Konstantina
Raining on Eora (Dharawal) - KONKK0072
| Size: H-152 X W-101 cm. |
| Medium: Acrylic and Ochre on Canvas |
| SOLD |
| Product No: KONKK0072 |
This is Dharawal.
As the artist it is impossible to detach yourself from your work, and in this case that impossibility is magnified by a million when you're speaking of your own Country. And as such, the Dharawal part of Country feels irrevocably sad.
She is in trauma.
Many of her decedents are influenced by discredited Caucasian historians the likes of Norman Tindal (1900-1993), and his wildly contested 'mapping' of Aboriginal people and land, not exclusively a Dharawal problem, this extends to work he produced on Groote Eylandt and in South-east Queensland. It's curious also that Tindale's "work" with fellow historian Birdsell (1939) to Cape Barren Island Aboriginal reserve led to their advocacy of assimilation ("absorption") as a solution to "the half-caste problem" too. These errors of judgement and misinterpretation leads to a level of social and political unrest.
The Country of the Dharawal was once considered the land from La Perouse to Bundeena and inland until it met its sister mob of the Dharug. But incorrect filtering of information about land and boundaries coupled with advent of the La Perouse mission in the 1880's; whereby many Aboriginal people residing in the Waran (Sydney) area were rounded up like sheep and shipped onto foreign soil well out of the way of white 'civilised eyes' has led to sadness that is palpable.
This rounding up, was exactly that. Executed in military fashion over a quick succession of weeks. All known Aboriginal persons were scooped up unlawfully by the Police and forced to live forever after at the 'LaPa mission'. I couldn't even imagine the unrest, people from different mobs, different family and clan groups all squashed in together - because all Aboriginal people are the same right?
My great Nan missed these round up's. She lived out her life on her Country, Gadigal Land until she died in 1981 the year I was born. She was considered "lucky" to escape the mission. But she housed in her backyard many mish walk-abouts. Those that had run away, escaped for a bit, were taken in by her and her family and given safe sleeping in the backyard by the fire.
There are a lot of politics that are born out of the LaPa mission, but for my part in Dharawal's story, I would like to consider her a friend, just like my Nan did.