title: Unsurreal Increments: my possum skin cloak
Creators: name: Vlatkovic, Michelle
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Gamilaraay / Gamilaroi / Kamilaroi language D23
subject: Gamilaraay / Gamilaroi / Kamilaroi people D23
subject: possum-skin cloak
subject: autobiography
subject: Aboriginal Australians

description: To cut, to stitch, to inscribe: these are acts of intentionality and of purpose. Unsurreal Increments: my possum skin cloak carries my purpose, place and belonging as an Aboriginal storyteller. Drawing from the Kamilaroi knowledge base in my family, from my grandfather's stories that shared our ontology and pedagogy, this dissertation is the output of my connecting to those stories on Country with family and others with whom I share a Kamilaroi kinship connection.1 My cloak also considers the oral stories, history and place of my father and his Croatian bloodline, as seen through my raised Kamilaroi consciousness. As such, this cloak is a manifestation of personal and familial trans-cultural context and history. Using the concept of the possum skin cloak, conceptually this work combines Indigenous storytelling with autobiography, and merges exegetical writing with creative writing, as a work of 'relationality'.2 Storifying across this work embeds repetition, reflection and the circular way knowledge has been imparted to me in Kamilaroi cultural and familial contexts. As such this work replicates elements of Kamilaroi pedagogy. The use of voice and silence in this dissertation reveals particularities in my position as narrator, author and observer whereby interwoven and integral elements of personal history speak to larger constructions of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia and beyond. The storyteller represents thousands of years of thinking and knowledge-sharing, as experienced and understood in this life cycle. Unsurreal Increments: my possum skin cloak contextualises 'how Aboriginal people identify and debate the nature of their own inherent consciousness' in relation to place, purpose and responsibility considering their bloodlines.3 Being of mixed ancestry, these stories challenge essentialist notions of cultural identity creating 'a third space' by exploring the tensions of taking on this consciousness.4 Kamilaroi understandings are applied to family history, identity and political circumstances elsewhere by examining written history and songs about my ancestor, alongside family stories from my father's birthplace, Croatia. My unique cross-stitch considers empire, war, dispossession and property. Asking what is Country, what Country means to people and how it shapes them in Croatia, the work seeks to address attachment, power and its relationship to identity on contested borders. Our Kamilaroi ways of knowing and doing are presented to such discussions where these intersect, challenge, conflict and complement other histories in the skins that make this cloak. This work seeks to enrich larger discourses asking the important human questions of who we are, what is truth-telling, what is belonging and why they matter. Our Kamilaroi stories grow with us, answering questions and offering a moral framework. We learn connection and responsibility in deeper more profound ways by hearing stories repeated over time. Possum skin cloaks are made over a person's lifetime; inscribed over time, these are living, unfinished documents. They are not set in time. Suspending chronological time, the layout of these pelts mimics how my understanding of Country, my place and responsibilities emerged from stories given to me. While memoir looks at the past, this work looks back across time, while simultaneously considering both the present and future. Its conception and creation merged learning, thinking and engaging within a Kamilaroi research paradigm. This means operating in an entirely different time-zone than traditional scholarship. While memoir is highly individualised and personal, the creation of this cloak was, and is, relational. Spirit, Consciousness and Creation: the three-part dissertation structure embeds Kamilaroi origin, calibrating the scope of this endeavour. Spirit is written in the voice of my ancestor Bootha Muldowney. She voices the preface, introducing the research questions, significance and approach. As Preface, this offers an exegetical and conceptional context for the reader. The Consciousness section holds the stories of family and Country in 'so called' Australia and Croatia over generations and how these stories speak to the future. Creation, the final section, presents the research methods that made this work possible. These pelts are conversations covering the key components of my critical thinking in relation to cultural learning, and my familial historical context in the research approaches employed to create this work. Unsurreal Increments: my possum skin cloak challenges notions of 'assumed' identity proposing instead that being, doing and knowing, carried in family story, history and practise, shape who we are, our values and purpose as Aboriginal Storytellers.