Craft Australia Research Centre
presents A story is like a River: Intercultural collaboration in Weaving the Murray, written by Kay Lawrence and Nici Cumpston as part of the Selling Yarns: Australian Indigenous textiles and good business in the 21st century conference held in Darwin in August, 2006.

Lawrence has an international reputation as a tapestry weaver and is currently Head of the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia.

Cumpston is a photographic visual artist of Aboriginal, Afghan, Irish and English descent. She is currently lecturing in Indigenous Arts, Cultures and Design at the South Australian School of Art and The Unaipon School at the University of SA.

Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose in her recent book, Reports from a Wild Country; ethics for decolonisation, notes the legacy of white settler society in Australia. Speaking as a member of this society she states 'we cannot help knowing that we are here through dispossession and death', and asks 'What alternatives exist for us, and what is asked of us'? ¹   Image slideshow

In answer to her own question she proposes an ethical position that 'would replace (this) violence with responsive attentiveness'² , an attentiveness to place and people, located in the here and now, that takes account of the past, and is based on listening to Indigenous Australians talking back 'in their own terms'.³

This paper has been written in response to Rose's proposition by artists Kay Lawrence and Nici Cumpston ⁴ who come from Indigenous and non- Indigenous Australian communities. The paper uses story telling as a way of focusing on the importance of listening and paying attention to people and place in intercultural collaboration, through a discussion of the Weaving the Murray project.

A story is like a river. And like a river it trickles from the source until it flows, flows, flows. Down mountains of the mountains. Branching onto the land the land the land. Flowing. Spiralling. Flowing towards the sea.⁵

Telling stories is a particularly appropriate way of discussing this project. Not only was listening to stories essential to the process we undertook to create the art-work Weaving the Murray but metaphorically, as in this text by Sia Figiel, there is a particular affinity between the flow of a river and telling a story, and through telling these stories about our collaboration, our insights can be carried to communities far from the Murray River.

The stories we tell come from two sources; the stories told to us by people along the River during the process of community consultation undertaken as part of the project, and the reflections of the artists on the project itself, collected through interviews conducted by Kay Lawrence with the artists two years after the project was completed. In order for their voices to be heard, wherever possible we have used quotations from the participants to talk about our collaboration. Their words are threaded through this paper just as recordings of their voices permeated the physical form of the installation.

The Project

The Weaving the Murray project was commissioned to celebrate the Centenary of the Federation of Australia in 1901. The project was developed by the South Australian Centenary of Federation committee as part of the Source to Sea celebrations linking the three south-eastern states, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. By celebrating the role of the Murray River connecting the three states and their communities, Weaving the Murray would symbolise the ideals of Federation as a celebration of democracy through;

artists (working) with communities along the river to weave a cultural map of the river from source to sea which will be given to the people of Australia as a lasting reminder of the Centenary of Federation. ⁶

The seven artists who submitted the winning proposal for the project were drawn together from personal networks and friendships developed in the 1990s. The team included three Indigenous artists, Rhonda Agius, Nici Cumpston and Chrissie Houston, and four non-Indigenous artists, Kirsty Darlaston, Sandy Elverd, Kay Lawrence and Karen Russell.

As suggested by Rose, the proposition that you can't understand the present without remembering the past was a guiding principle for the Weaving the Murray team. This meant researching the past history of the Murray River and its symbolic role in the process of Federation, but also understanding the meaning of the river for Indigenous and settler communities, through researching their stories and textile traditions. In the design concept presented to the Centenary of Federation committee we stated;

Through our research and the stories we collect through community consultation, we will develop a design that maps the changing relationship of people to the River. We envisage an installation of woven objects that symbolically map the differences and connections between communities based on objects and materials associated with River use.⁷

To undertake this research, the artists (accompanied by a sound recordist on the second trip), made two trips along the 2570 kilometre length of the river, visiting river towns to meet with community groups and listen to their stories, and to search museums, archives and second-hand clothing shops for information and artefacts that told the official and unofficial histories of the river.

Linking with Indigenous people, artists, the communities and Indigenous history, gathering more knowledge, more sharing. People could have a voice, indigenous people, women, migrants. They could have the opportunity to speak their stories without judgement.⁸

As Karen Russell noted in her interview, listening to stories was a key way we gathered knowledge. Some of these stories were recorded for the soundscape, some noted down and quoted in the work, some just remembered. All shaped the way we made the work.

In talking about the process of making the Weaving the Murray art-work in this paper, we've chosen to share stories that involved listening to other people, trying to hear what they said, and sometimes what they didn't say. We've chosen stories that changed us, shifted our perceptions and generated insights into other people's point of view. The stories we tell are those that enabled us to reflect on our experience and undertake the slow and sometimes painful process of developing an ethical practice of inter-cultural collaboration.

The installation

We'd first like to discuss the narrative underpinning the form of the work itself, as it was seen by viewers in the first showing of the installation in the Art Gallery of South Australia in January 2002. As we noted in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition, through the work we hoped to;

re-present to the river communities, their stories, their daily experiences, their hope and concerns for the health of the river. Textile processes provide the means to speak the unspoken, to tell previously disregarded stories. The artwork acknowledges difference while symbolising the connections between communities.⁹

These stories about the river are told through an installation of objects, artefacts and recorded voices. The installation was designed to enable viewers to walk through and around the work while listening to recorded stories and sounds, in order to be immersed in the experience. It was designed as five interconnected parts, beginning with the story of the creation of the Murray River, as told here by Ngarrindjeri elder, Rhonda Agius.

Pondi

Long ago in the dreaming an earthquake shook the land forming a long trench. Then came a second tremor, upheaving rocks and soil. From the centre of the earth emerged Pondi the mighty Murray Cod. He was far too large for the trench, so thrashing and weaving his way across the land, he formed the Murray River and all of its tributaries. As he moved along it filled with waters, all the way from where he emerged at the foot of the snowy mountains in the east, to as far as Lake Alexandrina to the west.¹⁰

It was important to have Pondi at the beginning of the installation as a symbol of the spiritual connection that Indigenous people have with the river. Pondi was created collaboratively under the guidance of Rhonda with all the artists participating and contributing to the construction. We collected rush from many places along the river using the traditional Ngarrindjeri weaving technique of coiling rushes to create the form of the fish.

Flooded Gums

Settler Australians dreamed of greening the inland, but the salt rose, the white death, turning the dream into a nightmare.¹¹

While Pondi tells the story of the creation of the River, Flooded Gums tells a story of destruction. As we drove along the river we noted the dead trees in the water ringed with salt. We heard many stories about the changes in water quality. Once you could see to the bottom though the clear, clean water. Now the water is turbid and brown.

The river red gum branches used in the installation were collected from the Hume Weir, near the source of the River. The well worn branches had gathered there as a result of changes to the course of the river and were washed up along the banks like driftwood. We collected them and carried them home in the back of the Tarago, and along with the op shop goodies, the rushes and our luggage, we were well packed. The South Australian Museum allowed us to use their freezer to chill the branches to ensure the bugs were killed before we used them in the installation. We ringed the branches with salt to symbolise the rising salinity levels that are damaging the River.

The Long Community

We belong to a long community of the river. It's the same body of water if it flows past Corryong, down the Condamine.¹²

Along one wall of the installation space, we created a string of words from rushes that grow along the banks of the Murray, making reference to the use of string as a key technology in many Indigenous Australian societies for connecting things together. The text 'we all belong to a long community' taken from an interview with conservationist Frank Tuckwell of Goolwa, speaks of the river connecting communities along its length over time, while the process and materials refer to the importance of Indigenous knowledge in understanding our connection to country.

The river in fact belongs to three colonies... Broad principles and not narrow jealousies or pettifogging quibbles, should rule in this matter-the Murray ought to be the great agent of Federation.¹³

One of the great hopes for the future, rather than thinking like South Australians, Victorians we're starting to think like Australians ... that the great river will be placed under the control of a national body'¹⁴

But, as these texts from 1889 and 2001 demonstrate, it has been lack of agreement for over a century amongst these communities, divided by state boundaries and conflicting interests, that has exacerbated the River's slow decline, visualised in the photographic image of salt-ringed trees.

The problems of the River have been amplified by persistent failure to recognise the importance of Indigenous knowledge in deciding how the river should be managed. This knowledge is there in the stories of Indigenous custodians, however it is rarely heard. As Doug Nicholls from Swan Hill noted;

There's that many mound sites, our burial grounds, our cooking places, our women's places. Were second rate citizens to them. We want them to respect our places. We want the whole landscape to be part of our heritage.¹⁵

As we visited communities along the Murray River and listened to the stories of Indigenous elders, we came to realise how important it was to hear the voices of the local people. We were told of the issues, people's concerns for the management of the river systems and the lack of consultation with Indigenous communities by the authorities. But there were also stories of hope. We were informed of land care groups who were working with Indigenous people, and this was one way that their voices were being heard.

The Mapped Landscape

On the wall facing the string text, we created a grid of textile objects, referencing the traditions of Indigenous and settler communities. These objects refer to the domestic and rural labour that supported the trade, fishing and farming practices that formed the economy of the River, an economy that has had disastrous consequences for the River's health. The grid makes reference to the mapping and ordering practices of the white settlers.

Without the fixed grid of named features we would be total strangers on the land - lost souls with nowhere to attach ourselves.¹⁶

As Sidney Moko Mead has noted, the grid structure reveals the anxiety underpinning colonisation, an anxiety expressed through the practices of mapping and naming, a way of controlling fear of the unknown.

The consequences of the failure to unite the states in the management of the Murray is signalled by two string bags that mark how the introduction of crops like cotton and irrigation practices, have damaged the health of the river. A traditional Indigenous netted bag made from plant fibre string is hung alongside its counterpart, netted with salt-encrusted, cotton rags.

Within the grid, European and Indigenous cultural practices are sometimes combined to form hybrid objects that speak hopefully of the benefits of working together, even when they allude to stories of dispossession. A Ngarrindjeri 'sister' basket formed by two cupped halves joined together to symbolise connection between people, has been remade in the ubiquitous fabric of the settlers, gingham check. In this hybrid basket, the spiral form of the structure overwhelms the usually dominant grid of the check.

All the objects within the grid are hung with tags, as in a museum. The tags, rather than identifying the object with date and provenance, provide images and texts that open up a range of readings, unsettling the fixity of the grid structure. The tag attached to the Sister basket lists the names of Indigenous groups living along the Murray, and the names of the sister cities facing each other on opposite banks. The pairing of forms in the sister basket is echoed in the rhythm of the repeated words.

Latji Latji, Dadi Dadi, Muthi Muthi, Wadi Wadi, Wamba Wamba, Barapa Barapa, Yorta Yorta

The Soundscape

The river is the life blood. It gives us everything.¹⁷

As Jacqui Kelly from Swan Hill said so eloquently, the River is the life blood of the community. As viewers walked around the physical installation of Weaving the Murray, they could hear the voices of people from the River telling their stories. By including the soundscape in the installation we enabled the voices of the people whom we met and spoke to, be heard. Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike, were all keen to tell us their stories, voicing their concerns for the management and well being of the River. The voices playing in the background were a subtle reminder of the people who had given us the information that we used to create the parts of the installation. We drew upon their stories the whole way through the project. Their generosity, depth of knowledge and understanding informed both the concept and design of the final work.

By sending the installation back to some of the River communities to be shown in their towns, and distributing the catalogue to all the people we had interviewed, we were able to give their stories back to them, as well as sharing their insights with the people who visited the exhibition.

Two stories from the process of community consultation

We'd like to tell two stories from the process of community consultation which was undertaken throughout the project, beginning in March 2001.

The first story is about the importance of listening to Indigenous people. We knew that they would have a deep understanding of the care required to maintain a healthy river system and we were often told by the elders of the importance of the many different plants and trees growing in various regions. We were also told that many of the forests were in extreme danger due to logging and farming practices. The ancient River Red Gum forests in Barmah Forest and the Nyah Vinifera forest near Swan Hill are still being logged and used to graze cattle, in complete disregard for Indigenous people's, knowledge, concern and connection to the areas.

Doug Nicholls, an Indigenous man from the Swan Hill area of the Murray River took us to the backwaters of the Murray in the Nyah Vinifera forest. He showed us the magnificent old River Red Gums that have had their branches joined in ring shapes, the ring trees. These trees were all situated along the backwaters. Doug explained that Indigenous people would have travelled along these backwaters in dug-out canoes. While the ring trees were obvious to people on the water, to us on foot on the river banks they were not clearly visible. Opposite each ring tree was a Barri ground, a midden representing years of occupation. There were old bones, charcoal, shells, and many very long, beautiful rushes growing from these fertile remains. The ring trees were used as a sign, a pointer to an area of abundance, so people knew they could find shelter, food and protection there.¹⁸

Doug noted that some local people were sceptical of the idea that the ring trees were shaped by Indigenous intervention, preferring to believe they were shaped by natural forces. This scepticism reveals a distrust of Indigenous knowledge that has been widespread along the river but is gradually lessening as Indigenous people form alliances like MLDRIN (the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations) that enable their knowledge to be presented to the community with greater authority.

The second story is about silence and absence, about things we weren't told during the process of community consultation.

A couple of the Indigenous people weren't keen on contacting CWA groups due to past bad experiences. This was alleviated by them choosing not to attend our meeting with the CWA in Corryong. I thought that it was interesting in this meeting when someone asked about the local Indigenous people and we were told that, 'there weren't any local Indigenous people living here, they just came and went.¹⁹

At our first meeting with the local Country Women's Association (CWA) in Corryong at the very source of the River, Rhonda and Chrissie decided not to come, due to, as Nici noted in her interview 'previous bad experiences.

None of the Indigenous artists are shown in the photograph taken by Nici of the other artists with members of the Corryong CWA. But their absence in the photo symbolises a more significant absence of Indigenous people in the stories we heard in Corryong. In their stories of the river, people focused on the first settlers, the first white baby born in the district, clearing the tea-tree and planting willows, the farming practices, the floods, the wayward nature of the river. Len Hogg told us that;

The river in those days really wandered about. It cut into the bank and black dirt, six or eight feet just goes.²⁰

The local Indigenous people were described in the same terms as the river as wandering, as not settled 'there weren't any local Indigenous people living here, they just came and went'. This implies that Indigenous people did not belong to the area, a misunderstanding about the nature of their connection to their country. This connection is forged, not through settling in one place, but through moving across the land and conducting ceremony to care for country.

Diane Witney, administrator of the Winan-Gidyal Aboriginal Education Centre in Albury told us later on our journey that in fact Corryong was on an Indigenous trade route from Tumut to the mountains. So for the local Indigenous people, close relationship to country was always characterised by coming and going.

During the process of community consultation we noted that the absence of Indigenous people in local histories often went unnoticed and un-remarked, their absence a sort of 'natural' phenomena like the river that didn't need investigating. This absence ensured that the role of the settlers, unsettling the local Indigenous people, displacing them and worse, was not interrogated and the destruction of country and community was not acknowledged. As Nici later revealed in her interview, we made a particular effort to seek out Indigenous people and listen to their stories and learn about their ways of life.

Instead of going to local museums it was preferred to try and find the local Indigenous people and to visit them and talk about things. As we didn't have a lot of time this could prove to be problematic. We also found ourselves just spending time by the river, talking and sharing our own stories of family. It was difficult also because of a lack of information about Indigenous people in most museums. It was hard to get enthusiastic when none of the information was about our own Indigenous culture.²¹

It became important for us to breach the silence, to seek out the stories and the artefacts of local Indigenous people. Through making reference to Indigenous culture and knowledge of the River in Weaving the Murray, we were then able to insert this knowledge into the public domain through the exhibition and catalogue.

Two stories about collaboration

The next stories we tell are about collaboration and sharing. They reveal what we learnt through reflecting on the process we undertook to create Weaving the Murray. The first story about the making of Pondi, reveals successes and failures in our collaborative process and the importance of effective communication in intercultural collaboration.

As we neared the end of the project with the deadline looming, some of the team decided work on Pondi together. There were problems in creating a large form with us all working independently and time wasn't on our side. Four of the artists who lived near to each other worked together at Nici's place to weave the form and listen to and edit the recordings. During this process the team shared many hot dinners and had long conversations about the journeys along the river. While there had never been an intention by anybody to leave anyone out, Rhonda and Chrissie had indicated that they felt this way at times so this was an effective way of being more inclusive through meeting several times a week and working hard to get things done.

While we worked on different elements people supported each other. Nothing could have just been done individually, but in a group we were able to make it successful and find solutions to problems. I felt I was living at Nici's for a couple of months making Ponde and working on the sound! Rhonda and Chrissie and Nici and I all worked at Nici's place. I think this gave Chrissie and Rhonda the feeling that they were part of a supportive team.²²

As Sandy noted in her interview, the decision for a small team to work intensively at Nici's place enabled us to complete two key parts of the work, Pondi and the soundscape, on time in a congenial, supportive environment.

During the project, Rhonda as a senior Ngarrindjeri elder, had taken responsibility for the design and making of Pondi with all members of the team contributing through coiling the body and fins or making spots. Finally Rhonda finished Pondi at home bringing the completed form to our last meeting just before the installation of the work. While nothing was said at the time, later, when we were installing the work in the gallery (with Rhonda unable to attend due to prior commitments) all the other artists admitted they were a bit worried about the final shape, particularly how the head of the fish related to the body. As the key focus of the installation we wanted Pondi to be right, but our silence about our reservations about the final form when Rhonda presented Pondi to us, revealed our anxiety about critiquing her work and offending her, both as the custodian of the story and as a maker.

On reflection we didn't handle this issue well.

We rang Rhonda from the Art Gallery during the installation process and asked if she minded if we inserted a bit of weaving between the head of Pondi and the body. She was clearly surprised but agreed, but later, having had a chance to think about it, rang and said she wasn't happy with others doing it and we should return Pondi to her to do it herself. By then it was too late, we'd cut the head from the body and were busily coiling the insert.

Working in such an intense (environment) sometimes you have to let go and say there's no resolution ... In relation to reweaving the section of Pondi, I think it was very negative thing and I think we couldn't have done anything else!²³

As Kirsty noted later we were caught in a quandary. The rushed decision to 'improve' the form of Pondi and ensure the work was completed in time for the exhibition, forestalled a longer more open-ended process of negotiation that takes as much time as necessary to reach consensus.

At the time we didn't know how to raise the problem without Rhonda thinking we were criticising her work, when she had greater ownership of Pondi because of her Indigenous heritage and links to the river.

We never looked at conflict resolution as a group at the beginning. It would have been useful to do this as a group, to discuss resolving conflict or issues in a safe environment. Not to take criticism personally, respecting others ideas and opinions. This would have helped when we got to the issue of Pondi, and would have made it easier to bring up difficult issues.²⁴

This issue posed a question that clearly bothered the artists who almost all referred to it in the interviews. Should we have given priority to Rhonda's custodial rights and not hurriedly altered the form of Pondi, rather than the group's perception of the 'quality' of the final work? As Sandy noted in her interview, an open and frank discussion at the beginning of the project about how we would manage and resolve issues, could have helped us to avoid this quandary.

Our second story about collaboration is a story about sharing and reciprocity.

During the process of community consultation we were able to share our weaving skills with the community as a way of giving them something in exchange for the stories that they had shared with us. During our return trips to the river communities we were part of other Source to Sea events celebrations. We were given an area to display our work, talk with interested people about our project and what we were trying to achieve. We offered people the chance to learn traditional Ngarrindjeri weaving, and those who were inspired wove a small circle for us to use on Pondi's body to make up the texture of scales and skin.

It was during these return trips and being a part of the celebrations that we first met up with the men who represented the Indigenous Flotilla. They included us in each event that they were a part of and were very respectful of our role in the official proceedings. They would not start their ceremony until we were all present. It was a very positive and empowering experience to have our contribution recognised. Their generosity and willingness to share their ceremonies with us despite the past, was humbling.

Such practices of exchange have always played an important role in connecting Indigenous communities along the River. Phil Egan from Mildura spoke to us about the long-standing connections between the Indigenous people from his area and the local Ngarrindjeri people. His elders explained to him that there have always been connections between Muttatunga Reserve and the Coorong through trade and intermarriage. The exchange of gifts between three Indigenous nations that was included as part of the Source to Sea celebrations was symbolic of the interconnectedness of Indigenous peoples all living along the Murray River.²⁵

Conclusion

This paper concludes with a story of generosity and hope concerning the final event in the Source to Sea celebrations at Goolwa in late 2001.

Many Indigenous Australians had been reluctant to participate in the Centenary of Federation, as Australia's first one hundred years as a democratic nation was based on their exclusion from the rights of citizenship. This was a particular issue for the Ngarrindjeri people, as the process of developing a federation of the eight states and territories at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, had revoked their rights as citizens, including their right to vote.²⁶

But there was another more recent reason, for Ngarrindjeri reluctance to participate in Federation celebrations, a reason linked to the Murray River itself. The Source to Sea event of which the Weaving the Murray project was a part, culminated in a weekend of celebrations at Goolwa, the traditional lands of the Ngarrindjeri people and the mouth of the Murray River.

During the 1990s the widely publicised dispute over the building of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge across the River at Goolwa generated deep distrust between the opponents and proponents of the bridge. By discrediting the traditional knowledge of the Ngarrindjeri, widespread damage was inflicted on the community creating deep divisions between people. The refusal of a group of Ngarrindjeri women to disclose secret-sacred knowledge to unauthorised people led to charges of fabrication in the findings of the Royal Commission set up to investigate the issue. While these findings were overturned in a subsequent legal finding by Justice von Doussa, the phrase 'secret women's business,' has entered the language as a way of disparaging un-verifiable claims.²⁷

For Indigenous Australians, sharing cultural knowledge with inappropriate people will create disaster, yet as the Hindmarsh Island dispute demonstrates the consequences of refusing to speak can result in the denial of living Indigenous cultural traditions.

The Hindmarsh Island Bridge was eventually built, and, with an irony evident to many of the celebrants at Goolwa, the final ceremonies of the Source to Sea celebrations took place on the banks of the Murray, under the bridge to Hindmarsh Island with banners behind the official podium stating that we were in Ngarrindjeri country. It was a peaceful protest, but it was nonetheless a very powerful statement of their living culture and relationship to the River. In her interview Kirsty reflected on the importance of acknowledging such issues in the celebrations.

The willingness of Federation to allow protest/issue based inclusions in the work and in the whole project ... really came home to me at the end when we were at Goolwa. There were the Kaurna elders and the Ngarrindjeri people involved in that protest under the bridge. It was really great that they allowed that protest to be part of the dialogue. All the way through we'd talk to Julie (Orchard) about the issues (relating to the impact) of Federation on Indigenous people, and she'd say 'We want that to be in the project. It's not about hiding the past.²⁸

In March 2006 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between MLDRIN (Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations) and the Murray Darling Basin Commission recognising the need for cultural consultation and management practices. There is still a long way to go but this marks a significant start towards the inclusion of Indigenous people in managing change along the river.

The stories we've told about making the artwork, Weaving the Murray, indicate the importance of listening as part of the collaborative process. This is particularly important for non-Indigenous Australians whose taken-for-granted certainties resulting from positions of privilege and power, can deafen their ability to hear and understand an 'others' point of view. These stories tell of our successes and our failures in the wider context of relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. They also tell of our determination to develop an ethical practice of inter-cultural collaboration through listening attentively to each others points of view in order to reflect upon and improve our practices.

Kay Lawrence and Nici Cumpston
South Australian School of Art.
University of South Australia

References

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15. Wahlquist, 2000 'Sold down the River' The Australian, 18 March, p25.
16. Weaving the Murray, 2001 Design Submission, R. Agius, N. Cumpston, K, Darlaston, S. Elverd, C. Houston, K. Lawrence, K. Russell
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