The Ancients - Songlines: Australia's Book of Genesis

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

What the Book of Genesis is to the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, songlines are to Indigenous Australians. Epic tales of desire, pursuit, shape-shifting spirits, strength and family ties, these are stories of the land, communicated only by a handful of elders. Today, Tristan is joined by Margo Neale, lead of the "Songlines: Tracking The Seven Sisters" exhibition, which is making its European debut at The Box in Plymouth till February 2022. Not only is this an art exhibition, but also a science and history exhibition, encouraging people to engage with stories that are thousands of years old and that tell us how to look after ourselves and the planet.If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Ancient content, then subscribe to our Ancient History Thursday newsletter here.Music:Earth Awakens - Jon Bjork

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, I am really looking forward to sharing this episode with you. We're talking once again about Indigenous Australia.

We're talking about a creation story that has been described as Australia's Book of Genesis. It's an epic saga, an epic story, the Australian Iliad, the Australian Odyssey, all of that. It's remarkable. And it's all to do with a new exhibition that is currently on in Plymouth at The Box called Songlines, tracking the Seven Sisters. Now, it's the Seven Sisters story, the Seven Sisters Songlines, which is the focus of this great creation, epic story of Indigenous Australia. And to talk through it all, to talk through the exhibition and why this story is so remarkable, so significant for the oldest continuous living

culture on earth. I was delighted a few weeks back to head over to a hotel in London to interview one of the curators of this new exhibition, Margot Neill. Margot, she was over from Australia for this exhibition. She was absolutely fantastic to chat to. She is a great personality. I really do hope you enjoy this podcast. It was so much fun to record. And without further ado, to talk all about songlines and tracking the seven sisters, here's Margot.

Margot, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Here's Margot. Margot, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's absolutely my pleasure. This exhibition, Songlines, this is groundbreaking. This is unlike any exhibitions that I can think of that we've had in the UK before. Well, yes, this is what they all say, and I can only believe them. It was groundbreaking in Australia too. Of course, we have Aboriginal art, it's very prominent, Aboriginal issues, politics, it's

more prominent. Or you get the odd Aboriginal exhibition about treaty or referendum or sovereignty or something of a more political nature. In the sort of visual mode, you get Aboriginal art and it's this sort of almost in my view a cultural cringe where it's got to be bigger and better and bolder than white art so it's part of the contemporary art scene so it's a big move a big movement over many years so the last 30 years to take it out of the ethnographic bark painting into this contemporary art and now I would say it's pretty well eclipsed the art scene in Australia because when they want to represent Australia in any of the international fairs and

documentaries and things it's invariably Aboriginal art or commentary on things Aboriginal are what distinguishes us from Europe because the white white art, and now the indigenous too, is derivative, in fact. It is so distinct, and the exhibition has proven so, so popular so far. I guess to start it all off, though, if we focus on the background, this whole word songlines, what are songlines? Yeah, well, it's really interesting, as you probably know. Bruce Chatman coined it, who's a British journalist.

Did you know that? No, I didn't. Yes, 1987. And I noticed the books on sale at the box. So Bruce Chapman was interested in sort of nomadic peoples. And we're not nomadic. We have a very distinct boundaries. But people didn't understand that then.

So he went all around the world. He went to Australia for about 10-12 weeks a long time zapped around the center of Australia with a number of Aboriginal people and he coined the word song lines which previous to that white people trying to get their head around this thing this knowledge system that Aboriginal people had that guided them through life you know like some have the bible and some have you know the quran and what is it what is it in australia well he came up with the idea of the song lines now that was a perfect cross-cultural passport right everybody understood

in essence at least because it's indefinable you can't actually pin it down and if you say to an aboriginal person from the desert who's very actively involved the song line still they'll least because it's indefinable you can't actually pin it down and if you say to an Aboriginal person from the desert who's very actively involved the song line still they'll just you say what's the song line the law it's the law but what is it it's my dreaming it's the law that's about as far as you'll get for my purposes because I had to do an exhibition and translate it to some extent. I say you can visualise them as corridors or pathways of knowledge that crisscross the continent. So the whole continent is a land story. It is comprised of land stories.

And it connects these lines that intersect and lay down over millennia, connect natural features of significance so sites of significance those sites look the way they look because of some ancestral activity that's taken place there and it's in that story that all the knowledge about that place and that land whether it be ecological, astronomical, because everything's reflected in the night sky, of ancestral, historic, or even the social organisation, creation themes and the transmission of cultural values.

So you can see they link and the more advanced in your years you become, the more of the song line that you have inherited, like we can talk about Seven Sisters, that's a song line of many. Some are very big and they're epic, like Seven Sisters will traverse the entire continent. But, of course, in the colonised parts, people have remnant knowledges. parts that people have remnant knowledges. And it also, the Seven Sisters actually does the whole world because the Pleiades star cluster and the Orion constellation are visible in the northern and southern hemispheres. So Ireland had them, France, Japan.

So all ancient peoples would have had a story about the Seven Sisters, whether they called it exactly that or not. Look at the Subaru. It's a star that's from the Pleiades. That's the Seven Sisters. Do you get it? I know. I absolutely love that link.

It doesn't matter if you're in the Southern Hemisphere or the Northern Hemisphere, how these ancient cultures, there is that link. And you look at astronomy and, for instance, the hunter figure. You know, whether you're in ancient Greece or the hunter figure you know whether you're in ancient greece or in northern hemisphere or you're in the southern hemisphere in australia that star cluster it's still the representation of a hunter yes exactly a hunter it's in very male and female i mean it's a an epic saga that has a universal relevance and history

variations in the theme but invariably and like a ryan in this story is an ancestral hunter or a pursuer of the women wrongfully against the kinship rules of the australian aboriginal people who subscribe to the story he is not the right man to be going after those girls he's after the elder sister she's, so she teaches the young ones how to avoid such dangers. And in the teaching, they learn about their marriage rules and male-female relations. It all comes out in the story, and in Australia, all these natural features are mnemonics.

So when you go there, it's like you're a traveller. These days it'll be in toyota maybe even a drone you know they'll go to a site it's almost like you go to a mobile library or a library you deposit knowledge because you sing to it you perform you talk and then you withdraw knowledge and then you become like a little mobile library that goes off to your people and you recapture it all. It's knowledge through performance, this idea that you're performing the knowledge to others to teach them about it. Well, when you consider it's a non-text-based culture, as all ancient cultures were,

the transmission of knowledge was through the body. So because it's a pre-non-text-based, not in pre-text, but non-text based, it is an embodied knowledge system. And the most primary mode of transmission is through performance, because you have not only body movements, you have nuances, voice, high, low, tonal, language, rhythm of music, you have the complete package. So you can transmit the knowledge in multiple, multi-sensory modes. And you imagine, if you saw a painting or a performance,

you'll remember that. Our neural pathways are designed to remember that. But you would never remember a page of text in your textbook. It's more engaging, isn't it? It's more engaging. Multisensory. Absolutely. So one of these stories, well, I guess a collection of these stories that would have been told like this is, of course, one that's the focus of your exhibition, The Seven Sisters. Now, from what you've said, as we've chatted so far, it sounds like this story, it's this epic saga there's always like this this Troy this

Odyssey kind of thing a great chase across the continent well you know it's it's a it's probably Australia's Iliad Odyssey you know you say that what's it called the Iliad the Iliad and Odyssey that's right or others others will say the our book of Genesis none of those quite fitted of course but it gives you a clue and invariably a lot of the ancient things are about a chase an interaction whether between warring tribes or brothers for supremacy or or in this case as I said to the Seventh-day Saint story is in fact a it has to be a chase it has to be exciting it's got to have intrigue drama tragedy sorrow loss otherwise how could you hold the story for 60 000 years if it's just

now listen here young woman you are not to go out yeah it's none of that right it's all in the story so you are eager to tell it and share it and laugh and chuckle and get scared around the campfire overnight and you're just as eager to pass it on to another willing listener so it just gets transmitted and leaks into you over time it's not a lecture like westerns would do you get excommunicated anyway so um the story would is, you could put it like this, it's an epic saga clearly. All of these songlines also have local songlines as well, how to hunt the wallaby, how to get the fish.

But these epic sagas, like the Seven Sisters, is an ancestral being or a sorcerer figure who takes a human form and in pursuit of these women, the eldest is the one he wants, it's the hardest to get because she knows what's going on, and it's wrong skin group, wrong kinship relationship. He's an older man. Not that that matters so much there.

And in order to lure them to him, in order to possess them, which they will say to make them his wives, he has to shapeshift. So shapeshifting is not a modern thing. He had to shapeshift into all of the things that are necessary and critical for survival. In this case, the desert, water, what foods are in season, where they are, shade. So he turns into a tree. So they come under him and then he can consume them. And then the food, well, of course, there's all sorts of layers of meaning. So if they eat the snake that he turns into, then he enters them. And there's all of these sort of ways of possessing that have in fact sexual overtones as well as others so in all of the stories that all of these sites

many of which were traveled many of which are in the exhibition and the paintings are the portals to place they're the sites this is why this exhibition is different because you travel a song line there's even a line and you get to a painting there's some beautiful stunning big red round painting and it's called or something and then if you look at the floor the bottom will tell you exactly where that site is Wollinga and then so you actually can follow the song lines and go to that site learn about, engage with it and then move on the song line to the next site. So the paintings have, you know, multiple purposes or functions. You can look at it just as a beautiful painting or you can go into it as a place. What's this place about? What do the Seven Sisters, what happened there between, in the encounter between what in Yuru or it's called

in some parts and the Kunkalankaba, the Seven Sisters and what is there now show there's a big red round pane you can see the journey all through the APY lands in that painting. And also I'm guessing and this is one of the things which I think is most interesting at all what's the lessons from it as you say you say it's not a lecture a Western lecture as such but included within these various stories of the greater Seven Sisters story, these epic, I guess, adventures, can I think? There are important lessons embedded within them which are vital to the passing on of this knowledge.

These elements of stories. It's all about this caring for country at the end of the day. Well, the whole thing, as in all human existence is about survival and depending on the circumstances you find yourself in at any given epoch so in the australian deserts where these ones are set three deserts from the west of australia right to the center and kind of back to the lower part of western austral. They are definitely deserts. What you have to learn there is water, number one. Where is it?

And in some of these paintings you'll see there are, there's a series of paintings there, what's called walker boards, and they will show you things like in this waterhole called Wittaboola, the sisters saw the man coming on the horizon so they had nowhere to go so they dived under the waterhole and they traveled the arterial subterranean waterways and came up at bore number three now what that says when you're in that country you know that story you know you're not going to find water on the surface most likely you're going to have to you have to bore for it or there's what's called soakages you recognize the area and you dig a bit and the water seeps through so that's why they weren't swimming

because they felt like holding their breath for an hour and in the another one where they go from one song line in western australia to the song line. They get to the end of it. He's too close for comfort, and so they fly. And they fly for 100 kilometres, and they land at another song line in this story. Now, they're not flying because they want to feel the wind in their hair. They're flying because that story's telling you you don't even try and walk across that 100 kilometres.

There's no water. There's no shade. There's no... So every action is a story about survival. There's an important survival element embedded within. And that's the physical part. There's also all of the other, the social mores, and as you mentioned, caring for country,

caring for each other and caring for country. So the story with this group of women is the elder sister's job is to teach the younger sisters about there are many risks in the desert you know to mitigate the risks of living in terms of the male female relationships i mean there's small groups that live together for centuries you know so there's a lot of knowledge you need to um aboriginal people have an amazing aboriginal people in these places this amazing way of conflict resolution really sophisticated cultural diplomacy rituals of diplomacy and all these are in this story like when wadi nura goes to a cave which is a dome

he chases them they run into the cave and he rubs his hands as greatly hard got him right and he waits and waits and they don't come out and he's sort of he says to himself what's wrong with me i'm just a nice man i just want to introduce myself proper way why do they keep running i have to chase them because they keep running he says i just want to do it proper way yeah these are the protocols for introducing yourself and then he looks down and he notices his footprint he has only four toes so that means he really there's a moment of self-realization he's a sorcerer that's why they're running so he's got the conflict between reason and sexual need or whatever gender you know the need for wives or something so he's got the reason and emotion i suppose so there's all this that whole story gets played out in all of

these accounts so it's a sister's big sister's job to show us various ways to teach younger people how to behave and survive socially and morally and physically. And then at the same time, the country is the mother, the one that nurtures and keeps you alive. Therefore, you must care for country and keep the water holes clear and spiritually engage with country through performance and dance and keep it alive because there's a whole lot of stories about you go to an area and you do the right singing and put the song back into the country and the next lot who come along pull that song up and re-perform and put it back in the

country and if that's not done regularly they say the country closes up and dies and you can't bring it back so this is why the people came to me and others to actually preserve this story because it only lives in the minds of these elders well you read where i was going to go next i talked to me about how the whole exhibition came about because of course it's not just you there's a whole team of incredible people behind it yep you just need one mad one who's prepared to go to the logistics of this so yes so they you know a group of what we call anangu anangu which aboriginal people of that place they also have a separate language group anangu people had for some time been campaigning to get some of these Western institutions

to help them preserve the songlines. And at one of these meetings, David Millis, the leader of the table, said, oh, you mob, our songline's all broken up and we need you to help us put them back together again. A bit humpty-dumpty, but it's the same idea. We need you. We can't do it ourselves because it's not only the mining pastures and other incursions of colonialism,

but it's their youth are too interested in the delights of the modern world and are not keen to go hanging out in country with their oldies and don't realise what they haven't got. And they said, well, look, we know when they're all married up and got kids, they'll want to know, but we'll be gone. And it's very critical. They'll really want to know. It doesn't matter how distracted they are now

because their whole identity is invested in these places. The whole raison d'etre, you know, which they'll get. And then when they have children they want to tell them where they're from or where their place is and who the what the stories are and what their responsibilities are they won't know so they'll be kind of like orphaned in finding a place there's no such thing as an aboriginal orphan because they all know their place you know so the really good thing about this instead of throwing their arms up in despair, they were very proactive and strategic and said, well, we'll meet them in the digital domain.

They won't come to us, we'll go to them. So the journey was a preservation journey and there was recordings, songs sung, performances done, which a lot of them had to regenerate. They had to negotiate and there's a lot of them had to regenerate they had to you know negotiate and there's a lot of not not like it was on the tip of everyone's tongue they go to place and then stimulate stuff and they'd have dreams and then they'd talk to each other so it was recorded orally for film paintings and so on in and text so all of it was recorded and to be deposited in an Aboriginal managed archive called Araeratitja in Alice Springs.

And that's an Aboriginal managed archive is another story because it's opposite to our Western libraries where it's democratic and anyone can access anything here only if you can prove your lineage to that story. So it's very subjective whereas the western archive is objective so i'm guessing like let's say sourcing the objects the artifacts for this exhibition it's very different to let's say an exhibition where let's say we're going to talk about ancient rome or ancient greece have a talk with a museum out in italy or greece

or wherever get the artifacts for this exhibition talk through, like, for the objects that are on display, the paintings, the sculptures, the ceramics, it was a whole very different process. Yeah, entirely, because there's absolutely no road map for this, none. There are many times I've thought, oh, this will never end. You know, the song lines never end, the story will never end. There is no end, so, except money. All the time, but they always think you can get more oh you're going out that government he'll give you more money no you know like they've got more money

so there's no sense of money as in the western sense so what happened is you know i called it a curatorium right that i and them are curates together they've got the knowledge they've got the stories and the content i've got the capacity to choreograph it into a Western institution for the purposes of audience consumption, if you like. So we have to travel. They said, we've got to go to Kerala, and then we go there, and this is what happened here. That's a big rock face because our history story is written in the land.

That's a classic example. Anyone can see that that's a person each so there's paintings done performances done films made stories told we camped there and out of that comes painting started there finished elsewhere and more were spawned as a consequence of that visit and then there'd be other similar places like cave hill which is walinga which is what that dome is that's what's in the dome so you basically go to all of these places they say this is where we need to go this is what we need to do you record it so what you're doing is a ground proofing for future proofing. That's how I see it. This is definitely on the ground,

no running along to little collections elsewhere. This is about reconnecting with the archive of knowledge for depositing and for preservation purposes. So there's no end to that. We went on one trip with 10 toyotas i can't tell you the cost 10 toyotas 30 people of 20 at least very advanced years with various health issues 600 kilometers 10 days no roads satellite phones and then we go to they say we're going to go to bungalow so we all get there unload the toyotas we say what has to be recorded oh no no photos why not daisy got off the bus she speaks for this country no one else he can speak for that and then you go to another place

we're better go look at punk holes i mean and you get there and someone says, oh, no, that's Bill's country. We can't speak for that. And so you can do a whole trip and come back with, well, paintings around the campfire, strengthened relationships, people who are singing and talking and dancing, a lot of stuff, but not what the intention of the trip was. It can be entirely different. All the young people there who are on this one particular one,

Mardu one, were rangers, so they got to learn the knowledge of the land. But in terms of the exhibition, there wasn't much out of the $100,000 it took. So this is what can happen. That's why there's no roadmap. You can't apply a strict Western structure or timeline and a Gantt chart to this sort of thing. So I'm the meat in the sandwich in a way.

There's no road map that certain people can only talk about certain places and this is why it's so important in your exhibition that you in the digital age you feature these traditional custodians they talk you through the story in this exhibition. Yes so once you understand this we've just discussed the genesis of this exhibition of this project rather of this heritage preservation project once you understand the genesis of it and you really do get it that all the other things that happened like what you see there is just a natural outgrowth now if i hadn't not been indigenous and not understood that this isn't a western experience although it it will be, but we need the Westerns to help save the songlines. We need the money and the political will and all that, because you may

well say, well, why have an exhibition? All the stuff saved into the archive. We had an exhibition very clear, and my reading is that they needed everyone to feel part of these songlines in order to have the political will to help preserve it for future they needed to feel the responsibility of saving this australian heritage in the same way they might save captain cook's cottage so they got that plus good party see the stuff like showing off sell paintings lots of other things but the real thing is I realised because what I got out of it at the end was that they're basically saying to Australians, and you can extrapolate that to the world,

but in Australia they're basically saying, we're not here to share our stories with you. We're here to tell you your stories because if you're going to live in this continent and you call this home, you've got to know your stories beyond 250 years. Otherwise, you'll only ever be a transplant. You'll never take root. And the same thing, you can extrapolate to the universe or here,

these are world heritage stories. They belong to you too. You live on this planet. We're all in this together. So it becomes very relevant as you know to the age of pandemics and wildfires and pestilence and environmental degradation and climate change it's all the wayfinders are all in that exhibition once again stressing that universal importance yes isn't it very much so there's a quote in there that you see in the prospectus.

And I say innocently and early, because it was 10 years ago now, I said it's not an art exhibition, it's not a science exhibition, it's not a history exhibition. It's all of these, and it's not only an Aboriginal history. It's a world history, and it's about how to care for each other and this planet in a fragmenting world that sort of well sums it up there we go back to caring for country i just to dave johnston a few weeks back and he was just like the archaeologist absolutely oh my mate from canberra we're wonderful yeah he sends his best he said it's always about caring for country

what does the end what does that look like in a western mind it's about ownership or it doesn't Yeah, we're wonderful. Yeah, he sends his best. He's always about caring for the country. So all that. Yeah, and what does that look like? In a Western mind, it's about ownership. It doesn't mean you don't care for it, but you're only dealing with the superficial. Yeah, I think it is kind of, and I think you mentioned the words like wildfires and stuff like that. And it's more like, and of course,

we're currently talking about climate change and we've just had COP26. So I think in a Westerner's point of view, at least in my point of view, that's immediately what comes to mind it's looking after the environment thinking about generations ahead and what's going to happen but that's my approach is it a bit different in well I think I don't think there's any doubt now I've heard it many times there's now a hunger for looking at how indigenous people did it How did Australian Aboriginal people live on a very harsh continent of huge

extremes for 65,000 years and kept it healthy? And many of the answers are in this book. There's a series called First Australians. That's the first of them. And then there's one on building on country design. And then there's this one, country, future fire, future farming and there's a whole series and they will tell you how. What do Tudor men like their women to look like? They should have broad shoulders, fleshy arms, fleshy legs and broad hips. What did 17th century Londoners think of coffee? A syrup of soot and the essence of old shoes. And what did executioners wear? A lot of these guys, they were clothes horses because it's a big public spectacle. All the eyes are on you.

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything Thank you. There we go. We've got that knowledge right there now. We've got our knowledge in books now. In fact, our Inuit elder once said to me, you know, trouble with those white fellas. They just keep all their brains in books. No wonder they get trouble. Well, you know, as you're bringing this exhibition into the digital age,

you're bringing it into the literature age as well. Well, you would need, I think, multiple platforms. Now, clearly the oral alone isn't going to work anymore. It's got to include multiple platforms. So once you know the genesis of this exhibition, it's the urgent plea to save the songlines as the heritage of the continent and the health of the continent, that it was very clear that the elders, the custodians of the places that we were talking about in this exhibition, as case studies, because you can

extrapolate, clearly had to be in that exhibition. Ideally, they should be there touring, right? They're there peopling the show and telling people and sharing knowledge and also making people feel included, not voyeuristic. Many highly sensitive white fellas feel very voyeuristic going through Aboriginal shows, peeping into people's stories and lives. So this is both, most of the comments are always it's transformative and I've never felt so included. Now that's because they're there and there's no way you could make the point

that this isn't a museum's exhibition without them there, none. So it became obvious to me just at the last minute, in fact, that they were there for a final meeting and I I said, they've got to be there. So we did these virtual elders, as you'll see. There's a welcome at the front. There's six screens, life size, and they morph into each other. So 12 or 13 people, elders are there saying, come on in, come and see this. This is for the whole world.

This is yours. And they indicate, so you get welcomed by, which is a reference also to an Aboriginal and Australian protocol. Anything Aboriginal, you are... Any event, you are welcomed to country by those whose country it is or the country of those whose country it is is acknowledged. So this is, you know, a nod to the protocol and a total acknowledgement of it's their stories their

country their project and the museum has facilitated this exhibition and then of course you need to break down the idea of a homogenous aboriginality like there are three deserts there and there's three different sets of people they don't even know what happened to the seven sisters after they leave their desert or what happened to them before because that's not the knowledge they need to survive in their patch of desert. So it was clear to say that each of the three deserts has an elder whose stories are in that desert and then when you move to the second part of the another part of desert then you're welcomed by yet a different person. So it also subliminally teaches you the variegation and breaks down any sense of homogenisation of Aboriginal peoples.

And therefore I made them part of the, call them the curatorium. So they're not an advisory group or a reference group, the curators with me. And let's then keep on the exhibition. And if we talk about the paintings in these various galleries, because these paintings, once you've had the welcome to country or the acknowledgement of country, they form a central part of telling the story in this exhibition. The visitor sort of virtually travels.

We picked out a number of song lines in each of the three deserts so you walk 600 kilometers of a song line in 20 50 meters and each of the staging posts are the paintings which are the places which tell you the story of what happened the encounter between the lustful pursuer and the seven sisters, and then the knowledge comes at what you learn from that. And you do that along one song line and then another song line. And as the environment and country changes, although from the outside, it looks like all deserts, some are very rocky and some are very sand duney and some are very, they're all different. And so the stories always change according to the nature of the environment.

That's how you know how to care for country. You need to know your country. That's with the paintings. There's one particularly good one called Jakolpa, a hunting ground, which is a monster, five by three metres luminous painting. And that painting is selected because it is an encyclopaedia of ecological and other knowledge.

The eight elder women painted that to teach the young rangers about that piece of country in Mardu, a country in Western Australia. And it is the documentation that goes with it and the Seven Sisters are seen there flittering across the top and then they're seen somewhere else but it's about these are the mosaic burning of the bush that we do to maintain so there's no wildfire so there's hot burns, cold burns, human burns, natural burns. When it's black, like these patches, you can see that it's good for hunting going because you can see their marks through the black.

And when it's white, that's when the ash is sort of blown away to show the black. And then when it's green, that's when the new shoots are. And that's when the kangaroos come. And when that happens up there where the coolabar trees are the wetland is full of water and the witchery grubs are fat and over here and it goes on and on right through this painting has this legend that goes with it that we can put into text but when the old women are doing this over 10 days they are teaching everything if there's a community camp everything is in this map which is cartographically correct because i know the country so intimately but that's not the real

thing so it is a an archive of knowledge and in the exhibition that painting is there's a time lapse photography of that being painted from the beginning to the end. And you see the women moving across the surface of the canvas, which is always on the ground. So it ceases to be about country. It is country. And it's a breathing skin of country. And they walk on it and sleep on it and sit on it.

And it becomes country. And over those 10 days they live on this canvas basically i was going to ask that was going to be you know how do they actually paint this but it says it said it's not on a stencil or something like that this is on the floor yeah all just about all aboriginal paintings from these remote regions are done on the floor because they're doing country on country and the other thing that might be interesting for people is most of these paintings are not undercoat with white they're undercoat with black because in painting started people used to putting body painting so they more familiar with putting

it on black not white that your culprit painting is astonishing like the size of it and the amount of several messages that are conveyed through it one other which i always find actually really interesting from one of your talks before chatting today was the one which has an interesting link to jfk oh what is this piece of artwork yes there's a rock hole called bungalow rock hole and again it's a modern country in western australia the women who were telling us they were talking about this painting and they said oh yeah them sisters they fly from this way and they're tired they have to land and they saw this water so they thought they might land there

and then they realized it's a man's place so they couldn't land they had to land at the hill behind it and while they were talking one of of them said, oh, yeah. And we said, oh, like, when was that? Which is a question you can't ask, really, because it's not Western linear time. Whatever happened, it extracted a comment like, oh, you know, that happened when that big boss man from America was killed by his own people.

That's when it happened. I said, what? That's 1963. We thought we'd told these ancestral, which of course on their mind, it's an ongoing story. It's not then and now. There's always equivalences to now in these stories. So they said, no, that's, you know, when that man and this man and that toyote came and he grabbed us people, us girls, and he put us in that truck. And I said, where do you take it? To along mission you know

yeah jig along mission that's where he took us and then of course historically speaking what happened was that when they were doing the nuclear test the atomic tests rather maralinga and so the welfare nt welfare officers were clearing the deserts of Aboriginal people because of the fallout. And they'd taken them off to these missions. So the story totally morphs into the Seven Sisters. There's Boba Sisters, Ben Grabber, I fell, I've taken away. Same story. Same lessons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this is the contemporary nature of ancient stories in modern times. You know, I can't speak for Greek and Roman, but my feeling is it doesn't do that. Yeah, it's very much now with Greek and Roman is that you tell the story and this is what is said by this. This is what happened and this is what they believed or this is what the ancient writer has said. But this one continues to have contemporary relevance

because of the stories, the information embedded with it. Yes, it's continuing culture and the cultural values are the same and practice as best as possible in changing circumstances. But this happened a lot, this conflation that what a Westerner from outside would say is a conflation. In the minds of these

particular women it was just the seven sisters doing their thing. And they're just living the story. Living the dream. Living the dream, there we go dreaming now margo you did mention it earlier so i'd like to go back to it now and this is a key part of the exhibition which seems to be very interesting based on the material culture for the seven sisters and this is

the dome what is the dome the dome actually replicates a significant rock art cave, a site in the APY lands. That's not close to Uluru for those who need to locate it. And it's a very significant part of the story, both of what the places before and the places after, which are all included in the paintings. But this cave, called Cave Hillbill Willinga, Aboriginal Way, old Douglas Stanley and his family are the current custodians.

And in this cave has got, well, I'd be right to say, the only Seven Sisters rock art paintings in the world. Love to be corrected. And they're in pretty good condition. And the old Douglas Stanley's family took us up there and we could see what Inuru depicted with the big hat and too many toes or too few toes and the women running all those little yellow footprints that are in the exhibition to guide people around there and so in this cave this is the cave that I mentioned to you before

where it was a moment of realizations he wasn't actually a man. This is where he stood. And all those critical points in the story of where he realized he wasn't who he thought he was, but reason and emotion conflicted. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals.

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so there's multiple variations on how to access the story as it is an aboriginal culture the same story is told in repeated and varied ways to reinforce so that's happening in the cave and it's also reinforcing the embodied experience so you too as a visitor gets to learn this in an embodied way and always people stay three times as long as they mean to because they don't it's embodied it's not boring you look up into a cave, you look down for projections on the floor, you look, you know, multiple... There's another part, the beginning,

which we call walking through a song line, which is an immersive digital thing with snakes running around and so on. So there's heaps of... And it is subliminally intended to replicate the idea of embodied learning. Now, you mentioned snakes there. Actually, that's something I actually also wanted to talk about.

Because the snake, the whole snake motif, that also seems to feature quite heavily in the exhibition. And why is that? Greek civilisation invariably has the snake to represent risk, danger, masculinity, temptation. So Garden of Eden, classic. A lot of the Asian religions have the hydra, the Greeks have the Greek with the hydra. Snake heads with the multiple snakes. Medusa. Medusa. So the snake is, again, a universal symbol across all cultures and all

times has been potential risk or temptation and it is this here because the pursuer changes into a snake in order to lure the women into an edible carpet snake and the story in a few places you'll see it where they grab it they want to eat it and they see well this is behaving strange who we won't they throw it into the sky and then another site somewhere else because it's not linear story another one they get it and they do eat it and they're sick for three days and they know they then know that that kind of snake you don't eat it'll make you sick so you learn the pragmatic stuff but in the story it's it's he managed to succeed for five minutes we introduce it very early it's a sort of recurring motif it represents as a red room

they call what in your room the man's like the man's room to acknowledge the role of males in this and it's fire engine red and it's got a whole lot of writhing snakes on the wall and spears. And the red and the snakes and spears reinforcing that this is the role of Wadi Nuru, the man, in this saga. Passion, danger, that kind of thing. The men are represented in the exhibition and also the sisters too. Is there a separate room for the representing of the sisters? Yes, and it's to also impart, albeit maybe subliminally, or that's in the text probably,

is that Aboriginal society is a gendered society. The landscape's gendered, the animal species, everything is gendered because another way of surviving in life was that everyone was very clear about their roles this wasn't a matter of equality and I think we may go too far down that track ourselves it wasn't a question of equality it's a question of same but different or what we call complementary roles there's certain things that every story, which may be predominantly a female story or predominantly a male story, there'll always be a male or a female component in it. So it's very important to impose this. So you hear women's business, men's business,

you'll hear seven sister story, there's an assumption. I'd have people who don't understand, who are naive and say, well, how can you have a man in there if it's a woman's story? Or why are you having a man speaking at the opening if it's a woman's story? Well, it is the women who are telling it, predominantly their story, but it's all about a man tracing them. But so in some way he's playing a minor role, but in another way he's the most active agent. So, you know, you can't give it an equality thing. It's a complementary role and that's replicated

in your ways of being and knowing and working to keep alive it's quite interesting in the whole the whole exhibition the layout if i'm correct in this how wadden ero he's almost for instance with the ceramics the pots he's there he's not with the seven sisters, the pots, he's there. He's not with the seven sisters, but he's there. He's always lurking. Right from the start, the first thing you see, well, first you go through this, what we call walking through a song line, where the snake rides around in the desert. It's a transition zone from the outside world

into this desert landscape we're taking you into. So it's got Google Earth shows you the kind of land and then the see this snake writhing around and it runs over kids and they've chased it up walls and all the seven sisters steps running away and then the rain calms and then flowers bloom and so he gives you that thing and of course he reappears in a human form as soon as as you enter the exhibition, there's a group of the Seven Sisters and him sitting in the corner, always watching, watching, watching. And they always huddle, huddle. It reoccurs throughout.

And when you get to the pots, well, there's the red room I just told you about. Well, I made a blue room. I don't know why the colour... Red, I know why red, but blue is just because the pots... It was a calm room. And this lady called, one of the traditional custodians from the APY land, that's towards the centre of Australia, for your listeners, Alison Milliker Carroll, her name is,

and she said to her granddaughter one day, go get me some munk leaves, right? And the girl goes, duh, as they do. Then she realised this is no good if they don't know the language name for this bush foods and bush tuckers and stuff they'll never know anything about them because in the language word comes the knowledge so she talked to the elders at the art center at urnabella who specializes in ceramics and there's a quote in the exhibition it says who has all the intimate

knowledge of the land as they travel the land of the plants of the animals of the water who knows the seven sisters of course so she taught them knowledge of country and flora and fauna through the seven sisters so there's seven pots for Sisters. Each pot is one of the shape-shifting, what Inuru does. So one's a witchetty grub, one's a bush tomato, and another's a honey ant and water, and all the things. So seven of his transformations in order to lure the sisters. So they taught through the pots, through the story. There you go so we've got paintings

we've got ceramics, we've got sculptures such as that snake motif which you mentioned earlier and the weapons for instance one last thing before we start wrapping up and you actually did mention it there is this last part which is this art centre hub now why is this an important part of the exhibition? We don't want people

to think there's all these exotic people dotted around the desert, sitting out under trees in the desert, painting these magnificent canvases, you know, like on an easel probably, because that's not how it is. That's their country. That's their responsibility. But all of these communities dotted around the desert and further forward have what's called an art centre. It's a sort of like a cultural hub, government funded, owned by the Aboriginal people of that place, the artists who choose to be artists. They are the owners and they bring in managers who

know how to sell to the marketplace, the interface. So these art centres, of which we have reproduced one in the exhibition, but it's over the road at the Art Institute, shows you they're sort of messy, active, there's dogs and there's all sorts of stuff and all the women, mostly women, men go too, but mostly women, they just go there every day, sit, talk, yarn, have cups of tea, sort out brawls, talk money story and paint. And then the Arts Centre, Art Advisors then connect. It has both an economic value, plus it's a teaching place, you know,

and it gives them some economic independence and some become star artists and big mobs of money come in there's all sorts of brawls about that and then um i've suggested then to make it all these to make it so the museums invariably have a retail outlet gift shop they always have public programs and they have education for kids so i said well make your retail outfit at art center and here they didn't manage it because they weren't allowed to sell stuff out of it or something but it's over the road you can see it and there's lots of slide shows of the art centers and operation but in aust Australia we had an, oh, boy, the retail people said they've never sold so much.

Can you imagine walking halfway through the exhibition being totally engaged, walking to a space where you can flip through paintings that look like them in there, you've just got to take them home. It's in the moment, isn't it? Marketing galore. There you go. I know. It's a great way.

So just a themed read it could be either replicate art set or a theme retail museum set it's both i have to get you on the marketing podcast yes yes okay as we start to wrap up now this was a great chat but just before we talk about the exhibition itself going and seeing the exhibition how people can go and see that once again i know we talked about, but just to wrap up, explain to us why this exhibition is so unique, so universally important, so significant, why it's so important to keep these stories alive. Well, it's important on multiple fronts.

Clearly for the people who made the urgent plea to help us, to get us to help them keep the songlines alive for future posterity. But on a universal level, clearly within this sort of exhibition, which is a reflection of the Aboriginal culture and the practices and knowledges that kept the culture alive or kept the country alive and healthy for 65,000 years years in there lies the answers to our current dilemma now westerners being as they are i had to just push things to the brink and exploit news and greed and the aboriginal values are not that so somewhere in this it's very clear what the

practices are to keep countries safe and alive and many people are bringing them in even the idea of recycling you know all the modern concepts that people have had to come to through by hitting the wall this show wasn't set up to do that but it just by coincidence or not coincidence i don't quite know what the word is but if this exhibition was around 10 or 15 years ago i don't think it would have resonated with so many people so deeply i think right now that the roman biodiversity conference in rome and glasgow and wildfires and all the things that the virus is a classic there were just natural mechanisms in place ancient systems of dealing with the elements in the world that people will absolutely see in this show that they may not have seen 15 years ago well there you go and last but not least how can people come about and well go and see your show in the uk

easy catch a train to plymouth fantastic but i did mean to say also I think people need to realise that we are now a one world and that Indigenous people need to be understood and appreciated and be seen as much mainstream, not a minority, but everything they have to say belongs to everybody. And Margot also, this exhibition, it's on until early 2022. It's 25th of February and whatever you do, never leave it to the last week, ever. It's a word of mouth exhibition.

My experience is now the third venue. In the last week, the word of mouth catches up and they're all queuing up to it. And it's better to have a bit of space when you experience this exhibition. So you've got until then, but make it towards the end of January or early February, I would suggest. I'll get it in my diary now because I do need to go and have a look. I mean, is it going anywhere else in the world after the UK?

Oh, yes, it goes to... Whereabouts is it going? This is the premiere for the European tour, Plymouth. After Plymouth, it goes to the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which is, you know, state of the art, like Plymouth, newly opened. And then it goes to Quiberon Lee in Paris. And then we're aiming for it to go on to the North America. I'm hoping for New York or Seattle or somewhere.

And then it has Canada, Finland, they're all sort of in the negotiation phase. So the great thing for Plymouth, England, is, you know, who would have thought you'd put Plymouth, Paris, Berlin, all in the same sentence, and it isn't missed on them either. So you'd be crazy not to go while it's here because it is a rare treat indeed to have something of such a scale that's doing a european and north american tour to be in your backyard basically i think you're so right we're very blessed in the uk of having a plethora of amazing exhibitions so yeah as you say rare treat need to go and see yes of course plymouth you know the significance

of Plymouth do you well I was thinking Mayflower but that's from North America what is the Captain Cook is he set from Plymouth did it yes and all the journeys that went to Australia the Cornish miners I heard something like 400,000 Brits left Plymouth for Australia over the years. And also, as I said somewhere else, the other significance beyond what I've just said is that, you know, it's like the empire strikes back. You know how the Brits came over to colonise and civilise our people

250 years ago. Well, it didn't work, obviously. So this show is here to show you how to civilise sustainably. And of course it's sort of nature strikes back as well. It's sort of an example of our moment.

Margot, I can't wait to go and see the exhibition. It sounds great. And last but certainly not least, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Well, thank you so much for taking such an interest. You've obviously done your homework.

Oh, thank you. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. If you have and are looking for more fascinating ancients content, I mean, of course you are, then why not subscribe

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