Living Archive project team in Ngukurr May 2023

Currently (late May 2023), members of the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art and Knowledge project are visiting Ngukurr to work with, share knowledge and learn together with Ngukurr artists and community members about their Country and culture through creative practices. Mitch Mahoney (Boowurrung/Barkindji), his mother Kerri Clarke (Boonwurrung/Wemba Wemba), and Mitch’s dad, Wade Mahoney (Barkindji), took an unmarked possum skin cloak to Ngukurr. The cloak was sewn by Newcastle High School students last year (2022) – who were guided by Kerri Clarke to learn the possum skin cloak technique, which is traditionally connected to southeast Australian Aboriginal people and their culture. At the same time the young people also learnt about Ngukurr activist Dexter Daniels, who visited Newcastle in the 1960-70s to gain support from trade unions, university students and others for land rights and equal pay for Aboriginal people. The cloak from Newcastle was unmarked and is now in Ngukurr, where stories are being exchanged between Mitch and his family and the Ngukurr community, as they work out designs to be burnt on the cloak that will represent the knowledge exchange and interconnections between Aboriginal people in the south and those in the north. Already Mitch and his family have shared their stories about their Country, including their connections to the rivers in their Country, while Ngukurr artists, Karen Rogers and her family, including Daphne Daniels (Dexter’s great niece) have shared stories about their Country. It is anticipated over the next few days that the cloak story/design will evolve to reveal how Indigenous knowledge systems through art-making can transmit vital information about caring for Country, Aboriginal histories and cultural practices, while forging new and ongoing relationships between people from two diverse regions of Australia. Stay tuned for more as we work on creating the cloak as a Living Archive…

Written by Fran Edmonds