16 The aesthetically organised space was developed as an Interview with Eleng Lu- luan via Skype between experimental model of Indigenous minimalist installation to Essex and Dulan, eastern respond to the need for an expanded field of ICP in Taiwan. Taiwan. The considerations within Luluan’s work range from inter- vening within and inhabiting a virtual, independently owned space, to the attempt to cultivate environmental art in a contemporary curatorial practice. She plays the role of artist-cum-ethnographer and her installation work delimits its own spatial boundaries, within which material objects and sculptures are displayed together. Her curation of ethno- spatiality in the form of an Indigenous minimalist installation points to an artistic construction and exhibition practice that goes beyond Western and Taiwanese Han-hegemonic discourse and interpretation. In Forest, River Water and Mother’s Hair (16 October 2016), Luluan is true to her statement: ‘I do not change existing shapes, but I arrange them differently in a virtual space, to make accessible to others the elegance [and] simplicity of using elastic cord and strapping for important structures, and new designs for inventing Indigenous minimalism and native inventions of installation art in Taiwanese Aborigi- nal culture.’16 Thus Luluan applies her material practice to a specific native context: the elastic cord is the exemplary tool for the Indigenous farmer. This work may also reflect her personal experience and memory of her grandmother instructing her how to collect water from the river in the deep forest. Thus she curates ethno-spatiality through an invented form of Indigenous soft sculpture and installation art, expanding the field of Indigenous conceptual installation. This, then, marks a turning point not just in Native art but also in the mainstream.

The Ethno-Aesthetic Nature of my Performative Curatorial Practice (In Collaboration with Contemporary Dancer Hsueh Yu-Hsien) In my exhibition Anti-Alcoholism: performative curatorial practices 2014–2017, I employed three strategies: site-specificity, neo-critical space and ethno-spatiality in an attempt to develop the processes and decision-making involved in

226 Biung Ismahasan creating the spatiality of the viewer-performer and inter- preter. In the context of ethno-spatiality, the viewer’s presence, participation, viewpoints and likely response patterns were all taken into consideration in an Indigenous performative installation that includes site-specific curatorial practices. Anti-Alcoholism was an experimental exhibition that consisted of a flux of performances and off-site curatorial creations in which dancers engaged with the spaces, audiences and my conceptual installation, triggering a succession of trajectories along the way. This curation of progressive participation builds upon a sustained commitment to revealing how Indigenous performance can be a radical tool to rethink ICP uses and aesthetics. In this case, the ethno-aesthetic nature of performance and ephemeral performing actions was an effective way of voicing the severe issues around alcoholism across global Indigenous communities, including Taiwanese Indigenous drinking as a form of protest. Per- formative curating applied in this work is a form of knowledge creation and also a catalyst for awareness of Taiwanese Indigenous practice. This work stimulates demands for socio-cultural/environmental change in Indigenous society. Tribal peoples and children were invited to participate and display artistic objects to explore how the meaning of their life values is constructed. These Indigenous curations respond to how Indigenous performance and installation art flourish in the face of social disruption, instability and change.

Three Curatorial Strategies for Performing Indigeneity Anti-Alcoholism was a collaboration with dancer Hsueh Yu-Hsien. Three curatorial strategies were developed through her improvisational bodily performances within alternative spaces, all of which cast a spotlight on how Indig- enous curating may serve as a mediator to open up spaces for process-based performative art. These radical strategies had a productive impact, taking as a point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather

227 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 17 than an independent and private space. ICP is rarely con- See Biung Ismahasan, ‘From Pink to Darker I – sidered in the context of performance art or its present-day Performative Curatorial manifestation in relational art. As such, these works raise Trajectories in Nov 2014’, YouTube Video, 5:32, 25 the question of what it could mean to curate Indigenously in February 2017: https:// www.youtube.com/ order to work towards a socially oriented, post-appropriation watch?v=5Q74kGWHwbs and post-performance art.

I. Curation of Site-Specificity17 2 November 2014, Dakanuwa Community Public Cemetery, Namasia, Southern Taiwan

Biung Ismahasan, Anti-Alcoholism, 2014. Curatori- al experiment in collaboration with tribal villagers. Dakanuwa community public cemetery, Namasia, Southern Taiwan Photo: Biung Ismahasan. Courtesy of the artist.

The first of my strategies, the curation of site-specificity, contributed to the development of the hybridised figure of the curator-cum-artist, which has subsequently become a privileged symbol within Indigenous Contemporary Prac- tice. It can be argued that off-site space creates conditions that provide more flexibility and broaden the level of creative imagination for curators to produce performative works of art.

228 Biung Ismahasan II. Curation of Neo-Critical Space18 4 November 2016, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (3rd PULIMA Arts Award)

Biung Ismahasan, From Pink to Darker, 2016. Mixed-media exhibition. 3rd PULIMA Art Exhibition, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Southern Taiwan. Photo: Biung Ismahasan. Courtesy of the artist.

18 See Biung Ismahasan, The curation of neo-critical space has contributed to the ‘From Pink to Dark- establishment of Indigenous curatorial aesthetics: ‘a potential er – Indigenous Per- formative Exhibition’, nexus for discussion, critique and debate’, and fills in gaps YouTube Video, 8:07, 13 November 2016: left by ‘the evacuated role of the critic in parallel cultural https://www.youtube. discourse’19 beyond Taiwanese Han hegemonic interpre- com/watch?v=ByUHM- RAZCHo tation. Thus my work can be defined as Indigenous per- 19 Paul O’Neill, ‘The Curato- formative curation that demonstrates the implications and rial Turn: From Practice strategies for Indigenous curating both practically and theo- to Discourse’, in Judith Rugg (ed.), Issues in Cu- retically. The notion of ICP may be more deeply understood rating Contemporary Art by exploring the concepts of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Indigenist’ and Performance (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect through my video installation. Books, 2007), p. 14. 20 ICP has rarely been considered within the context of rela- Ian McLean, ‘The Secret tional, socially engaged art, and Taiwan’s expanding field of History of Performance Art’, Bomb, exh. cat. performative exhibitions in recent years. This is partly why I Ghent-Kortrijk, Belgium have devised, through applied curatorial strategies, a sys- (Snoeck Publishers, 2013), p. 89. tematic experimentation of curatorial form, which could be described as an anti-formalist approach to Indigenous performance art, and have sought to ‘escape its earlier anthropological frame in a collective and performative sensibility’.20 My video installation exhibited the aesthetic nuance of emergent identity, self-determination and cultural sovereignty in an open-ended space where Indigenous curatorial aesthetics have been utilised in an interactive display between screen and viewers.

229 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 21 III. Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part I21 See Biung Ismahasan, ‘Dispossession – an 13 August 2017, Dakanuwa Community Indigenous performa- Public Cemetery, Namasia, Southern Taiwan tive encounter履踐式原住民族表述行為空間策展, YouTube video, 4:55, 19 October 2017: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=UxIy9y- 6jzWg&t=220s

Biung Ismahasan, Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part I, 2017. Indigenous curatorial practice within performativity. Dakanuwa community public cemetery, Namasia, Southern Taiwan. Photo: Rich John Matheson. Courtesy of the artist.

230 Biung Ismahasan III. Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part II22 14 August 2017, Ningni Guest House grassy site, Namasia, Southern Taiwan

Biung Ismahasan, Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part II, Biung Ismahasan, Curation of Ethno-Spatiality Part II, 2017. Indigenous curatorial practice within performa- 2017. Indigenous curatorial practice within performativity. Ningni Guest House grassy site, Namasia, tivity. Ningni Guest House grassy site, Namasia, Southern Taiwan. Photo: Rich John Matheson. Southern Taiwan. Photo: Rich John Matheson. Courtesy of the artist. Courtesy of the artist.

22 There is a more important consideration than an alterna- Performance video as link: Biung Ismahasan, tive space to the Aboriginal collection in the ethnographic ‘ANTI-ALCOHOLISM’, Facebook video, 17:27: museum. What really counts is the quality of the work on https://www.facebook. display, the sensitivity of performative processes and the com/biung.ismahasan/ videos/vb.100000307 display of artwork. Furthermore, the curation of ethno- 701584/1547128388 spatiality has contributed to an expanded, systematic exper- 640736/?type=3&theater imentation with Taiwanese Indigenous curation that aims to produce knowledge about Indigenous/decolonial aesthetics and to create a discursive space of performative exhibitions. The trajectories of ethno-spatial curating in Hsueh’s gestures and movements can forge an exhibition practice that simultaneously promotes, creates and reflects. Most significantly, this radical practice has elicited a question about the extent to which Indigenous curating has itself become a performative activity that foregrounds social issues, radical activism and art in the public interest and as part of community collaborations.

231 Ethno-Spatiality as Sovereignty 232 MĀTAU ʻO TAUTUANAGA O FAʻĀLIGA ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANAʻI. Considering the Service of Displays for our Futures Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 233 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I Angela Tiatia, The Liberators, 2017. Wallpaper installation. Pōuliuli, West Space. Photo: Christo Crocker. © Angela Tiatia / BONO, Oslo 2018.

234 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi 1 Faʻatālofa atu ia ʻoutou uma. Greetings to you all. I extend See the glossary at the end of this text for faʻamalama to the Ancestors, elders, plants, birds, animals, selected translations lands, waters, skies of this place, Dhaka, where we meet. of terms in Indigenous languages. Tulouna, tulouna, tulouna. I humbly offer you my respect. I come from the villages of Āpia, Leulumoega, Siʻumu, Salelologa in the Sāmoan archipelago, the Persian village of Najafābād and other ancestries. I am a grateful visitor to Kulin Nation lands, living and working near the sacred waterways Merri yaluk and Birrarung yaluk, and supporting pule aoao/pule saʻoloto and soālaupule1 of local First Nations around Birrarung-ga and along other coasts of the Great Ocean. Vasalaolao, Lul, Na Ta, Garrigarrang or Moananuiākea are just some of the conceptions of the Great Ocean in our languages, encompassing vast worlds of atolls and volcanic archipelagos. These words existed for thousands of years before Latin-descended languages, in the soil and air where we survive and thrive both on and off our ancestral territories. All living things are connected through ebbing and flowing vā across thousands of years of ancestral connections and exchange to every coast and beyond. We maintain cultural, landed, spiritual, sensual and ceremonial-political practices in every part of this expanse, and far beyond it through multiple international diasporas. A third of our planet’s surface, this is a continent rendered invisible in dominating Euro-American and East Asian military and economic-political endeavours. The late Tongan/Fijian writer Epeli Hau‘ofa enabled us to return to our understanding of the Great Ocean as a sophisticated oceanscape of relationships located within a sea of islands. My galuega as a maker, writer and organiser takes a number of forms: faʻatinoga (performance, literally becoming-body), measina (hand-made treasures), tala faʻasolo- pito o fāʻaliga ata (sequential display/exhibition histories), and tautuanaga ʻo faʻāliga ata (instead of curating, literally serving the display/exhibition). My suʻesuʻega into Indige- nous cultural practices across and beyond the Vasalaolao as part of my Curatorial Practice PhD at Monash University

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 235 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I Art Design and Architecture has brought me into an on- going relationship with distant and close relatives, Indig- enous makers, organisers and knowledge keepers, especially my closest mentors and peers from Yorta Yorta, Quandamooka, Wemba Wemba, Wiradjuri, Pakana, Kulin, Māori, Sāmoa, Tonga, iTaukei Viti, ʻŌiwi, Matao, Métis, xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm, Secwépemc, Gunantuna, Hakö, Kanien’kéha:ka, Oglála Lakȟóta, yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Nations, amongst others. The reality of Indigenous peoples living and striving in the diaspora away from our homelands and waters in the Vasalaolao is due to the cumulative, on-going impact of plantations, missionaries and nuclear, military and real- estate development, as well as detention camps, in vastly differing periods and localities, implemented by Dutch/ Indonesian, Spanish/Chilean, British/American/Australian/ New Zealand, French/New Caledonian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and German empires and resultant colonising states. Sāmoa is now an independent nation-state with Indigenous governance following German and British New Zealand colonial regimes, currently heavily influenced by China. The eastern third of the archipelago remains a colony of the United States, lacking extensive citizenship rights. Around 260,000 people live on both sides of this artificial border, with more than 350,000 people in Aotearoa, Aus- tralia, Viti, Hawai‘i, California, Washington and Alaska. A key hurdle for the non-Indigenous understanding of diverse Indigenous practices and histories of the Great Ocean and all its shores is the deep, on-going lack of engagement with, or embodied initiation into, our own languages, aesthetics, knowledges and ceremonial-political structures. Sāmoan artist Angela Tiatia works across live performance, video, photography and installation to explore contemporary culture, attending to representation, gender, on-going colonisation and commodifications of the body, sexuality and place. Her wallpaper work The Liberators (2017) features a chandelier suspended in a lush, dark tropical forest, above a glistening machete. To Tiatia, ‘This work

236 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi 2 engages with ways of knowing and being in neo-colonial Angela Tiatia, ‘Artist statement’, Pōuliuli times. The chandelier is a symbol of Western dominance, (Faitautusi ma Fā›aliga) status and colonisation with its “light” shining above the (Birrarung-ga: West 2 Space and Honolulu: Ala machete.’ While the machete is a tool used to tend fertile Moana Center, 2017). 3 lands across the Vasalaolao today, it cannot escape its dark Ibid. connotations for those blackbirded or indentured onto sug- arcane, cotton, cacao, coffee, vanilla, cinnamon and copra plantations from eastern Australia and New Guinea in the west, to Hawaiʻi and Tahiti in the east, and throughout the archipelagos ʻcontained’ between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In the German, French/New Caledonian, British/ American/Australian/New Zealand, Japanese, Dutch/Indo- nesian, and Spanish/Chilean plantation regimes of the region during the last few centuries, the machete has been both a tool of colonial suppression and a powerful sign of local cultural continuity, in the same way that Chinese and American culinary elements have been internalised in many Indige- nous cultures.

The Darkness The rendering of our millennial existences as ‘the darkness’ by Euro-American and East Asian missionaries and colonial administrators remains a lasting psychological and spiritual violence, accounted for in gagana Sāmoa and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi amongst other languages by introduced light/dark equiva- lences for Judeo-Christian good/evil:

In Sāmoa, it [the machete] has been used in ceremonial practices in the past such as when a chief in the village died. The young men in the village would run ahead of the body being carried to a burial site, cutting anything living or inanimate to clear the way for the dead as a mark of respect … but many of us have lost the memory of this due to colonisation by ‘the light’.3

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 237 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I 4 The Liberators as a title plays on who is liberating whom. Ibid. 5 For so long, the West has used ‘civilising the savages’ and The exhibition was ‘freeing the savages from sin’ and similar discourses to presented in 2017 at West Space as part alter peoples and ecologies, but Tiatia is here suggesting an of the Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival in ensuing threat from a rising underclass to free themselves Birrarung-ga, and at the from the grip of colonisation, and restore pule sa‘oloto/pule Ala Moana Center in the ‘Ae Kai: A Culture Lab on aoao: Convergence’, organised by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center This is an image to highlight memory of cere- in Honolulu. monial practices – of Sāmoan and many other Indigenous ways of adapting to Western technology to connect to and honour our spirits and ancestors during the early days of colonisation. The impending threat of those beneath the chandelier rising to fight back – it’s what we are doing right now in our practices. This is a decolonising image. We are reclaiming our present space, our histories and our futures.4

This work is part of the series produced by Tiatia in response to Euro-Australian artist Max Dupain’s famous Sunbaker (1937), where a fair cis man claims the seascape – and all the lands and waters of the Australian settler colony – in a sunlit black and white photograph. Tiatia is a Sāmoan artist living and working in unceded Gadigal (Eora Nation) territory, and her work is significant to my understanding of Indigenous aesthetic and spiritual relationships across ao, light/clouds/worlds, and pō, darkness/night/potential-filled spaces. The Liberators is a grounding work within the exhibition Pōuliuli (Faitautusi ma Fā‘aliga),5 which consisted of a living Indigenous space, activated by the work of ten local and international Indigenous artists and collectives. As the show’s curator, I imagined it as a place to gather, deepen and engage with Indigenous knowledges, genders, sexualities and ceremonial-political structures.

238 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi Pouliuli (Faitautusi), installation view. Photo: West Space and Jacqui Shelton © Jacqui Shelton, West Space / BONO, Oslo 2018.

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 239 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I 6 Hauntings Noémie Desp- land-Lichtert, The As Indigenous peoples, we are inhabited, often haunted, by Silence of Sovereignty: ideas, images and traumas of our ancestral past, manifest Dylan Miner (Tio’tià:ke Montréal: articule art- in our genetic and spiritual memory, and in the continuing ist-run centre, 2014), p. 4. violence we are currently experiencing. We are non-lin- 7 ear beings even within European linearity. Many of our Ibid. languages in the Vasalaolao place the future directionally ‘behind’ and the past ‘ahead’ of us. All things exist at once and in each specific moment too. Not only are Indigenous sensual languages alluded to by the warm saturation and forest glow of Tiatia’s image, but also the apparent silence in the work – humans or animals being absent – is pivotal. The silence of certain sites is a sovereign form of resistance, a quiet strength on colonised soils.6 This for me is a form of fa‘amalama of fanua and vai, echoed in the centre of the ancestral vaomatua as actualised genealogical time. The work deploys the double binds of the absence/ presence of mana, and the ao/pō of genealogical time, as strategies to resist settler colonial hegemony, to redress missionary colonial control of bodies and minds, to refuse white supremacist institutions, to push back on structures of time, space and the individual emanating out of Europe.

The Borders Crossed Us The visible and invisible borders of European-derived hegemony do not represent our Indigenous geographies, tied as they are into genealogical matter and deep listening to all living things7 The collective marking of moments in service to the ancestors was forcibly shifted to linear ‘time’. The collectively realised so‘otaga between all things was attacked by animate and inanimate ‘space’. The Earth-centred philosophies of being were degraded by fierce individualism and capital-seeking greed flowing directly from the ironically named Enlightenment period’s empire-building. And yet Indigenous philosophies of existence persist as ever: ‘vā is the space between, the betweenness, not empty space, not space that separates but space that relates, that holds separate entities and things together in the Unity-that-is-All, the space

240 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi Drew Kahu’aina Broderick, Billboard I (The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness), 2017. Vinyl banner and neon sign on support structure, framed reproduction of a historical artwork (Death of Captain Cook, George Carter, 1783 from the collection of The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum). Installation view, Honolulu Biennial, 2017. Photo: Chris Rohrer. Courtesy of the artist.

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 241 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I 8 that is context, giving meaning to things. The meanings Maualaivao Albert 8 Wendt, Tatauing the change as the relationships/the contexts change.’ Post-Colonial Body (New Zealand Electronic Poet- Beyond Eurocentric Display ry Centre, 2002), http:// www.nzepc.auckland. ac.nz/authors/wendt/ I want to contextualise the essential tension in display prac- tatauing.asp Accessed tices around work by Indigenous artists in settler coloni- July 2018. 9 al-controlled institutions. A Eurocentric reading cannot offer Ibid. a deep understanding of, and engagement with, Indigenous practices and knowledges. Only Sāmoan cultural practices and history can offer the viewer the fuller resonances of this work by Tiatia, signalling a return to ancestral fanua, to sovereign Indigenous being outside of European thought, activated precisely because Tiatia, outside the frame, wears the sacred malu tattoo, at once socio-political protection, genealogical proof and spiritual imprint. Our words for blood are toto, ‘ele‘ele, and palapala. Totō can also mean to plant. ‘Ele‘ele and palapala are also our terms for earth/soil/mud. We are therefore made of earth/ soil. Our blood, which keeps us alive, is earth. So when you are tatauing the blood, the self, you are reconnecting to the earth, reaffirming that you are earth, genetically and genea- logically.9 Pōuliuli comprised activations of both Fale Faitautusi (archive/library reading room) and Fa‘āliga ata (exhibition/ display), presenting countless documents pertaining to Indigenous genders, sexualities, ceremonial-political structures, knowledges, ecologies, as catalogues, monographs, video and photographic works. The Faitautusi element is key to anchoring viewers in Indigenous aesthetic and intellectual histories, in spaces where Indigenous experiences and knowledges hold pride of place, at least temporarily. These are spaces of responsibility for the viewer/reader to engage in order to centre Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Tiatia’s work offers a tethered Indigenous Sāmoan space – in a medium echoing barkcloth artistic expression – from which to host activations, access to knowledges and relationships of learning, reciprocity and respect. I humbly recognise that this is never a replacement for Kulin Nation and

242 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi Kānaka ‘Ōiwi aesthetic, intellectual and ceremonial-political sovereignty in Birrarung-ga and Honolulu respectively. The wallpaper work’s presence at the centre of the long gallery at West Space and in the Ala Moana Center is a deliberate amplification, a rarified occurence of mana, for an otherwise small framed print. Significantly, the archive reading space was later packed up, and both spaces went back to their usual Euro-American mainstay of programming.

Sovereign Images Sovereignty over images and territory lies at the heart of the immense work by Drew Kahu‘āina Broderick, Billboard I (The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness) (2017). A cropped reproduction of George Carter’s Death of Captain Cook (c. 1783), on the top left of which is superimposed a neon coconut tree and ‘Vacancy’ sign, it remem- bers the violent acts of Captain James Cook and his sailors, which resulted in seventeen Kānaka ‘Ōiwi deaths, including the Mō‘ī Kalani‘ōpu‘u, at Kealakekua Bay on Hawai‘i island in 1779. This work, hung at the entrance to the Hub gallery of Honolulu Biennial (2017) curated by Fumio Nanjo and Ngahiraka Mason, meant that the exhibition started and ended with where we were and how we find ourselves in the present moment. Broderick is known for interventions critical of historical photographs and paintings, as well as assemblages of T-shirts and other accessories that reiterate the tropical paradise trope for tourist and military consumption, particularly of the Leahi crater at the end of Waikīkī beach in O‘ahu. He is part of a long lineage of local artists remediating on-going colonial capitalist and militarised violence on ‘āina, ʻike, kuleana and kānaka, and his billboard calls to relations of Kānaka ‘Ōiwi in other unceded yet occupied territories across the Moananuiākea.

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 243 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I Sovereign Editing Printing a section of George Carter’s painting in billboard size, free of human figures, and displaying the source work adjacent in its gilded frame, is a kind of editing. Broderick responds to the non-consensual consumption of Indigenous bodies, images, ancestral belongings and knowledges by uninvited settler colonial gazes by cutting out the racist depictions of Ancestors from the large billboard work. Intent on rendering aesthetic contempt as Indigenous resistance, he also edits out the colonising Europeans. The way in which the billboard activates space is multiple: an ‘illegal’ billboard holds pride of place on entry, wresting symbolic control of the narratives and representations of Hawai‘i from outsiders, and re-establishing local Kānaka ‘Ōiwi agency. This is not a completed action but a process always in the act of becoming through interaction with new audience members who must take the journey on which Broderick sends them. The immeasurable psychological, geological and spiritual traumas of Eurocentric racial hierarchy, militarised invasion and annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and bombing of islands since, emblazoned in the conflict within the original painting, can never be adequately redressed. This is why the modern plywood architecture surrounding the work is resonant. The wall displays wood grain, the lighting is sparse but directed onto the work, adjacent artworks give the billboard a wide berth, and the neon ‘vacancy’ sign is a symbolic gesture to the audience, but on visually appealing terms. The cachet of familiarity is delib- erately deployed to draw audiences in. This complication of tropical paradise narrative comes from the artist and curators alike. It is an invitation not to enter the hellish dreams- cape maintained by Euro-American

m i l i t o u r i s t i n d u s t r i a l c o m p l e x a n d f a n t a s y ,

244 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi 10 but a more complex, more unfinished, more real site and Terisia Teaiwa, ‘Read- ing Paul Gaugion’s Noa sight. The late Banaban, I-Tungaru, African American poet Noa with Epeli Hau’ofa’s and academic Teresia Teaiwa defined the militourist indus- Kisses in the Nederends: Militourism, Feminism, trial complex in multiple contexts across the Great Ocean, and the “Polynesian” Body’, in V. Hereniko and and particularly in Hawai‘i, as when ‘military or paramili- R. Wilson (eds.), Inside tary force ensures the smooth running of a tourist industry, Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in and that same tourist industry masks the military force the New Pacific (Lanham, behind it’.10 Maryland: Rowman + Littlefield Publishers, In recent times in the unceded Hawaiian Kingdom, the 1999), pp. 249–51. 11 Indigenous sovereignty movement has gained incredible Ngahiraka Mason, ‘Talk momentum; the mutual acceptance among diverse ethnic Story: Mobile Geog- raphies’, in Honolulu communities contrasts with the fearful European dias- Biennial 2017: Middle of pora majority in the continental United States. The title of Now | Here (Honolulu: Honolulu Biennial Foun- Broderick’s work is the common English translation of Ua dation, 2017), p. 6. 12 mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono, spoken in 1843 by the Mō‘ī Translation of ‘the Hono- of the unified islands, Kamehameha III. A multiplicity of lulu Biennial’ into ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i by Bryan Kamaoli meanings, and kaona in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i are carried by this Kuwada. mo‘olelo: pono being a state of balance, care and wellbeing of the various strata of the people and the land from mauka to makai in the customary ahupua‘a of millennial Indigenous practice. The emphasis by Biennial curators Fumio Nanjo and Ngahiraka Mason on island-centred thinking, of connected nodes instead of Eurocentric centre/periphery, means we imagine and actualise shared sovereignties, shared intimate relationships in our world/s.11 In times of aggressive settler colonial activity and capitalist military deployment around the world, Ko Honolulu Hōʻikeʻike Hana No‘eau o nā Lua Makahiki12 focused on local perspectives to demonstrate that decolonisation, the renewing of cultural flows, is indeed possible in this space and time. For the last five centuries, Euro- pean, American and Asian strategic and commercial desires have played out in the Moananuiākea, with little regard for Indigenous peoples’ agency, relationships or perspectives. Billboard I is another anchor work in another large exhibition, this time, a mediation multiple times over of a crucial historical event that meets audiences versed in European knowledges and aesthetics on their own turf. This is Indige-

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 245 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I Megan Cope, RE FORMATION part III (Dubbagullee), 2017. Hard-cast concrete Sydney rock oysters, copper slag. Installation view, The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2017. Photo: Felicity Jenkins, AGNSW. Courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the artist.

246 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi nous intellectual architecture occupying Eurocentric art-historical space in an American militarised territory, and not a fully autonomous rendering of site and sight. The responsibility of viewers is, then, to meet the so‘otaga expressed in the work, a critique of militarised nuclear and plantation colonisation in the occupied Hawaiian Kingdom, an environment hinted at within the neon and reproduced image. That this mediated image was the grounding work at the entrance to the Biennial is telling of the dispossession – aesthetic, intellectual and ceremonial-political – against which Kānaka ‘Ōiwi are fighting. The neighbourhoods where the Biennial took place are undergoing intense real-estate development and gentrification, pushing out lower-income communities, including Kānaka ‘Ōiwi, and this cannot be separated from readings and approaches to the kind of sovereign Indigenous aesthetic practice possible and urgent in these contexts. Significantly, Ko Honolulu Hōʻikeʻike Hana No‘eau o nā Lua Makahiki represents a subversive Indigenisation of the biennial exhibition format. There is no Indigenous art biennial in the United States, but in Honolulu there is. In this local political context the Indigenous sovereignty movement has gained considerable place and space. It is both a buffer zone art event and cultural exchange between Euro-American-dominated art centres and the dynamic cultural practices of interconnected communities span- ning the Moananuākea. I recognise the radical sovereign potential of large exhibitions such as this Biennial, where local and global, Indigenous and non-European art histories and practices are centred, and not marginalised within the Euro-American-dominated ‘global’ art world. These two anchor works are key to my developing understanding of works by Indigenous artists that mediate centuries of colonial oppression and violences untold on bodies, knowledges, ecologies and spirits.

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 247 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I Shell Monuments A third key work is a reaction to the deliberate destruction of First Nations shell monument architectures many storeys high across the coasts of Australia. RE FORMATION part III (Dubbagullee) (2017) by Quandamooka artist Megan Cope, is her largest memorial installation, created for the new Australian art biennial The National at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Cope is known for installation, moving-image works and paintings that dissect and critique methods of colonisation, mapping and intimacies shared by place and people. With the European invasion of sovereign First Nations territories in this part of Vasalaolao came the political drive to eliminate Indigenous governments, villages, knowledges and peoples. These assimilation and dispossession policies, located in unceded lands and waters ecologically altered through capitalist exploitation for the benefit of the European diaspora majority, acutely inform reality today. Cope addresses the violence, seen and unseen, of colonisation throughout vast territories. While her smaller monuments seem to grow directly out of the gallery floor and walls, RE FORMATION echoes the grandeur and enormity of the vast structures that were shaped by thousands of years of Ancestors fulfilling ceremonial-political practices. It is a haunting presence, created by slowly caring for the memory of Ancestors and healing the multiple absences through the precise repetition in hand-making the layered forms of black sand, copper slag and cement oyster shells. An echo on the wind, a cultural memory recalled into being, standing in the place of countless villages and ceremonial sites that were obliterated across coastal First Nations territories, these sacred sites of intergenerational histories reached far along the shores and high into the skies.

248 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi 13 Architectures of Genocide, Architectures of Resurgence Elisabeth Gondwe, ‘North Stradbroke Island The deliberate burning of shell monuments thousands of Historical Museum’, in years old, holding in their structure earth, shells, Ancestors V. Ziherl (ed.), Frontier imaginaries: edition no. and belongings, cannot be understated as a repeated act 1, FRONTIER (Mianjin: Institute of Modern Art of cultural genocide, in Australia as in Aotearoa, Hawai‘i, and QUT Art Museum, Turtle Island and elsewhere. The same brutality lies in the 2016), p. 175. 14 forcible displacement of First Nations peoples put to work as Peter Meyers, ‘The Third underpaid or unpaid labour in constructing ‘Brisbane’ along City: Sydney’s Origi- nal Monuments and a the river Maiwar and other nearby townships.13 In ‘Sydney’, Possible New Metropolis’, Architecture Australia massive Indigenous shell monuments and village sites that (1 January 2000): www. existed across Eora Nation territory were subsequently architectureau.com/ 14 articles/the-third-city/ destroyed and built over by British colonists. The Old Accessed July 2018. Norse term ‘midden’ refers to a dung heap, a refuse mound near a dwelling or prehistoric pile of bones and shells. Here is the radical difference in perspective: the rapid, extensive removal of Ancestors and belongings from villages and ceremonial sites through burning for lime was core to the settler colonial myth-making in normalising a White Australia as a ʻnatural’ outpost of European knowledges and practices. Glistening in the light, Cope’s shell monument draws the viewer into what can be described as non-colonial spaces of Indigenous life, autonomous of western frameworks of being and knowing. Rather than presenting us with a performance of on-going First Nations pain and trauma, Cope resists the narratives of manifest destiny, containment, terra nullius and mare nullius. Here, Indigenous sovereignty is actual healing: not a metaphorical return to customary concepts pre-dating European invasion and genocide but an intellectual, spiritual, linguistic and ceremonial-political return to kunjiel, to jagan. RE FORMATION part III (Dubba- gullee) charts a restoration of land-based practices that will bring the right people to see

Q u a n d a m o o k a j a g a n m a r u m b a ,

to embody First Nations living practices in the present and future tenses.

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 249 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I With the widespread destruction of colossal shell monuments, the built environment echoes the intellectual environment across the Australian settler colony in its Eurocentric reflection. Again we see a work mediating the cumulative absences, erasures, violences and traumas on all living beings and territories, this time creating a physical and spiritual site, if temporary within an exhibition context, from where to grow and to which we can address our learning and humility. The shell monuments by Cope are, in my opinion, an expansion of the works by Tiatia and Broderick. All are embedded in their specific Indigenous histories, and also keenly engaged in broader First Nations resistance to ongoing settler and missionary colonial violences. The shell monuments are indeed compelling sculptural installations: the renewal of permanent Indigenous aesthetic, intellectual and ceremonial-political architectures through which Earth-centred knowledges, relationships and healing have been expressed once more.

Tautuanaga ‘o fa’āliga ata Tautuanaga ʻo faʻāliga ata is a new term created with fellow Sāmoan knowledge holders, artists and curators, for use instead of ‘curating’. It is based on Indigenous concepts of sogi, soālaupule, responsible governance, organising for collective wellbeing and illumination, and displays of cultural practice that heal and strengthen mutually benefi- cial exchanges of images, objects, performative states and orature. This so‘otaga is not a translation of curating, the curator or curatorial practice as these are understood in European languages and knowledges, with current fashionable curators working in ways that I see as unaccountable to communities and sites. Rather, the future wellbeing of our communities, on and off ancestral territories, of all our non-human and human relations, is our duty. Healing is not dissociated from what is understood as art practice; cultural practice takes myriad forms in our diverse Indigenous experiences and knowledges. Tautuanaga ʻo faʻāliga ata as a practice is based in Sāmoan cultural values and histories,

250 Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi and the texts imprinted on bodies, lands, waters, digital files and other formats are the latest manifestation of genealogical matter and imperatives that direct our actions into the times to come.

Ma le agāga faʻafetai ia ʻoutou uma i lenei fono. With warm thanks to you all in this gathering.

Glossary

From Jandai: From gagana Sāmoa: jagan - land and sea country ‘afa - coconut sennit kunjiel - ceremony afiafi - afternoon marumba - beautiful ‘āiga - families Quandamooka - the great bay (also aitu - kin spirits known as Moreton Bay) atua - gods faʻamalama - a deep listening/ hearing, prayer votives to ancestors and gods, becoming illuminated/enlightened fala - Pandanus tree fanua - land, placenta galuega - work iloa - knowing, knowledge lā - sun laumei - turtles limu - seaweed mālumālu - temples mana - cumulative power and presence manu - birds māsina - moon matāfaga - beaches mauga - mountainsma‘umaga - food gardens pa‘a - crabs pe‘a - flying foxes, bats, tattoo worn by men

MĀTAU ‘O TAUTUANAGA O FA’ĀLIGA 251 ATA MO O TĀTOU LUMANA’I pule aoao/pule saʻoloto - sover- From ‘ōlelo Hawai’i: eign, sovereignty, linked with ‘āina - land soālaupule ahupua‘a - customary district of sā - clans farming and spiritual spaces siapo - barkcloth made from mul- from mauka, mountain top, to berry bark makai, sea shore, renowned for soālaupule - deliberative consul- ecological sustainability and tation providing for large Kānaka sogi - greeting by touching noses ‘Ōiwi communities until the and sharing breath American plantation system soʻotaga - relationships, alliances and military occupation of the suʻesuʻega - research Hawaiian Kingdom disrupted suli - descendants this way of life talo - root vegetable ‘ike - knowing, knowledge ta‘amū - root vegetable kānaka - people taeao - issued/issuing of the light/ kaona - hidden meanings world, morning, tomorrow kuleana - responsibility, duty tapuafanua - guardian sirits Moananuiākea - conception of the tupuʻaga - ancestors vā - rela- Great Ocean tional space between all living mō‘ī - high chief, ruler, king things mo‘olelo - expression, discussion, vaitafe - rivers proverb vaomatua - forests vai - waters

252 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms. Belonging to a Place in Time Hannah Donnelly

253 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms Hannah Donnelly, At the End of Their World: Keepcups, 2017. Installation. The Future Leaks Out, Installation view at Liveworks 2017 presented by Performance Space. Photo: Lucy Parakhina. Courtesy the artist.

254 Hannah Donnelly 1 Indigenous futures are much more than a genre. They Erica Violet Lee ‘Rec- onciling in the Apoc- include the dystopian now, descendants of the imaginary alypse’, The Monitor, future, un-reconciliatory apocalypses, second invasions 2016: https://www. policyalternatives.ca/ and sovereign romanticisms. Our future practices are dif- publications/monitor/ reconciling-apocalypse ferent from other speculative practices and we have distinct Accessed July 2018. devices that draw from work that Indigenous futurists have 2 Grace Dillon (ed.), been creating for a long time. ‘Imagining Indigenous Futurisms’, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology Indigenous futures look like the resurgence of of Indigenous Science Fiction (Tucson, AZ: Uni- our languages, our knowledges, our governance versity of Arizona Press, systems, and journeys home to our traditional 2012). 1 3 territories. — Erica Violet Lee Andrew Milner, ‘Get- ting Under the Skin of Speculative Fiction, Anishinaabe academic Grace Dillon coined the term ‘Indig- Science Fiction and Scientific Romance’, enous Futurisms’ to describe a form of storytelling and The Conversation, 2015: creating work where Indigenous peoples use speculative http://theconversation.com/getting-un- fiction to challenge colonialism and envision Indigenous der-the-skin-of-specula- 2 tive-fiction-science-fic- futures. When I write about Indigenous Futurisms I must tion-and-scientific-ro- acknowledge the history of Afro futurisms in both global mance-43107 Accessed July 2018. and diasporic contexts, and the vast musical, literary, pop cultural, media and cultural movements that have influenced our critical understanding of futures. I work with Indigenous Futurisms because I am interested in how they become interventions into the ways we are studied, written about and interviewed. Indigenous futures, our own speculative devices and stories, are different from the way that other people use speculative fiction to talk about the future. They allow us to assert futures that question and change the colonial settler framing of past, present and future. It is important to understand that although speculative fiction describes the future and presents things that might happen, it is different from the genre of sci-fi. Speculative fiction is more focused on sociological speculation than on technological advancement.3 It is about the story of continuity and movement of people and environment. For Indigenous peoples, the link between people and country is inseparable in both our lives and speculative futures. It is

255 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms Hannah Donnelly, At the End of Their World: Keepcups, 2017. Installation. The Future Leaks Out, Installation view at Liveworks 2017 presented by Performance Space. Photo: Lucy Parakhina. Courtesy the artist.

256 Hannah Donnelly 4 therefore impossible to separate Indigenous futures and the Tony Birch, ‘Climate Change Recognition story of climate trauma. and Caring for Country’, Sydney Review of Books, 2017: https://sydney- Caring for country encompasses being spiritually reviewofbooks.com/ climate-change-rec- bound to country through intimate connections ognition-and-car- with ancestral beings still present in the land and ing-for-country/ 4 Accessed July 2018. waters. — Tony Birch 5 ‘Country’ is used to refer to one’s territory, A dramatic point of difference between Western concepts Aboriginal nation, land of origin or a person of speculative fiction and Indigenous theories of speculative connected to the same fiction is caring for country.5 While non-Indigenous spec- country. As described by Goenpul Professor Aileen ulative fiction also focuses on the environment, Indigenous Moreton-Robinson, our Futures contest Anglo-centric and Anthropocene explora- sense of belonging is derived from an ontological tions of futures and country. Environmental art and writing relationship to country. Connection to country by non-Indigenous people often prioritise the settler, looking is a form of embodiment at themselves as individuals in an end-of-the-world sce- for Indigenous peoples. This connection can exist nario caused by catastrophic environmental collapse. This in the different embodied forms for those living is presented as a trauma happening to them, the settler, who ‘on country’ or living ‘off becomes the subject of climate change.6 Indigenous tech- country’. 6 niques in speculating on climate change and environmental Tony Birch, ‘Climate trauma instead focus on the story of the trauma to country Change Recognition and Caring for Country’, itself. We are not individuals in our future watching the Sydney Review of Books, 2017: https://sydney- spectacle of the world ending. We are communities repair- reviewofbooks.com/ ing, returning and revitalising country. climate-change-recognition-and-caring-for-country/ The irony that runs through the story is that Accessed July 2018. 7 while the settlers are intent on recording their Jeanine Leane, ‘History- less People’, Long Histo- history – the ‘things that are safe to tell’ – they ry: Deep Time (Canberra, fail to realise that they are already incorporated ANU Press, 2015). into a bigger past that is Aboriginal land and memory and that, in this scheme of things, they are the shallowest layer. — Jeanine Leane7

Seeing the future in Western time is not a necessity for Indigenous speculative work. Our ideas of projecting into the future can collapse time; work can be set in the now while still imagining our future. A world is created to reflect what is happening to Indigenous communities politically and socially centred around continuity, not the passage of time.

257 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms Hannah Donnelly, Long Water, 2016. Video. Yirramboi Festival, Open Studio Residency presented by Arts House. Video still: Courtesy the artist.

258 Hannah Donnelly 8 Aboriginal temporality and conceptions of time are not Ibid. 9 linear Gregorian versions of future. Future does not always Ellen Van Neerven, 2014, mean future in years or dates. The date of the earliest occu- ‘Water’, in her Heat and Light (Acton, UQP Press, pation of the continent now known as Australia is constantly 2014). changing. Archaeological evidence points to at least 65,000 years ago. Most Aboriginal nations believe we have been here, on country, since the time of creation. In writing about Waanyi author Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria (2006), Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane talks about the difference between people with time and timeless people and how our art ‘collapses time and space to honour Aboriginal past, present, memory, future and the sense of collectively experienced time like the serpent described in the opening passages’. 8 The settler fantasy of ‘the dreamtime’ often relegates our science and knowledges to illusion and magic, while self-determining Indigenous time reveals traditional knowledge of place. Indigenous Futurisms can be off country, on country and of country, and in a settler colonial context, the historical and continuing displacement and disconnection within our own communities is still relational to country. Futurisms can prioritise rebuilding relationships that have been eroded by colonialism. Futurism is work that understands its place as fictional or conceptual, meaning that it is not real or concrete, but grounds itself in reducing the harmful effects of colonial violence on our bodies, minds and spirits.

One sign facing me said: The cultural displacement continues! I looked up at the windows of the tall building. President Sparkle wouldn’t be there, she was never here. She would be in Sydney or on the other side of the world. So why were these people here now? Then I realised that today was the date. By an online ‘enrolment’, Aboriginal people could sign up to live on Aus- tralia2. The government would decide whether the individuals met the Confirmation criteria, and assign them a block of land. — Ellen Van Neerven9

259 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms 10 Indigenous artists have no problem speculating about unde- Lindsay Nixon, ‘Visual Cultures of Indige- sirable futures, particularly in a settler colonial body. We are nous Futurisms’, GUTS not postcolonial in Australia – on-going settler occupation magazine, 2016: http:// gutsmagazine.ca/visu- is harming our life and land. In her book Heat and Light, al-cultures/ Accessed July 2018. Mununjali author Ellen Van Neerven uses the dystopian now to show that we are already in an environmental wasteland made of our territories, resources, waters. The history of settler occupation means that we don’t have to imagine the dystopian world: this colonial dystopia is our reality. In Western speculative fiction, the concept of dystopia is often framed by the end of the world. Indigenous peoples look at the dystopia through a different lens. Our countries are being mined for resources and our water systems have become poisoned. Some of us live on country and some of us live off country with complex and adaptable relationships to lands that are a result of colonisation. The dystopia as linked to the end of the world is not relevant to Indigenous futures, it is a present post-apocalyptic reality of Western civilisation.

Settler occupation is unnatural and has resulted in the subjugation of all Indigenous life, including land. The result is a post-apocalyptic environmental wasteland made of our territories and the embodied complexities of ecological warfare, including within the reproductive life of our communities. — Lindsay Nixon10

While non-Indigenous scholars trying to achieve decolonial thought talk a lot about centring Indigenous knowledges, they still envision Indigenous Futures in which they have access to our thoughts, imaginations and, most importantly, to our ways of surviving the end of the world. Just like the dystopian reality of now, our future can be mined for Indige- nous ecological knowledges. But the dystopian now isn’t the end of the world. We have already experienced that. So the real work begins when Indigenous people imagine our utopia, which is the end of

260 Hannah Donnelly 11 the settler occupation. In this sense, the end of their world Ali Cobby Eckermann, ‘Unearth’, Inside My is not the end of our world. The strength in our narratives of Mother (Sydney: Gira- the dystopian now is the ability to end colonisation, as in the monda Publishing, 2015). 12 removal of the nation state of Australia, and return to our Maddee Clarke, ‘Coded Devices’, Wormhole, Next future. Wave Festival, Melboune, 2016: http://2016.nextwave.org.au/essays/cod- Let’s dig up soil and excavate the past ed-devices/ Accessed breathe life into the bodies of our ancestors July 2018. 13 when movement stirs their bones Ibid. 14 boomerangs will rattle in unison. Nixon, 2016. — Ali Cobby Eckerman11

European writers and anthropologists have always assumed our future is one of inevitable total extinction and this has been the starting point for their writing about Indigenous cultures.12

It is always much more digestible to non-Indig- enous minds that Aboriginal people are dead, tragically / no longer have culture / are dying out / don’t really live in the south eastern states; than it is to accept images of resistance, life, and adaptation. — Maddee Clarke13

Anishinaabe-nehiyaw writer Linsday Nixon talks about the future imaginary used by Indigenous artists to project Indig- enous life, subverting the death imaginary ascribed to our bodies by colonisers. The death imaginary is where we are represented as disappearing to legitimise settler occupation. We contest colonial myths of the dying race with our own imaginings and art practices into a future present.14 Indig- enous artists project our life into the future. Using imagery of descendants of the imaginary future we survive without assimilating into the colonial body. We challenge our erasure and create ourselves into being.

261 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms 15 For too long we have seen the Native as either Claire G Coleman, Terra Nullius (Syndney: a hindrance or a cheap, if somewhat unreliable, Hachette Australia, source of untrained labour. Their technology 2017). 16 was primitive, they lack our education, they Alison Whittaker, ‘Not As We Know It: Terra Nul- are provincial and naive, having never seen lius’, Sydney Review of someone from elsewhere, having barely left their Books, 2017: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/ planet. They had never even sent anything more terra-nullius-claire-cole- advanced than an unmanned drone out past the man/ Accessed July 2018. moon of their own tiny planet. — Claire G. Coleman15

The second invasion is an Indigenous allegorical device that can tell the stories of the dystopian now through imagining the future invasion of our coloniser. In speculative second-invasion scenarios the cruelties inflicted on Indigenous peoples are returned upon the people who benefited from stolen land. A reoccurring technique is the fantasy of alien invasion and colonisation of all humanity on earth. While alien invasions are commonly used in sci-fi, Indigenous futures use this device to flip the experience of the coloniser and the colonised. This device can make a fiction of truth, of what historically happened through the practices of colonisation, such as removing children and forcing people to live in segregated communities like missions or reserves. This isn’t imagined – it actually happened – but it is also what the audience is experiencing through a speculative invasion. This plays with the good faith of the audience and expects empathy in response to the invasion. There is, however, always a question of whether non-Indigenous empathy will miss the historical lessons embedded in the speculative invasion.

The reader is an observer who must sit between two apocalyptic colonial moments (one ongoing, one possible) – analogising the latter to better appreciate the former. — Alison Whittaker16

262 Hannah Donnelly 17 While there is a danger that the second invasion triggers Ibid. 18 colonial empathy for non-Indigenous peoples, for Indige- Erica Violet Lee, ‘Rec- nous readers it irreversibly cements the first historical inva- onciling in the Apoc- 17 alypse’, The Monitor, sion. An Indigenous audience sits firmly on one side of the 2016: https://www. policyalternatives.ca/ experience when engaging with the second invasion, while publications/monitor/ non-Indigenous audiences approach the experience for the reconciling-apocalypse Accessed July 2018. first time as happening to them. The second invasion is only 19 a second invasion for Aboriginal people. For a settler, the The Mabo Decision was a significant legal case in second invasion is the first. Australia that recognised the land rights of the Me- We don’t necessarily project futures in which time has riam people, traditional reconciled our conflicts with settlers. In many Indigenous owners of the Murray Is- lands in the Torres Strait. apocalypses, relationships with settlers and colonisers are The High Court decision projected as unresolved. Indigenous futures are beyond the in 1992 overturned terra nullius and led to the creative output; they are also policy alternatives. For me, it Native Title Act in 1993. Subsequent decisions is an alternative to reconciliation, to proposed constitutional testing the Native Title recognition and failed treaty talks. Act have narrowed the Mabo Decision. This, along with the extin- guishing of Indigenous But it seems that with any idea of reconciliation land rights, the burden I’ve heard, there is an unspoken requirement of of proof and amendment acts, have led to unequal Indigenous forgiveness and Indigenous consent implementation of the to continued occupation. Even within our own Act. communities, the onus is on women, Two-Spirit people, and children to forgive those who have harmed us. Healing, we are told, cannot begin to happen until we forgive colonial sins of the past. — Erica Violet Lee18

Our depictions of future apocalypses draw on the ideology of feminine futures. Present reconciliations push the onus and responsibility of healing the trauma of colonisation onto us, Indigenous women, and our ability to forgive. Imagining unreconciled futures brings a central focus on Indigenous ways of being and knowing, like relationality and the roles Indigenous women have in healing our future communities. My generation grew up in the aftermath of the Mabo decision19 that overturned terra nullius. This was the hallmark of the Howard government – symbolic public gestures and a forced rhetoric of reconciliation to discourage the

263 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms 20 narrative of land rights. This public presence was more Hannah Donnelly, ‘Sov- ereign Romantacism: about the label of reconciliation than action. The danger in an interview with Uncle this label is the unspoken requirement of our forgiveness Richard Bell’, Sovereign Apocalypse 1 (2014): and, in some circumstances, this could seem like consent to pp. 1–2. continued occupation. The presence of reconciliation in public discourse and public memory has confused many Australians who have misinterpreted what reconciliation is about. A settler’s interpretation of reconciliation is one of forgiveness for the traumas inflicted on our families and our communities. This is not the reality for Indigenous people. Un-reconciliatory apocalypses show a future where our current conflicts with settlers do not disappear. Without the promise of title to our lands, territories and resources, and recognition of sovereignty, we are un-reconciliatory.

Sovereign Romanticism and the Collective Future of Indigenous Art Romanticising our futures has allowed our imagination to become an authority. Sovereign romanticisms present us with play and possibilities for our collective sovereignties. This romanticism is not just the imagination of sovereignty but the conditions of sovereignty, such as Indigenous governance or return to country and ancestral lands, through which a political sovereignty can be realised. I use future tense to interview people about their work. In my first future-tense interview, I adopted an unformed structure with artist Richard Bell. I speculated scenarios of future sovereignty in ways that became romantic versions of sovereignty.20 Since this first attempt at interviewing an artist using Indigenous futures devices, I have continued to develop a methodology. The future-tense interview is about understanding the collective imagining of an artist’s practice and how sovereignty could be and is imagined in art practices. Many Indigenous artists when talking about their work use collective pronouns. We can view art as coming from both the artist and the community and cannot help but incorporate collective principles in the development of the work.

264 Hannah Donnelly 21 The methodology I use for the future-tense interviews ‘Field of View, Sovereign- ty’, Broadsheet Journal revolves around a set of questions and world-building using 46.1 2017: https://issuu. Indigenous future devices to assist the artist in visualising com/cacsabroadsheet/ docs/broadsheet_46.1 the interview. I ask artists to imagine their work as a com- Accessed July 2018. 22 munity, that their writing, painting or exhibition is a living ‘Mission Gari Yala’, and breathing community that exists physically in a place. In Wormhole, Next Wave Festival, Melboune, most scenarios, the interviewer is from an Indigenous future 2016: http://2016. and is returning to these communities to record their stories. nextwave.org.au/essays/ sovereign-futures-han- Each interview is unique. I have become an omnipresent nah-donnelly/ Accessed July 2018. worker in an art-history-coding department accessing our digital archives through virtual reality. AI sovereign invig- ilators guide audiences through life-sized environments without boundaries, sending curatorial feeds to virtual displays in the past.21 I have become a sovereign explorer from a totalitarian future, conducting field interviews to deter- mine whether the intended trajectory of the community (the art) will lead to sovereign futures, as the explorer rewrites and erases histories that do not support total sovereign control.22 The use of classic colonial terminology is intended to both co-opt and destroy these terms while creating new Indigenous frameworks.

You can read the questions yourself and imagine your (art) future: Where are you from/where is your community? What is the most important thing in your community? How would you describe your occupation in your community? What country i.e. traditional lands do you have a responsibility to protect? (Do you live there?) What cultural flow i.e. river, spring, water systems do you have responsibility to protect? (Do you live there?) What are you changing or maintaining in your environment? Who is/are your creator/s?

265 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms Sometimes these answers can translate into a traditional Q and A format; more often they result in short creative responses. In my experience, all Indigenous peoples have been able to answer these questions from the perspective of their art, as community, living in a future place. When I think about the future, I think about a place where I can create stories that have not been colonised, in the sense that my present is very much controlled by our history. In the future we take back that control. Romanti- cising my own sovereignty is a place in time where we can imagine solutions to colonisation and ways that are better for Indigenous peoples.

266 Hannah Donnelly Sovereign Words

Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism

267 Bibliographies

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269 Bibliographies for kunsthistorie, 2001 / Hubbard, George and Robin Craw. Tamati-Quennell, Megan. ‘The Designtrykk, 2006. ‘Beyond kia ora: the paraes- Tangi of Shona Rapira Davies’. Gaup, Aslak. ‘Vi må selv forme vår thetics of Choice!’. Antic 8 Art Monthly Australasia 156 kultur. Jåks om samenes situ- (December 1990). (December 2002): http:// asjon og identitet’. Aftenpos- Ihimaera, Witi. ‘Karaka’. Art New www.artmonthly.org.au/copy- ten, 12 February 1973. Zealand 60 (Spring 1991). of-issue-157-2003/ Gullickson, Charis and Knut Johnston, P. and L. Pihama. Walker, Ranginui. Ka Whaiwhai Ljøgodt. Eds. Iver Jåks: ‘What Counts as Differ- Tonu Matou: Struggle Without Reconstructed. Tromsø: The ence and What Differences End. Aukland, New Zealand: Art Museum of Northern Count: Gender, Race and the Penguin Books, 1990. Norway, 2010. Politics of Difference’. In Toi Guttorm, Gunvor. ‘Duodji Bálgát / Wahine: The Worlds of Maori Prashanta Tripura En studie i duodji: Kunsthånd- Women, edited by K. Irwin & I. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terrence verk som visuell erfaring hos Ramsden. Auckland: Penguin, Ranger. Eds. The Invention of et urfolk’. PhD thesis, Faculty 1995. Tradition. London: Cambridge of Humanities, Institute of Art Karaka, Emily. ‘Fierce Mix of University Press, 1983. History, University of Tromsø. Art and Politics’. Mana (12 Kottack, Conrad Phillip. Cultural University of Tromsø, 2001. November 1993). Anthropology: Appreciating Guttorm, Gunvor. ‘Duodji- som Karaka, Emily. Emily Karaka, Cultural Diversity. 14th Edition. begrep og som del av livet. waharoa o ngai tai. Manukau New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Duodji – doaban ja oassi City, New Zealand: Fisher 2011. eallimis’. In GIERDU – Bev- Gallery, March 1997. Maquet, Jacques. 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270 Tripura, Prashanta. ‘From Jumia 2013 International Semi- to Jumma: Shifting Cultiva- nar-Workshop on Indigenous tion and Shifting Identities Studies, 26–28 June 2013, in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Legend Villas, Mandaluy- Hill Tracts’. Farms, Feasts, ong City, Philippines, jointly Famines, special issue of the organised by the University Himal Southasian quarterly of the Philippines Baguio City 26, no. 2 (April 2013): http:// and the Tebtebba Founda- himalmag.com/jumia-jumma/ tion. Baguio City: Cordillera Accessed August 2018. Studies Center, University of Tripura, Prashanta. ‘Identity the Philippines Baguio, 2013. Grabbing’. The Bangladesh Tripura, Prashanta. ‘Violence-torn Paradox, special issue of Hills and an Idyllic Stream: Himal Southasian quarterly the Canvas of Joydeb Roaja’s (September 2015): http:// art’. In Dream Without Pillow: himalmag.com/identity-grab- Reflections of Joydeb Roaja’s bing/ Accessed August 2018. Art Journey. Booklet pub- Tripura, Prashanta. ‘In Search lished by Joydeb Roaja in of Adibashi (Indigenous) connection with his solo Consciousness’. bdnews24. exhibitions and performances com (11 August 2012): in Japan, 17 November – 1 https://opinion.bdnews24. December 2016. com/2012/08/11/ in-search-of-adibashi-in- Sontosh Bikash Tripura digenous-consciousness/ Chittagong Hill Tracts Dis- Accessed August 2018. trict Gazetteer, statistics, Tripura, Prashanta. ‘International 1901–1902. Calcutta: Bengal Year of the World’s Indigenous Secretariat Book Depot, 1905. Peoples and the Indigenous Gilbert, Jeremie. Indigenous Peoples of Bangladesh’. Peoples Land Rights Under Keynote paper presented in International Law, From Victim Bangla at a seminar organ- to Actors. Ardsley, NY: Trans- ised to mark the International national Publishers, 2006. Year of World’s Indigenous Mohsin, Amena. The Politics of People, 18 December 1993, Nationalism –The Case of the Dhaka. English translation Chittagong Hill Tracts Bang- available at: https://ptripura2. ladesh. Dhaka: The University wordpress.com/2013/12/17/ Press Limited, 1997. ip-year-1993-keynote-paper/ Roy, Chandra. Land Rights of Accessed August 2018. the Indigenous Peoples of Tripura, Prashanta. ‘Letter to the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Bangladesh From a “Non-ex- Bangladesh: IWGIA Document istent” Bangladeshi’. The No.99, 2000. Daily Star (27 August 2014): Sneyd Hutchinson, R.H. Eastern http://www.thedailystar. Bengal and Assam District net/letter-to-bangla- Gazetteers: Chittagong Hill desh-from-a-non-exist- Tracts. Pioneer Press, 1909. ent-bangladeshi-38811 Tripura, Sontosh. ‘Blaming Jhum Accessed August 2018. Denying Jhumia, Challenges Tripura, Prashanta. ‘The Colonial of Indigenous Peoples Land Foundation of Pahari Ethnic- Rights in the Chittagong Hill ity’. Journal of Social Studies Tracts’. Master’s Thesis in 57 (1992). Reprinted in Naeem Indigenous Studies. Univer- Mohaiemen. Ed. Between sity of Tromsø, Norway, 2008. Ashes and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Naitonalism. Dhaka: Drishtipat Writers’ Collective, 2010. Tripura, Prashanta. ‘The Quest for Indigenous Identity in Bangladesh: Reflections on Achievements and Setbacks since 1993’. In Unsettling Discourses: The Theory and Practice of Indigenous Studies, proceedings of the

271 Bibliographies Biographies

Daniel Browning is an Aborigi- installations, video work and painters. In 2017 Tara Books pub- nal journalist, radio broadcaster, paintings explore the myths and lished Santosh Kumar Das’s Black: documentary maker, sound artist methods of colonisation. Her An Artist’s Tribute, a memoir of and writer. Currently, he produces diverse practice also investi- his growth into art and a tribute and presents Awaye!, the Indige- gates issues relating to identity, to the personal muses that nous art and culture programme the environment, and mapping transformed him into an artist. on ABC RN, one of the radio practices. Most recently, Cope’s Between 2003–2008 he served as networks of the Australian Broad- large-scale sculptural installa- the First Director of the Mithila Art casting Corporation. A visual tions have been curated into three Institute in Madhubani. In 2005 he arts graduate, Daniel Browning is major national survey exhibitions: travelled around several univer- also a widely published freelance The National, Art Gallery of New sities in the USA where he gave a arts writer. He is a former guest South Wales (2017); Defying number of artist talks. His work co-editor of Artlink Indigenous, Empire: 3rd National Indigenous has been exhibited widely, both a specialist issue of the quarterly Art Triennial, National Gallery nationally and internationally, and Australian contemporary arts of Australia Parkes (2017); and is included in the collections of journal. He is the curator of Blak Sovereignty at ACCA (Australian the Oberlin College and Conserv- Box, an architect-designed sound Centre for Contemporary Art), atory, Oberlin, and the Ethnic pavilion produced by Urban Melbourne (2016). Her work Arts Foundation, Berkeley, among Theatre Projects, a performing has been exhibited widely, in others. He received the Ojas Art arts company based in western exhibitions at Next Wave Fes- Award in 2015 at the Jaipur Liter- Sydney. He studied English and tival Screen Space, Melbourne ature Festival. Art History at the University of (2014); Incinerator Gallery, Queensland before graduating Sydney (2013); My Country: I Hannah Donnelly is a Wirad- with a degree in visual arts from Still Call Australia Home, Gallery juri woman, writer and artist. the Queensland University of of Modern Art, Brisbane (2013); Renowned for her ‘cli-fi’, she Technology. Daniel Browning Para Site, Hong Kong (2013); Tony works with text, sound and is a descendant of the Bund- Albert Wellington City Gallery, installation exploring Indige- jalung and Kullilli peoples of far New Zealand (2010); and the ARC nous futures and responses to northern New South Wales and Biennial, Brisbane (2009). In 2014 climate trauma. Donnelly is the south-western Queensland. she was selected for the Victo- creator of Sovereign Trax, an rian Aboriginal Art Award. In 2011 online platform promoting First Kabita Chakma comes from the she won the Churchie National Nations music through energising Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Emerging Art Prize, and in 2009 decolonisation conversations and of Bangladesh. Chakma is the was a finalist for the Clayton Utz community in music. She recently largest Indigenous group in Bang- Travelling Scholarship and won held the solo exhibition Long ladesh. Kabita Chakma belongs to the Sunshine Coast Art prize. Water at the Yirramboi Festival, the clan of Raange goza, Bhudo Her work is present in many Arts House, North Melbourne gutthi on her maternal side and national public art collections, (2017). Her recent group exhi- Borbo goza, Phoraa daagi on her including: Australian Parliament bitions include: The Public Body paternal side. She is a freelance House, Canberra; Mater Hospital, .03, Artspace, Sydney (2018); The researcher, architect, writer and Brisbane; Gold Coast University Future Leaks Out, Liveworks, occasional guest lecturer and Hospital, Gold Coast; Redlands Sydney (2017); Future Eaters, teacher at the School of Design, Art Gallery, Redlands; and the Monash University Museum of part of the University of Tech- NEWflames Anne Gamble Myer Art, Melbourne (2017); Feedback nology, Sydney (UTS). She is a Collection, Brisbane. Loop, Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne Coordinator of the Chittagong Hill (2017); and State of the Nation, Tracts Indigenous Jumma Asso- Santosh Kumar Das is an artist Counihan Gallery, Melbourne ciation Australia (CHTIJAA), and from Ranti village in the Madhu- (2016). a Community Adviser to BODHI bani region of Bihar, India. His (Benevolent Organisation for work draws inspiration from the Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi, Development, Health and Insight) traditional folk language of Mad- whose pronouns are ia/ū, is an Australia, a charity organisation. hubani, using various iconological artist, curator, and writer from Her interests include the history, figures and symbols, and creating the Sāmoan archipelago, Pārs culture, art and architecture of a unique artistic language. He plateau, Guangdong delta, and disadvantaged communities, holds a BA of Fine Arts in Painting other ancestries. Eshrāghi com- particularly Indigenous peoples of from the Maharaja Sayajirao pleted a PhD in Curatorial Practice the CHT, Bangladesh, as well as University of Baroda. During the at Monash University in 2018, and environmental sustainability. 1980s he conducted a research is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the project on folk songs of Mithila, Initiative for Indigenous Futures Megan Cope is a Quandamooka together with the ethnomusicol- at Concordia University beginning woman from North Stradbroke ogist Naomi Owen from the USA, in 2019. Ia holds qualifications Island in Southeast Queensland. and assisted Dr Raymond Lee in Indigenous arts management, Her site-specific sculptural Owens on a film about Mithila francophone Great Ocean

272 literature, Indigenous studies and Biung Ismahasan is a curator and She was also a co-curator for cultural studies. Ia is a member researcher, currently working Artbank Sydney Social Day of the Transits and Returns on his PhD in Curating at the 2016, RECENTRE: sisters, City curatorial collective supporting University of Essex’s Centre for Of Melbourne Gallery (2017); and Indigenous artist development Curatorial Studies. His research co-curator of Next Matriarch, ACE and an exhibition series around involves issues of contemporary Open Adelaide and TARNANTHI the Great Ocean (2018–20) at the Indigenous curatorial practice Festival (2017). In 2018 Moulton Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, and aesthetics, focusing on the curated Mother Tongue for the Artspace Auckland, and Vancou- curation of Taiwanese Indigenous guest curatorial series ‹Octopus› ver Art Gallery. Recent resi- contemporary art. His current at Gertrude Contemporary, dencies include Para Site Hong research emphasises the issues Melbourne. Moulton is an alumna Kong, Banff Centre for Arts and of participation, performativ- of the National Gallery of Aus- Creativity, Asia Pacific Triennial ity and the historiography of tralia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous of Performing Arts, University Indigenous curation and exhi- Arts Leadership Program 2010, of British Columbia – Okana- bition design. He received a MA British Council ACCELERATE gan, Smithsonian Asian Pacific in Cultural Policy, Relations & programme (2013), National American Center, and Dhaka Art Diplomacy at Goldsmiths, Univer- Gallery of Australia International Summit. Ia makes performances, sity of London in November 2014. Curatorial Fellow at Kluge-Ruhe installations, writing and curato- Belonging to the Bunun Nation Aboriginal Collection (2015), and rial projects centred on embodied of Taiwanese Indigenous groups, a Victorian Curatorial Repre- knowledges, ceremonial-political he was awarded the PULIMA Art sentative for the First Nations practices, language renewal and Award (the first national art award Exchange Program United States Indigenous futures throughout dedicated to Indigenous con- of America 2016 at the Venice the Great Ocean and further afield temporary art), and exhibited at Biennale (2017) and First Nations through expanded kinships. Ia Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Exchange Canada (2017). She exhibits widely and publishes reg- in Southern Taiwan in 2014. His was a co-curator of Mandela: My ularly, and serves on the Aborigi- most notable curatorial projects Life at Melbourne Museum (2018), nal Curatorial Collective | Collectif include Anti-Alcoholism: an Indig- the story of Nelson Mandela. des commissaires autochtones enous performative encounter (Turtle Island/Canada) board. 2014–19, an international perfor- Máret Ánne Sara is an artist mance art exchange of Indigenous whose work deals with political David Garneau is Professor artists from Taiwan. He recently and social issues affecting the of Visual Arts at the Univer- curated Dispossessions: Perform- Indigenous Sámi people and their sity of Regina. He is Métis and ative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese reindeer-herding communities. his practice includes painting, Indigenous Contemporary Art at Sara has created posters, CD/LP curation, and critical writing. With Goldsmiths in May 2018. covers, scene visuals and fabric Kathleen Ash Milby, he recently prints for numerous Sámi artists, co-curated Transformer: Native Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta designers and institutions and has Art in Light and Sound, at the Yorta woman with a curatorial and exhibited in the field of visual arts National Museum of the Amer- writing practice that has engaged since 2003. Furthermore, she is ican Indian, New York; Moving with many museums and contem- an editor, journalist and published Forward, Never Forgetting, with porary art spaces. She is Senior novelist. Her first book Ilmmiid Michelle LaVallee, an exhibition Curator of South Eastern Abo- gaskkas (In Between Worlds, concerning the legacies of Indian riginal Collections for Museums 2013), was nominated for the Residential Schools, other forms Victoria at Melbourne Museum, Nordic Council’s Children’s and of aggressive assimilation, and focusing on the intersection of Young People’s Literature Prize in (re)conciliation, at the Mackenzie contemporary First Peoples art 2014. She is one of the found- Art Gallery in Regina; and With and cultural material in museums. ing members of the Dáiddadállu Secrecy and Despatch with Tess Prior to this, Moulton was Project / Artists’ Collective Guovd- Allas, an international exhibition Officer and Curator at Bunjilaka ageaidnu. Her ongoing project about the massacres of Indige- Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Pile o’Sápmi was showcased, nous people and memorialisa- Melbourne Museum between amongst others, as part of the tion, for the Campbelltown Art 2009 and 2015, and an Assistant documenta 14 exhibition at the Centre, Sydney. Garneau has Curator for First Peoples exhi- Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel 2017. recently given keynote talks in bition at Melbourne Museum in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2013. Alongside her institutional Venkat Raman Singh Shyam’s the United States, and through- curatorial roles, she has inde- practice belongs to the tradi- out Turtle Island/Canada. He is pendently curated: where the tion of Pardhan Gond art. Singh a co-researcher with Creative water moves, where it rests: the Shyam was awarded the Rajya Conciliations, a five-year SSHRC art of Djambawa Marawili, Kluge- Hasta Shilpa Puraskar by the (Social Sciences and Humanities Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Government of Madhya Pradesh in Research Council of Canada) Charlottesville (2015); State of 2002. In April 2009, he held a solo funded curatorial project, and he The Nation, Counihan Gallery, exhibition at the Indira Gandhi is working on a public art project Brunswick (2016); A Call From National Museum of Mankind in for the City of Edmonton, Alberta. The West: The Continuing Legacy Bhopal. Having subsequently His paintings can be found in of Mr William Cooper, Footscray travelled and exhibited widely in numerous public and private Community Arts Centre (2016). India, Australia, Canada, Europe, collections. 273 Biographies New Zealand and the USA, he has UiT (Arctic University of Norway) pastiche and third space, which been exposed to a wide range of where he specialises in Indig- has the working title Advocacy, arts practices that have influ- enous rights law. Somby was Ownership and the Cross-Cultural enced his sensibility. In 2013, his born in 1958 in Buolbmat in the Imaginary. works were exhibited in Sakahàn: Deatnu/Tana municipality on the International Indigenous Art at Norwegian side of Sápmi. He is Prashanta Tripura is an academic the National Gallery of Canada, in the former Chair of the Centre anthropologist turned devel- Ottawa. Cited as ‘the largest-ever for Sámi Studies at UiT and opment professional who (until global survey of contemporary former leader of Sámiid Nuoraid September 2018) taught part-time Indigenous art’, Sakahàn featured Searvi (Sámi Youth Association in at the Department of Economics artworks by more than eighty Kárášjohka, 1976–78). Somby has and Social Sciences at BRAC artists from six continents who performed extensively as a yoiker University, Dhaka. Previously he interrogated the theme of what since 1976, and has occasionally was an Associate Professor in it means to be Indigenous in the also lectured on the subject. His the Department of Anthropol- present world. In 2015, he was writings include: ‘How to recruit ogy at Jahangirnagar University, one of the artists who participated Samis to higher education and to Dhaka, in which he taught for ten in Kalpa Vriksha: Contemporary research, items on an agenda of years before switching over to Indigenous and Vernacular Art of actions’ (Sin neste som seg selv: the development sector, where India at the Asia Pacific Triennial Ole D. Mjøs 60 år 8. mars 1999, he worked for over a decade. He of Contemporary Art (ATP8) at the ed. by Arthur Arntzen, Jens-Ivar received his academic training in Queensland Art Gallery. In 2016, Nergård, and Øyvind Norderval, the US, majoring in Anthropology he was one of the participating 1999) and ‘The Legal situa- at Brandeis University, Waltham, writers in Literary Commons!: tion of The Nordic Indigenous and went on to pursue gradu- Writing Australia-India in the Peoples’ (paper presented at ate studies at the University of Asian century with Dalit, Indig- the 35th Nordic Jurist Assembly, California, Berkeley, where he enous and Multilingual Tongues 1999) and ‘Yoik and the Theory received his MA. He has con- at Monash University, Melbourne of Knowledge’ (Kunnskap og tributed many articles – in both (2016), and at the Byron Writers utvikling, ed. Magnus Haavelud, Bangla and English – that have Festival in Byron Bay (2017). 1995). been published in academic Venkat’s graphic autobiography, journals as well as magazines Finding My Way, was published in Megan Tamati-Quennell is and dailies. Two collections of his April 2015 by Juggernaut Books. Curator of Modern and Con- essays – in Bangla – titled Jati- He is the 2015 recipient of the temporary Māori and Indige- rashtrer Kinaray (On the Margins Ojas Art Award. nous Art at Te Papa Tongarewa of the Nation-State) and Bohujatir The National Art Gallery and Bangladesh (Bangladesh of Many Irene Snarby is a Doctoral Museum of New Zealand. Her Peoples) were published in 2018 Research Fellow in Art History iwi (Māori tribes) affiliations and 2015 respectively. He also at SARP: The Sámi Art Research are Te Ātiawa, Ngati Mutunga, expresses himself in Kokborok, Project at UiT The Arctic Uni- Ngāi Tahu and Kati Mamoe. Her his first language, which is spoken versity of Norway, where she is fields of research include: Māori by the Tripuras, an Indigenous carrying out research into the modernism and the works of people of Bangladesh and India works of the artist Iver Jåks. post-war (1945) Māori artists; the (he is from the Bangladesh side, Snarby has worked as a curator first generation of contemporary where he was born and brought within the Art Department of Māori artists, Mana Wahine; Māori up in the Khagrachari hill district The Sámi Museum – RiddoDuot- women artists of the 1970s and of the Chittagong Hill Tracts tarMuseat in Kárášjohka (Sápmi/ 1980s; ’The Māori Internation- region). Norway) and has been a member als’, the artists who developed, of the Sámi Parliament’s Acqui- with the advent of biculturalism, Sontosh Bikash Tripura is a sitions Committee for Con- a postmodern construct par- scholar and researcher, working temporary Art. She has written ticular to Aotearoa/New Zealand in the field of Community Devel- essays, given lectures and been and global Indigenous art with a opment. He studied Anthropol- an editor for several publications specific focus on Indigenous art ogy for his BSS Hons and MSS of Sámi art for over twenty years. in Australia, Turtle Island/Canada degrees at the Dhaka University. She has also been an advisor on and the United States, with which He also received a M.Phil. in important art projects such as she has had some engagement. Indigenous Studies from UiT the International Indigenous Art Tamati-Quennell has worked as (Arctic University of Norway), exhibition Sakahàn: International a curator for nearly thirty years Tromsø, under the Norad fel- Indigenous Art at the National and has been at the forefront lowship programme. His M.Phil. Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, of many developments related thesis is titled Blaming Jhum, and There is no, at the Northern to contemporary Māori art. Her Denying Jhumia: Challenges of Norwegian Art Museum. current endeavours include a the shifting cultivators land rights major commissioned project with in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Ánde Somby is a writer, yoiker leading conceptual artist Michael Between August 2009 and Feb- (yoik is the Sámi way of singing Parekowhai, an exhibition focus- ruary 2017 he worked for UNDP or chanting, which differs from ing on Indigenous abstraction, (United Nations Development Euro-American vocal music) and and an exhibition that looks at the Programme) in Bangladesh. Associate Professor of Law at practice of appropriation, cultural Belonging to the Tripura Indige-

274 nous community in the Chittagong OCA Contributors Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, he researches Indigenous peoples’ rights, land rights and development. Liv Brissach is an art history Drew Snyder is a curator and art graduate from the University of historian and has been Pro- Oslo (MA) and University College gramme Manager at OCA since London (BA) and has been Project August 2018. He holds a PhD in Officer at OCA since December modern/contemporary art history, 2017. She was an independent theory, and criticism from the art writer for Billedkunst and Visual Arts Department at the Kunstkritikk amongst other University of California, San Diego writing platforms. She was under the supervision of Grant project manager for the exhibi- Kester and Norman Bryson. His tions NorskArt and Juvenarte, dissertation reconsidered the both initiated by the Association development of postwar visual of Norwegian Students Abroad. culture, public discourse, and Her research interests lie at the avant-garde in the U.S. in the the intersections between art, context of geopolitics and nuclear ecology and technology, and she culture. He has a broad set of explored these fields as curator research interests across the arts for Kunst-i-Festival in Nord-Trøn- which include questions of his- delag. torical narrative, political ecology, discourses of life, and new forms Katya García-Antón has been of international exchange. Director and Chief Curator of OCA since February 2014. She Nikhil Vettukattil is an artist is a Biology graduate, and went and writer, and has been Project on to obtain an MA in 19th- and Officer at OCA since February 20th-century Art History from 2018. He has an MA in Contem- The Courtauld Institute of Art porary European Philosophy from London. She has worked at The Kingston University London and Courtauld Institute of Art, Museo the University of Paris VIII, and a Nacional Reina Sofía Madrid, ICA BA in Fine Art from Central Saint London, IKON Birmingham and as Martins College of Art & Design. Director of Centre d’Art Contem- From 2013–16 he participated in porain (CAC) Genève. She has the CSM Associate Studio Pro- curated three national pavilions gramme. His artistic practice has for the São Paulo Biennial (2004) been presented internationally, and la Biennale di Venezia (2011, examining the role of representa- 2015), and co-curated the first tion in framing and interpreting edition of the Qalandiya Interna- lived experience. tional Biennial (2011). Amongst other projects, at OCA she has developed a long term programme to empower critical writing, Criti- cal Writing Ensembles, as well as launched ‘Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North’. The latter involves research and programming reflecting and connecting with the Arctic region from an ecological and socio-political standpoint, as well as highlighting Sámi, Indige- nous and decolonial practices.

275 Biographies Acknowledgements ‘Sovereign Words. Facing the nous Peoples’ Forum), Bhavna Tempest of a Globalised Art Kakar (TAKE on art Magazine), History’ was presented during and Devika Singh (Guest Curator, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) 2018 Dhaka Art Summit) for their as part of OCA’s Critical Writing engagement. Ensembles. It was curated by We are grateful to the Royal Katya García-Antón, Director and Norwegian Embassy in Dhaka for Chief Curator of OCA, with the their hospitality during the project collaboration of Curator Antonio and for ensuring the wider reach Cataldo and the support of team of our endeavour through their members Liv Brissach and Anne media network. Charlotte Hauen. Thanks to Ida Marie Ellinggard, We are most grateful for the Tara Ishizuka Hassel and Vilde M. continued dialogue, advice and Horvei for their relentless organ- collaboration in the development isational efforts as former team of this project from Diana Camp- members at OCA, and to current bell Betancourt, Artistic Director team members Liv Brissach, Anne of the Samdani Art Foundation Charlotte Hauen, Toril Fjelde and Chief Curator of the DAS who Høye, Ingrid Moe, Drew Snyder supported this second instal- and Nikhil Vettukattil. ment of OCA’s Critical Writing Finally, a most heartfelt Ensembles to take place within thanks to the peers and partic- the Summit. Our warmest thanks ipants in the audience during are also extended to found- the Summit, whom we hope will ing directors Nadia and Rajeeb continue to be connected to this Samdani, and their dedicated endeavour in the years to come. team, including Nawreen Ahmed, The publication Sovereign Ruxmini Reckvana Choudhury, Words. Indigenous Art, Curation Emily Dolan, Mohammad Sazzad and Criticism was launched at Hossain and Emma Sumner. Árdna, UiT – the Arctic University Thanks also to the Shilpakala of Norway – Sápmi/Northern Academy, who welcomed ‘Sov- Norway on 5 December 2018. We ereign Words’ so warmly during would like to thank UiT and the the 2018 edition of the Summit. In Northern Norwegian Art Museum the Dhaka Art Summit, ‘Sovereign for their collaboration for the Words’ also benefited from the launch. We are most grateful to important advice and collabora- Sovereign Words’ peers Kabita tion of Artspace, Sydney’s Execu- Chakma, David Garneau, Biung tive Director Alexie Glass-Kantor, Ismahasan and Kimberley Moulton Deputy Director Michelle Newton for travelling across the world and Curator Talia Linz, and the to present their essays during generous support of the Australia the launch of the reader, and to Council for the Arts. artist Matti Aikio for accompa- Special thanks to peers of the nying them on a road journey Santal community in Bangladesh across Sápmi to meet Sámi for their important contributions peers. Thanks also to Sovereign during the sessions in Dhaka; Words’ peers Máret Ánne Sara, teacher M.S. Albert Soren and Irene Snarby and Ánde Somby students Mikael Tudu, Prodip for their contributions during the Murmu and Jiten Kisku, as well as book launch. Thanks to Elin Már to Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Øyen Vister and Silja Somby for a Arts’ Salma Jamal Moushum for rich ongoing dialogue regarding liaising, and Partho Mostafa for Sápmi and Indigenous discourses. invaluable interpreting services. Last but not least, we are deeply We extend our gratitude to indebted to the audience for their Sabih Ahmed (Asia Art Archive), avid engagement. Subodh M. Baskey (Adivasi Mukti Morcha), Rustom Bharucha (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Sanjeeb Drong (General Secre- tary of the Bangladesh Indige-

276 Acknowledgements

Editor: © 2018 the authors, the The publication Sovereign Katya García-Antón artists and Office for Words. Indigenous Art, Contemporary Art Norway. Curation and Criticism Assistant editor and compiles texts presented coordinator: All rights reserved. No part during the programme ‘Sov- Liv Brissach of this publication may be ereign Words. Facing the reproduced, stored in a Tempest of a Globalised Art Coordination support: retrieval system or trans- History’, conceived by OCA, Drew Snyder mitted in any form or by any held during the Dhaka Art Nikhil Vettukattil means, electronic, mechan- Summit in February 2018. ical, photocopying, record- ‘Sovereign Words. Facing Contributors: ing or otherwise, without the Tempest of a Globalised Daniel Browning the prior permission of the Art History’ is the third Kabita Chakma publisher. Unless otherwise iteration of OCA’s Critical Megan Cope specified, material and texts Writing Ensembles. The Santosh Kumar Das were supplied by the owners latter is a long-term platform Hannah Donnelly of the works, who hold the dedicated to strengthening Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi copyright thereto and are critical writing within the arts David Garneau reproduced with permission. through research, commis- Biung Ismahasan We have made every effort sions, debates, peer-to- Kimberley Moulton to obtain permission for all peer network building and Máret Ánne Sara copyright-protected material publishing, across geogra- Venkat Raman Singh Shyam in this publication. If you phies and artistic communi- Irene Snarby have copyright-protected ties of the world, including Ánde Somby material in this publication Norway and Sápmi. A first Megan Tamati-Quennell and you have not given us iteration was launched in Prashanta Tripura permission, please contact 2015 in Maharaja Sayarijao Sontosh Bikash Tripura the Office for Contemporary University of Baroda, India Art Norway. (organised by TAKE on art Section introductions: Magazine in collaboration Written collaboratively The text following Máret with OCA, in partnership by Liv Brissach, Katya Ánne Sara’s essay with Maharaja Sayarijao García-Antón, Drew Snyder ‘Indigenous Stories, Indig- University of Baroda). and Nikhil Vettukattil enous to Global Survival’ The second iteration was is excerpted from her book presented in collaboration Copy editor and In Between Worlds, trans- with the Dhaka Art Summit proof reader: lated from Northern Sámi to in February 2016 and was Melissa Larner English by Laura A. Janda realised with the support of (Guovdageaidnu: DAT, 2016). Pro Helvetia; a publication Graphic design: The original Northern Sámi documenting this is available Hans Gremmen version was published by through Mousse Publish- DAT as Ilmmiid Gaskkas in ing and OCA’s website. For Typefaces: 2013. www.dat.net. more information on Critical Times Nr, SF Pro Writing Ensembles, its peers Office for Contemporary and thematic discussions, Production: Art Norway is a non-profit please see OCA’s website, Wilco Art Books foundation created by the www.oca.no. Norwegian Ministry of Paper inside: Culture and the Norwegian Project curators for Munken Lynx 120 gr Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘Sovereign Words. Facing www.oca.no. the Tempest of a Globalised Paper cover: Art History’ at the Dhaka Art Munken Lynx 300 gr Summit: Katya García-Antón, with Lithography: Antonio Cataldo Marc Gijzen ISBN Publisher: 978-94-92095-62-6 Valiz, Amsterdam, www.valiz.nl Printed and Bound in NL/EU

Artists and cultural practitioners from Indigenous Contributors: communities around the world are increasingly in Daniel Browning Kabita Chakma the international spotlight. As museums and cura- Megan Cope tors race to consider the planetary reach of their Santosh Kumar Das Hannah Donnelly art collections and exhibitions, this publication Léuli Māzyār Luna’i draws upon the challenges faced today by cultural Eshrāghi David Garneau workers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to engage Biung Ismahasan meaningfully and ethically with the histories, pres- Kimberley Moulton Máret Ánne Sara ents and futures of Indigenous cultural practices Venkat Raman Singh and world-views. Shyam Sixteen Indigenous voices convene to consider Irene Snarby Ánde Somby some of the most burning questions surrounding Megan Tamati-Quennell this field. How will novel methodologies of word/ Prashanta Tripura Sontosh Bikash Tripura voice-crafting be constituted to empower the Indigenous discourses of the future? Is it sufficient Edited by: to expand the Modernist art-historical canon Katya García-Antón through the politics of inclusion? Is this expansion a new form of colonisation, or does it foster the cosmopolitan thought that Indigenous communities have always inhabited? To whom does the much talked-of ‘Indigenous Turn’ belong? Does it represent a hegemonic project of introspection and revision in the face of today’s ecocidal, genocidal and existential crises? A first of its kind reader of Indigenous voices, Sovereign Words charts perspectives across art and film, ethics and history, theory and the museo- logical field. With the canonical power systems of the international art world increasingly under fire today, the book makes a strong bid for knowledge building and intellectual alliances that will inform the cultural and artistic processes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous futures.

Printed and bound in the EU

Office for Contemporary Art Valiz, Amsterdam Norway / www.oca.no www.valiz.nl