Storytelling
Some of you will recognise the most famous Australian environmental activist Dr Bob Brown in Geoff Dyer’s 1993 Archibald portrait. I’ve placed a link below to a photo I took a while ago when meeting Brown at the little house “Oura Oura” which he gifted to the Tasmanian people. During our conversation Bob Brown told me the story of how on this property near The Great Western Tiers, the momentous campaigns to save the Tasmanian Wilderness were developed.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/archie-100/in-polite-...
On the right is one of the greatest story-tellers in Australian history, Burnum Burnam (1936-1997). The painting is by Kerrie Lester (1991/92). In 1976, after joining the Bahá’í faith, the former athlete and University of Tasmania Law student Harry Penrith changed his name to Burnum Burnum (meaning “Great Warrior”). Young Harry had spent his childhood in foster homes having been a member of the Stolen Generations (i.e. Aboriginal children removed from their families in order to give them a better chance of advancement, since it was commonly believed at the time the indigenous race was dying out in Australia). The consequences of such policies can be heard in the late great Archie Roach’s song, “Took the Children Away”. www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6CnnBW6LbQ
Well Burnum Burnum was having none of it! On 26 January 1988, in an act of defiance, Burnum Burnum planted the Aboriginal flag on the White Cliffs of Dover in England, symbolically invading Great Britain and declaring in irony, ‘We wish no harm to [England’s] natives’. He further pledged not to poison British waterholes, ‘pickle and preserve the heads […] of your people […] sterilise your women, nor to separate your children from their families’.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/archie-100/in-polite-...
Storytelling
Some of you will recognise the most famous Australian environmental activist Dr Bob Brown in Geoff Dyer’s 1993 Archibald portrait. I’ve placed a link below to a photo I took a while ago when meeting Brown at the little house “Oura Oura” which he gifted to the Tasmanian people. During our conversation Bob Brown told me the story of how on this property near The Great Western Tiers, the momentous campaigns to save the Tasmanian Wilderness were developed.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/archie-100/in-polite-...
On the right is one of the greatest story-tellers in Australian history, Burnum Burnam (1936-1997). The painting is by Kerrie Lester (1991/92). In 1976, after joining the Bahá’í faith, the former athlete and University of Tasmania Law student Harry Penrith changed his name to Burnum Burnum (meaning “Great Warrior”). Young Harry had spent his childhood in foster homes having been a member of the Stolen Generations (i.e. Aboriginal children removed from their families in order to give them a better chance of advancement, since it was commonly believed at the time the indigenous race was dying out in Australia). The consequences of such policies can be heard in the late great Archie Roach’s song, “Took the Children Away”. www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6CnnBW6LbQ
Well Burnum Burnum was having none of it! On 26 January 1988, in an act of defiance, Burnum Burnum planted the Aboriginal flag on the White Cliffs of Dover in England, symbolically invading Great Britain and declaring in irony, ‘We wish no harm to [England’s] natives’. He further pledged not to poison British waterholes, ‘pickle and preserve the heads […] of your people […] sterilise your women, nor to separate your children from their families’.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/archie-100/in-polite-...