Australian Aboriginal Art History Against the Art Historiographical Canon
By: Rachel Martin
Tags: Historiography, Decolonizing, Museums, Art, Aboriginal Australians

NOTE: This paper was submitted for a course entitled “Decolonising Knowledge” at Goldsmiths University of London in June, 2020. Edits may be made and will be reflected in later published versions.

Defined as being “ahistorical”, there exists a population of the world who construct their pasts outside of the dominant historiographical method, and are thus considered to live outside of history. Contrary to belief, these populations do indeed have methods of creating a past, although their understandings of time and event chronology may differ from the concise causal Western understanding. These pasts often include oral traditions, stories of gods and spirits, and a connection to the land they inhabit as opposed to the West’s European Enlightenment values of historical narrative and reason.

Using the Ngurarra Canvas II, created by members of the Southern Kimberly community in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, I will focus on one case study of non-Western past telling. As a work created not to tell a “story” but to dictate the Law, the canvas is a triumph in regard to its political aims as well as the aesthetic value later placed on it. This study underlines multiple factors, including the role of art history and museums in historiography. The question of art cannot be overlooked, as Western traditions reconceptualize ethnographic artefacts as aesthetic objects of art[1]. I argue that historiography is only one way of representing pasts and, in the case of the traditional owners of the Great Sandy Desert (the Aboriginal people who have lived there long before the arrival of Captain Cook), it is not the correct way of telling a past. The art history processes imposed on the canvas equally reflect changes and dangers of non-Western histories and “art” pieces being folded into the Western traditions.

THE CANVAS

Upon first glance, you would likely not believe that the Ngurrara Canvas II[2] tells a story of generations. Painted in the ochre tones of the desert and measuring eight by ten metres, the eye is drawn across the massive canvas as though surveying a landscape, led by horizontal lines and around circular interstices. You are precisely taking in a landscape when looking at the work, created by over forty “artist-claimants” supporting their Native Title Claim in 1997[3]. Ngurrara in Walmajarri, one of the dialects spoken in this region of Australia, means “home” or “country” — a place where people have an attachment to[4]. It is no coincidence that this is the title of the work. The canvas is not only notable for its size and beauty, but because it represents one of only several examples of painting used as proof of Aboriginal occupancy and Native Title[5].

Figure 1: The Ngurrara Canvas. Painted by Ngurrara artists and claimants, coordinated by Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, May 1997. 10 metres x 8 metres. Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency.

Aboriginal groups have just to surmount one major challenge to claim their land: they must prove that they have an enduring connection with their ancestral lands[6]. The first case that recognized Aboriginal land title was only in 1992, now a landmark case known as Mabo[7]. Five years later, people from around the South Kimberly region met in Fitzroy Crossing, a town in the northern edge of the Great Sandy Desert, and decided how to go about creating such a claim. Many of the Aboriginal people in attendance could not speak legal English, the courts did not speak Aboriginal languages at all, and some claimants present could not read or write. There were over four dialects in attendance, and communication to a court seemed to be ever more impossible.

In response to the question of how to prove to an Australian legal tribunal evidence of land tenure extending generations back and of an area of over 76,000 kilometers, the assembled claimants had an idea. “Instead of merely talking about their claims they would demonstrate it through a painting,” recounts Pat Lowe. “The work would be a collaborative effort with each of the claimants painting his or her own piece of country, the area for which they have special responsibility”[8].

Painting the land hosted its own list of challenges, however, and those especially difficult were related to Aboriginal culture and storytelling. Artist-claimant Tommy May summarized these concerns stating the following:

“When I was a kid, if my father and my mother took me to someone else’s country we couldn’t mention the name of that waterhole. We used an indirect language which we call Malkarniny. We couldn’t mention the name of someone else’s country because we come from another place, from different country. That is really the Aboriginal way of respecting copyright. It means that you can’t steal the stories or songs or dances from other places. This law is still valid and it is the same when we paint… We can paint our own story, our own place, but not anyone else’s country”[9].

The decision was then made: they would paint what is common amongst all of their communities, namely water holes or jila[10]. In May 1997 after discussions and meetings, a group of over 40 Aboriginal men and women from the Walmajarri, Wangkajunga, Mangala and Juwaliny communities and language groups made the first stroke of paint on the canvas[11]. Over ten days, the artists created their claim to their land.

The significance of the canvas extends beyond the claims to land, though this is an obvious and important aspect of the story. The canvas is also a cultural artefact, a political manifestation within postcolonial power, and a major work of art in and of itself[12]. The implications of this are something I will return to later. The plenary session took place on their land, at the insistence of the artists. The canvas, unrolled in front of the tribunal, was walked over as claimants testified in their languages about their culture, law, and where they came from. Ten years later[13], in 2007, the Justice returned to deliver the determination. In the same place where the canvas was painted, the Justice stated: “… the Court does not give you native title. Rather, the Court determines that native title already exists. It determines that this is your land. That it is based upon your traditional laws and customs and it always has been. The law says to all the people in Australia that this is your land and that it always has been your land”[14].

Figure 2: Justice Gilmour at the 2007 Ngurrara Native TItle Determination. Still from Putuparri and the Rainmakers, 2015, dir Nicole Ma

ART HISTOR(IOGRAPH)Y

The dominant method of constructing a past, that is to say “telling a history” as one tells a narrative story, is based on European Enlightenment ideals. History is built around ideas of nation-states, a secular worldview, scientific rationality, and theories of development and progress[15]. Historiography is the common construction of histories, focused around these same ideas — the past is told in a “logical”, forward moving chain of events that has led us to the current moment. There is not space for “creation ancestors” nor inexplicability in the dominant historiography. Irrationality is ruled out in the courts of law, and supernatural events are not considered as valid historical evidence but rather as part of one’s non-rational belief system[16].

As might be expected, many are left out of stories of the past when told this way. The world is broken into “majority” and “minority” groups, which often have nothing to do with numbers, but rather with power distribution. “Minority histories” refer thus to all of the pasts that have long been struggling for inclusion and representation (that which liberal and representative democracies hold so high)[17] — such as histories of lesbians and gays, feminists, Indigenous groups, and children. The history that is taught in school is the history of the majority — the world is broken up into winners and losers, savages and saviours, and the “majority” tend to take the better half of such equations.

Knowing that such dichotomies exist is only one step in addressing the issues of history telling. In fact, adopting “minority histories” into the history of the nation as such endangers diminishing their importance. “Minority” literally implies inferior; translating them back into the historian’s language does not change their status, but rather folds them in and holds them at the same level. In addressing this, it is not about building a more radical history within the structures that exist, but rather constructing a radical structure of telling history. However, there exist histories which push this limitation further, opposing altogether being absorbed into the dominant “majority” narrative.

These particular marginalized stories, those that resist historicization, are what Dipesh Chakrabarty defines as “subaltern pasts”[18]. He leads us to question why we must privilege the discipline of history as such and proposes the open question regarding experiences of the past that cannot be captured by the methods of the discipline[19]. It is important that Chakrabarty underlines that such histories are not solely based in “minority” groups, that dominant groups can also contain subaltern pasts. The limits of the previously explained discipline of historiography (that which values rationality, secular beliefs, and reason) are reached in the discoveries of subaltern pasts, particularly when championing minority histories. That is to say, these subaltern pasts are constructions of historicity that help us to see the limits to the mode of viewing embodied in the practices of the discipline of western history. This is because historiography is only one very specific way of remembering the past.

History is all the richer with subaltern and minority pasts built into it — no one will deny that the opening of history to include queer, feminist, or Black pasts has been a detriment to the discipline. Yet, I am writing to challenge the very discipline as it exists. To challenge the dominant methods of explaining pasts, as Chakrabarty says “to find the limits of the discourse”[20] and then to push beyond. Ngurrara II addresses such issues to the face of the courts of justice in Australia, challenging the dominant history-telling practice in order to lay claim to their land. This method of past telling does not succumb to the court’s usual process of rational evidence and eyewitness reports, but defines their method of historicization and law on their own terms. The legacy of Ngurrara in history extends beyond the court case and bleeds into how the canvas is spoken about and described in the future, as well as the potential it holds for other “minority” or “subaltern” groups.

Art history plays an important role in history building as well. In the case of the Ngurrara Canvas this is particularly clear, as the historicization of this event involves its later inclusion in museums, which are particular past-narrative constructing institutions. It is no secret that art history is traditionally focused on maintaining the Western narrative that guides its audiences through showrooms and classrooms. Art history courses will generally teach from the Hellenistic period, through the Renaissance and Baroque eras, into Modernism and Postmodernism; all European traditions. In museums, the same trend is underlined, with large galleries dedicated to historically placed paintings within those aforementioned eras. Then, off to the side, are African, Indigenous Australian, or Southeast Asian works; these are labelled “primitive” or “prehistoric” (namely, “other”), and not given the same historicity and attention that of Western movements. That is not to say that this isn’t changing, however these traditional hierarchies are consistently reestablished[21], be that in history textbooks or the museum. Art history, as history, attempts to create a unified identity, one which aligns with political interests and perpetuates Western colonial domination[22].

However, opening art history to include non-Western understandings of traditions poses the same issue as written historiography: the threat that the dominant hegemony will envelope other traditions to make them profitable and/or fall in line with the previously mentioned colonial domination. Again, calling for a radical historiography does not call for a radical way of telling history within the same structures as currently exist, but a dissolving of these structures altogether. In the same way art history is being made “more democratic”, oral history is shifting to become an accepted form of historical data[23]. Folding non-Western traditions into the dominant hegemony threatens indigenous and aboriginal art practices, appropriating them to become marketable as opposed to discussing their value within the culture and time they exist in, outside of the dominant historiography.

In the case of Aboriginal Australian art, works that were traditionally created in a temporary medium must now be created to endure time, weather, and travel as Sotheby’s agents market the pieces to museums and collectors around the world. Despite the dangers, this cultural ‘self-production’ challenges the dominant colonial narrative in both art history as well as how Aboriginal peoples are represented, filling in gaps of Aboriginal perspectives and encouraging acceptance of their art as both a form of storytelling and history[24]. Traditionally these pieces are ceremonial and ephemeral. Though running parallel to the conventional art world, the Aboriginal art industry is also functioning outside of its ideals. Producing art as such challenges the colonial representations of Aboriginal people (as “prehistoric” or “savages”, thus incapable of creating “good art”) as well as gives an opportunity for self-determination, where “art production is the main source of commercial income for many remote communities with art centers,” in which “between 2008 and 2012, remote Indigenous art centers generated around $53 million in art sales, with $30 million paid to artists”[25] .

Ngurrara II is built on an ‘artistic’ and ‘historic’[26] tradition unique to Aboriginal Australian beliefs. As hinted at in the previous section, their ahistorical, timeless and mythical[27] method of relating to the past is based on Dreamtime or Dreaming. These are the travelings of ancient ancestors, passed down in narratives based on the land in which the story took place. As mentioned in the quote from artist Tommy May, Aboriginal Australians do not take or share stories that are not theirs, so certain people inherit responsibility for certain stories. Secret rites would celebrate the “creation ancestors” — those responsible for creating every detail of the landscape. In the desert, ground paintings of a Dreaming myth would be told by the individual with the rights to tell it, drawn directly into the earth and then subsequently obliterated once the ceremony ended[28]. This explains why, for so long, Aboriginal imagery remained unknown to those not inside the immediate tradition.

In the face of displacement and threats of cultural annihilation that have threatened Aboriginal populations across Australia, creating art on more permanent mediums is a challenge to their fringe positions — literally and metaphorically — in Australian society. Suddenly, Dreamings are being permanently created and a history is being told, in a modified manner. This historical trend began through the 1960s and 70s as Aboriginal people were forced off of their ancestral lands for white cattle ranchers to take over. One anecdote comes from 1974, when a devastating cyclone tore through Darwin — the center of European influence in northern Australia — Aboriginal elders interpreted this as a manifestation of the anger of ancestral spirits, enraged at the white influence that caused neglect of their land and rituals[29]. In order to raise money for impoverished communities, they began selling their crafts[30].

The case of Ngurrara comes out of this combination of circumstances. Where Western histories are written from their own (often biased) point of view, they also fold “other” narratives into their structures, endangering “minority” pasts as being kept in a lower position. The Ngurrara Canvas I&II and those who came together to create it are a prime example of a “subaltern” past. But the explanation must push further to explain the dangers of Ngurrara being folded into the western historiographical method, a method that is not suitable for it especially as the canvas offers a radical alternative to historiography.

HOW DO YOU CURATE CULTURE?

I will not entertain the common narrative that Aboriginal art was “discovered”, that “connoisseurs” could appreciate “unusual” paintings; this myth furthers the marginalization of the Aboriginal cultures responsible for creating such works, implying that without Western aid and supplies they would not be capable of creating “good art”. It is this precise narrative that has been placed over the canvas following the court case. Although the intention of the Ngurrara Canvas was political, the aesthetic value cannot be overlooked; it must also equally not be overstated according to western terms and conditions.

In 2003, the Ngurrara I canvas was put up for auction by Sotheby’s[31], and eventually sold for $213,000. This money was used to raise funds for the Mangkaja Art Centre in Fitzroy Crossing, in order to have a proper gallery space as opposed to the stack of crates containing the Ngurrara II Canvas. The first canvas is now on permanent display in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. On the other hand, Ngurrara II has traveled around to biennales and exhibitions from Lyon to the UAE to museums across Australia. Its permanent home is the Mangkaja Art Centre, and it is still used in traditional ceremonies. As many of the original painters have passed away, this canvas remains hugely important for the population as a complex network of memories, emotional and social connections, and relationships[32].

Unlike written history, the arts provide an accessible way of discussing complex issues of white colonial and patriarchal narratives that dominate public spaces[33]. You do not need to have a level of dominant language ability to represent your history in the form of art. It is in this context that both Ngurrara Canvases present us with the problematic of representation of the past. The displaying of such a work in the traditional European art museum opens it to “otherizing”. As in historiography, the world of art tends to define these aforementioned “subaltern” or “minority” histories as “other” histories — those which do not fit into the dominant story. The Ngurrara Canvas does not need to be explained in the language of the western museumgoer or historian, as it ultimately served its purpose both as a cultural artefact and a piece of evidence.

Another issue in historiography exists in art history as well — art historians working in the borders of the field are not involved in the central debates on theories and methods. Including them must be considered an urgent task[34] to answer these issues of representation. The main vein of this argument centers around discussion of “decolonizing” the art museum, though this decolonization is not focused on the restoration of native land or sovereignty[35], nor of proposing a radical alternative to the western art historiographic tradition. The aforementioned racialized social and intellectual statuses “play out through the hegemonic western lens of anthropology and Eurocentric art history in the space of the museum and gallery”[36]. Though the question is often posed regarding how to assert sovereignty within the white cube museum structures (that which is driven by the denial and regulation of Aboriginal rights[37]) the answer does not lie in succumbing to the same structures, but rather challenging them directly. Art and culture are predominantly seen as meaning-making practices that reflect social values and are also capable of establishing, confirming or challenging those values[38]. Ngurrara I&II offer an opportunity to challenge as the meaning exists within the canvas as it stands, used in traditions and not intended to be hung on a frame on a wall in a museum. It is still considered art, but not art in the western museum sense.

Decolonization also calls for Aboriginal artists to vocally continue to resist colonization and racism in speaking about their trans-generational traumas, fighting against colonial narratives in public spaces, and addressing the institutions of whiteness and privilege[39]. This is a tall order alongside the other work that must be done in the creation of “artworks” that are part of a 60,000-year-old tradition[40]; 60,000 years of life and culture that could not be simply adopted into a recent western invention. What does it say about art history and historiography that curators in Australia are by and large white, or that the Museums Victoria appointed its first Indigenous head of the First Peoples Collections in 2018, 164 years into the existence of the Melbourne Museum[41]? I believe that says all that it needs to. Further frustration arises when art historians or curators who are not Indigenous place an Aboriginal Australian work in an exhibition while writing about it in order to “legitimize” it as contemporary art, or to authenticate it with their “expertise”[42]. The work is only thus validated in the context of the western art history canon.

We also see the issues that arise when such pieces, created by Aboriginal Australians in this case, are attempted to be positioned within the western canon. As curator and Yorta Yorta Sovereign Kimberly Molton states:

There is still the undercurrent of thought that until the non-indigenous person ‘encouraged’ Aboriginal people to paint their land through western methods, and to make their sacred designs available for sale on board and canvas, that Aboriginal art was ‘undiscovered’. The preference for the ‘authentic’ Aboriginal aesthetic of the western desert or northern art sits within a different category of contemporary art than that of the south-eastern mob. Is Aboriginal art only accepted within the western canon when it suits a capitalist agenda?[43]

The alternative to this is anti-capitalist as well as offering a new sovereignty to those responsible for creating such works — both of these are direct challenges to the (art) historiographical method. Further acts of sovereignty include other artistic traditions that do not align with the European art history tradition, such as rock art, body painting, stone formations, and cultural material carved of wood[44]. In Ngurrara, what is commonly referred to as “stories” is in fact the Law for those responsible for creating the work. This is their act of sovereignty. These Canvases were not created for the art market. Enveloping them into the western art history tradition threatens these acts of sovereignty in overlooking them, instead placing the value on some “untapped potential” that has been “discovered” by cultural institutions — institutions which hold incredible influence on the manner in which culture is presented to the public.

Museums are cultural past-building institutions. It is in these contexts that such works being displayed creates meaning and opens the potential for an incorrect meaning to be overlaid. The alternative that is offered by Ngurrara is thus precarious, in danger of being folded into a dominant tradition that does not care about it. Another danger for the creators of the Ngurrara Canvases is implied in the transition from an oral history, one that is flexible and ephemeral, to one that is “written”. As such works become marketable, they open a space for misrepresentation and wresting power from those responsible for creating the work into the hands of those responsible for creating the conditions under which the piece was made. Those who use such canvases for traditional practices stand to lose access to their past, and those who create must depend on materials outside of their tradition. It is here where the failure of the western historical tradition rears its head — a rational, displayed, written and permanent history telling is not adequate for the cultures in question.

A decolonized museum does not necessarily hold all of the answers to this issue. Despite the calls to “reframe their structures of thought”[45] in order to stay outside of the dominant historiography, Aboriginal art would be better off continuing to push the boundaries as subaltern pasts do so well. It must continue to “speak back and blak[46]” — a phrase coined in 1991 by Aboriginal artist Destiny Deacon[47] — to dominant, white narratives of history and identity without falling into the language of the colonizer.

The radical alternative presented with Ngurrara is the culmination of these ideas surrounding decolonization, curatorial practices, and history telling. The first radical step is the fact that the history presented is neither written, nor necessarily is it “logically” laid out in a chronological, rational manner. Further, it is based on mythical stories as opposed to rational, secular western ideas. To use such a piece in a court case for land rights offers a truly radical narrative to those of the white Australians deciding the case; in particular it undermines and throws off the dominant hegemony by calling upon a tradition that existed long before the courts deciding land rights. It is a call to challenge the settler sentiments of a large majority of the nation of Australia[48], a demand to understand the rights and situation of the Aboriginal population.

Outside of the courts and into the cultural creators of the state, Ngurrara further challenges western understandings of art and culture by precisely rejecting the western canon. Fitting into the canon would not solve the issues of the Aboriginal population; in fact, it would threaten only hurting their sovereignty more as they bent their bodies, traditions, and cultures to a western tradition that would not understand it. The canon is constructed not simply on the inclusion of traditions and movements, but also on exclusion — particularly of non-Western movements. It only takes reading articles written by The New Yorker, as one example, to see how quickly the language describing the Ngurrara II Canvas becomes about comparing it to Western “abstract expressionism”, dropping names such as Rothko, Miró, Pollock and Matisse. What benefit is there in comparing a work so radically different, created in such a radically different context? Such comparisons do nothing but undermine the creation of such a piece, as though thinking it were wholly impossible outside of the western canon and even less so from “savages” such as the Aboriginal population.

The job of the western art museum, if it must be there where such works are housed, is thus to present non-western artworks as they are. It is not to explain such pieces in the western hegemony’s language, but to challenge our own established way of thinking and teach us to acknowledge the limits of our mental constructs[49]. The museum must present the history outside of the historiographical tradition, teaching us as viewers the values of both aesthetic and cultural sensitivity[50].

It is through this story that we see one example of another way of telling the past that is not historiography, thus answering with a firm “no” the question of whether or not there is only one way to tell a history. In the case of the Aboriginal population of the Southern Kimberly community in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, historiography is decidedly inadequate to representing their past. The Ngurrara Canvas and its legacies open interesting questions into art history and its role in historiography, only further underlining the insufficiency of western ideals in representing the past. This example challenges us, pushes at the boundaries of our conceptions of history, and requires an alternative to western historiography. This alternative offers a “new” realm in the telling of a past, one that is based on a tradition that is thousands of years old. History-writing is a modern and European way of thinking about the past, and not superior to myth and legend, or other such understandings of the past in non-western contexts. Ngurrara offers an opportunity to “speak back and blak” to the settlers who arrived, displaced the people of the Great Sandy Desert, and forced them into a tradition that was not their own.

WORKS CITED

Australian Council for the Arts, 2015, Arts Nation: An Overview of Australian Arts, 2015 edition, Sydney, Australia.

Balla, Paola. “Across Australia, Artists Are Disrupting the Colonial Mindset.” Frieze, Frieze, 31 Oct. 2018, frieze.com/article/across-australia-artists-are-disrupting-colonial-mindset.

Behrendt, Larissa. “Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvas.” Aboriginal Art Directory, Aboriginal Art Directory, 17 June 2008, www.aboriginalartdirectory.com/news/feature/ngurrara-the-great-sandy-desert-canvas.php.

Blue, Zachary. “Aboriginal Art and Oral History in the Colonial Narrative.” NEW: Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 15 Mar. 2019, pp. 65–69., doi:10.5130/nesais.v4i1.1533.

Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 21 July 2003, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/28/the-painted-desert.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts.” Scrutiny2, 3:1, 16 Sept. 2014, pp. 4–15., doi:10.22459/hr.1997.02.

“Facts about Aboriginal Art — Japingka Gallery.” Japingka Aboriginal Art Gallery, 21 Apr. 2020, japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/facts-about-aboriginal-art/.

Gronlund, Melissa. “Why the Huge Aboriginal Painting Coming to Sharjah This November Is a Must-See.” The National Arts and Culture, The National, 31 July 2019, www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/why-the-huge-aboriginal-painting-coming-to-sharjah-this-november-is-a-must-see-1.892881.

Kolig, Erich. “A Sense of History and the Reconstitution of Cosmology in Australian Aboriginal Society. The Case of Myth versus History.” Anthropos, no. 90, 1995, pp. 49–67.

Lahoud, Adrian. “ArtReview x Sharjah Architecture Triennial: Ngurrara II.” ArtReview, ArtReview, 9 Aug. 2019, artreview.com/online-2019-sharjah-triennial-1-adrian-lahoud/.

Mattos, Claudia. “Whither Art History? Geography, Art Theory, and New Perspectives for an Inclusive Art History.” The Art Bulletin, 96:3, 2 Oct. 2014, pp. 259–264., doi:10.1080/00043079.2014.889511.

Moulton, Kimberly. “Sovereign Art and the Colonial Canon; Are We Lost until We Are Found?” Sovereignty, by Paola Bella and Max Delany, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2016, pp. 27–33.

Nandy, Ashis. “History’s Forgotten Doubles.” History and Theory, vol. 34, no. 2, May 1995, pp. 44–66., doi:10.2307/2505434.

“Ngurrara Canvas II.” Rights of Future Generations, Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019, Nov. 2019, rfgen.net/en/project/ngurrara-canvas-2.

Schirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Allen & Unwin, 2004.

Wildburger, Eleanor. “Indigenous Australian Art in Practice and Theory.” Coolabah , no. 10, 2013, pp. 202–212.

Ngurrara II Artists: Manmarriya Daisy Andrews, Munangu Huey Bent, Ngarta Jinny Bent, Waninya Biddy Bonney, Nyuju Stumpy Brown, Pajiman Warford Budgieman, Jukuna Mona Chuguna, Raraj David Chuguna, Tapiri Peter Clancy, Jijijar Molly Dededar, Purlta Maryanne Downs, Kurtiji Peter Goodijie, Kuji Rosie Goodjie, Yirrpura Jinny James, Nyangarni Penny K-Lyon, Luurn Willy Kew, Kapi Lucy Kubby, Monday Kunga Kunga, Milyinti Dorothy May, Ngarralja Tommy May, Murungkurr Terry Murray, Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah, Ngurnta Amy Nuggett, Japarti Joseph Nuggett, Nanjarn Charlie Nunjun, Yukarla Hitler Pamba, Parlun Harry Bullen, Kurnti Jimmy Pike, Killer Pindan, Miltja Thursday Pindan, Pulikarti Honey Bulagardie, Nada Rawlins, Ngumumpa Walter Rose, Kulyukulyu Trixie Shaw, Pijaji Peter Skipper, Jukuja Dolly Snell, Ngirlpirr Spider Snell, Mayapu Elsie Thomas, George Tuckerbox, and Wajinya Paji Honeychild Yankarr.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: The Ngurrara Canvas. Painted by Ngurrara artists and claimants, coordinated by Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, May 1997. 10 metres x 8 metres. Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency. 2

Figure 2: Justice Gilmour at the 2007 Ngurrara Native TItle Determination. Still from Putuparri and the Rainmakers, 2015, dir Nicole Ma 4

[1] Behrendt, Larissa. “Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvas.” Aboriginal Art Directory.

[2] The Ngurrara Canvas was created twice; as the artists were unhappy with the first outcome, they decided to repaint it. See: Lahoud, Adrian. “ArtReview x Sharjah Architecture Triennial: Ngurrara II.”

[3] “Ngurrara Canvas II.” Rights of Future Generations

[4] Behrendt, Larissa. “Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvas.” Aboriginal Art Directory

[5] Ibid

[6] Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.” The New Yorker.

[7] Mabo vs Queensland (№2)

[8] As quoted in: Wildburger, Eleanor. “Indigenous Australian Art in Practice and Theory.” 203.

[9] As quoted in: Ibid. 204.

[10] Lahoud, Adrian. “ArtReview x Sharjah Architecture Triennial: Ngurrara II.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] Wildburger, Eleanor. “Indigenous Australian Art in Practice and Theory.” Coolabah , no. 10. 203

[13] The case was stalled as many other similar land claim cases were brought forward and contested by mining and farming interests. See: Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.”

[14] As quoted in: Behrendt, Larissa. “Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvas.” Aboriginal Art Directory

[15] Nandy, Ashis. “History’s Forgotten Doubles.” p 44

[16] Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts.”p 8

[17] Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts.” p 4

[18] Ibid. p 7

[19] Ibid. p 10

[20] Ibid. p 12

[21] Mattos, Claudia. “Whither Art History? Geography, Art Theory, and New Perspectives for an Inclusive Art History.” p 262

[22] Ibid. p 260

[23] Blue, Zachary. “Aboriginal Art and Oral History in the Colonial Narrative.” p 68

[24] Ibid p 67

[25] Australian Council for the Arts 2015, p. 31

[26] I put these terms in quotations because it does precisely what I claim it should not do — defines non-western traditions in western terms

[27] Kolig, Erich. “A Sense of History and the Reconstitution of Cosmology in Australian Aboriginal Society. The Case of Myth versus History.” p 49

[28] Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.”

[29] Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.”

[30] Ibid

[31] At the time, “Ngurrara II will never sell”, stated those involved with painting it. No matter how much money it may one day be worth, the canvas is “mangi”, meaning it contains the presence of the dead. They decided amongst themselves to let the little one go. See: Brooks, Geraldine. “The Painted Desert: How Aborigines Turned Ancient Rituals into Chic Contemporary Art.”

[32] Gronlund, Melissa. “Why the Huge Aboriginal Painting Coming to Sharjah This November Is a Must-See.”

[33] Balla, Paola. “Across Australia, Artists Are Disrupting the Colonial Mindset.”

[34] Mattos, Claudia. “Whither Art History? Geography, Art Theory, and New Perspectives for an Inclusive Art History.” p 260

[35] Reconciliation is an effort to make settlers more comfortable with their inherited crimes and privileges. See: Moulton, Kimberly. “Sovereign Art and the Colonial Canon; Are We Lost until We Are Found?”

[36] Moulton, Kimberly. “Sovereign Art and the Colonial Canon; Are We Lost until We Are Found?” p 28

[37] Ibid. p 31

[38] Schirato and Webb. Reading the Visual. pg116

[39] Balla, Paola. “Across Australia, Artists Are Disrupting the Colonial Mindset.”

[40] “Facts about Aboriginal Art — Japingka Gallery.” Japingka Aboriginal Art Gallery,

[41] Ibid

[42] Moulton, Kimberly. “Sovereign Art and the Colonial Canon; Are We Lost until We Are Found?” p 30

[43] Ibid. p 29

[44] Ibid. p 30

[45] As quoted in: Balla, Paola. “Across Australia, Artists Are Disrupting the Colonial Mindset.”

[46] [sic]

[47] Balla, Paola. “Across Australia, Artists Are Disrupting the Colonial Mindset.”

[48] Moulton, Kimberly. “Sovereign Art and the Colonial Canon; Are We Lost until We Are Found?”. pg 27

[49] Wildburger “Indigenous Australian Art in Practice and Theory”. p 210

[50] Ibid. p 210