Tag Archives: Aboriginal

Aboriginal night patrols 17/7/13 and 31/7/13

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The Koori Mail

Text by GEOFF VIVIAN

Police, the WA government and Aboriginal community organisations agree that night patrols are an essential service.

Click on this image to read the story

Click on this image to read the story

Teams of trained Aboriginal workers drive through the streets of Perth and regional towns at night, stopping to speak to stranded countrymen who are often intoxicated or otherwise distressed.

They then offer them a lift home, or to emergency accommodation

In July 2013 the WA Aboriginal affairs minister ordered a review of the service, with a view to extending it.

Koori Mail 31 July 2013Meanwhile the Commonwealth Attorney General, who part-funded the service in Broome and Perth, decided to cut funding for the patrols by 37 and 20 per cent respectively.

Fresh stoush looms over Burrup rock art

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The Koori Mail

STORY BY GEOFF VIVIAN

Traditional owners of Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula are gearing up for a fight with a company proposing to quarry the land underlying the area’s renowned Aboriginal rock carvings.

Click on this image to read the story

Click on this image to read the story

The peninsula in WA’s Pilbara region contains an estimated one million rock carvings, known as petroglyphs, with some dating back to the last ice age.

The Guardian has republished my Koori Mail story. Must be time to get interviewed by Andrew Bolt, or published in Quadrant.

Multiple dating techniques used to eliminate rock art disputes 8/8/2013

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A team of scientists is travelling to the eastern Kimberley to sort out the vexed question of rock art dates.

From The Kimberley Echo 2 September 2013

The hot question is when prehistoric artists stopped painting in the Gwion Gwion style, and when they started painting Wanjinas.

Science Network WA first published my interview with archaeologist Fiona Hook on 8 August 2013, it has since appeared in the Broome Advertiser and Kimberley Echo newspapers on 29 August and on The West Australian’s regional website on 2 September of the same year.

The latter has the best headline, albeit with dubious grammar.

 

Evicted from his home 20/11/2008

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The Kimberley Echo

Text and picture by GEOFF VIVIAN

Halls Creek has not had enough houses for a long time.

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Many people live in caravans at workplaces and parked in other people’s driveways.

Halls Creek Shire had fallen into the practice of renting houses out to services it wanted to attract to the town.

Unfortunately this meant it was unable to fill important vacancies of its own when there was nowhere for outside applicants to live.

The shire evicted Russell Tremlett when it needed the house he was in for a new staff member.

From The Kimberley Echo

Wanjina Art causes offence 2009 and 2011

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A serious cultural debate keeps popping up since Worora elder Donny Woolagoodja first displayed a giant Wanjina at the Sydney Olympics.

Vesna-Tenodi-with-Wanjina-sculpture

Vesna Tenodi

Several non-Aboriginal artists felt that Wanjina images, until then confined to Kimberley caves, were theirs to reproduce and re-interpret. Elders of the Worora, Ngarinjin and Wunambul tribes disagreed, and have expressed distress and disappointment at what they see as outsiders’ appropriation of their sacred imagery.

Dutch musician Randolph Smeets – aka the Phlod Nar – created a suite of musical pieces, even though he had never visited the Kimberley.

You can find my 2009 WA Today story about Randolph and his work here.

Croation-Australian gallery owner Vesna Tenodi had likewise never visited the people of Mowanjum. Nevertheless she commissioned a giant sculpture of Wanjinas carved in the side of a massive stone block, outside her gallery in Sydney’s Blue Mountains.

You can find my first KimberleyPage story about Vesna and her cultural adventure with the Wanjinas here. More stories about the unfolding drama are here.

‘Bushtucker’ fruit standout in Broome ecological survey 10/4/2013

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THE WA Government has listed an ecological community on Broome’s outskirts as Priority 1 PEC (Priority Ecological Community).

The dominant species is a small tree that grows on the top of relic sand dunes in the Broome Peninsula.

Broome Advertiser 4 July 2013It is commonly known by the Bardi name Mangarr and in English as wild prune (Sersalisia sericea)formerly (Pouteria sericea).

“It is an important and renowned local bushtucker species and does not occur in such frequency and longevity in other locations,” says ecologist Louise Beames.

Science Network [read this story]

This story first appeared in Science Network WA on 10/4/2013 and it has been republished by Broome Advertiser on 4/7/2013

Burning the bush helps conserve animals and plants 26/07/2012

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STANFORD University researchers have produced hard data to show desert Aboriginal bush-burning practices result in smaller, cooler fires and help conserve reptiles and small mammals while promoting plant diversity.

bush_burningEcological anthropologist Associate Professor Rebecca Bliege-Bird says key game species are more plentiful near Western Desert communities and well-used roads, where people frequently light hunting fires.

“Where people are lighting fires and making small fire mosaics you tend to find more kangaroo (Macropus robustus) and you also tend to find more sand goannas (Varanus gouldii),” she says.

Science Network WA, now defunct, originally published this article. –GV 21/5/2017

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Archaeological sites ‘easier to destroy’ in WA 22/5/13

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Two stories from The Koori Mail.

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In the first, a consulting archaeologist and a KLC heavyweight say it is getting easier to destroy archaeological sites in Western  Australia.

In the second, the National Native Title Council CEO weighs in along with the WA Aboriginal Affairs minister and another consulting archaeologist.

 

 

 

Archaeology at Barrow Island 1/6/13

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GEOFF VIVIAN

Barrow Island, off the WA coast, was once part of the mainland. As sea levels rose, the Aboriginal inhabitants would have visited less and less often. It is likely that they didn’t go there at all for some 7,000 years, until the pearling industry brought a few people back to the island in the 19th Century.

Archaeologists are about to start excavating several ancient habitation sites. This should give us a rare glimpse of what life was like in the ice age.

Science Network WA, which originally published this story, is now defunct so I have reproduced it below. –GV 21/5/2017 Continue reading →