Reflecting on Tarnanthi, a Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
All this creating speaking breathing on Kaurna country demands more than just an acknowledgment of a peoples past present and future, for this place, this space, is abundant with stories and strong families who have always had agency, moving through and resisting what this particular cultural-precinct represents: Tarnanthi – rise, come-forth, spring-up, appear. Right here, in this potent-place, you will find Festival offerings beyond a feast of art, for this cultural-precinct along Adelaide’s North Terrace is no easy place for everyone to navigate…. these limestone walls whisper a conglomerate fragmented journey that has lead us, toward this day, surrounded by precious gifts like these images, these hanging skirts, these glass bush-yams, these baskets, and now, in this moment, I call on you to reflect on the very walls from which they hang….
these limestone walls
frame institutions of power
shape the
‘main story’
this colonial ‘free’ State
/
these North Terrace
statues
bronzed famous faces
symbols of colonialism
Empire-revered
/
next door the Parade Ground
original quarry
raw materials morph
grand buildings abound
/
limestone mined
from this old Kaurna campsite
Red-Kangaroo
stories
ripped from the ground
/
these limestone walls
these
limestone walls
/
consider this Armory
that housed a
morgue
cells and gallows
watch our people hang
/
see mounted police
perform military functions
“pacified” our
warriors
on colonial frontiers
/
these wretched walls
this
Armory building
hear horses-hooves gallop
on cobblestoned
blood
/
this limestone heritage
revered cultural-precinct
fleshed and preserved
/
these limestone walls
these
limestone walls
/
consider this place
the South Australian
Museum
their proudest collection
wins the Empire’s great race
/
an uncanny replica
London’s Natural History Museum
but
what is ‘natural’
about their history of this place?
/
they ‘set up
camp’
on great expeditions
to study and collect us
‘experts’ in teams
/
their cabinets of curiosity
their objects and
specimens
their racialised hierarchy
our human remains
/
these limestone walls
these limestone walls
/
the Migration
Museum
was the old Protector’s Office
the Rations Depot
the Colonial Store
/
blankets and flour
sugar and tea
the
removal of children
the first Kaurna school
/
and behind the Art
Gallery
the Radford Auditorium
the ammunitions-store
for
military-police
/
then a storage-place
for Aboriginal
Records
where paper-trails trace
surveillance and control
/
consider the paperwork
the archiving process
to consign and
classify
this resource maintained
/
consider this fantasy
monolith-
archive
its stunning all-knowing
so easily sustained
/
these limestone walls
these limestone walls
/
strive to navigate
this
violent place
be still and listen
there are waterholes here
/
these
fresh water springs
flow a limestone-memory
erode and
expose
our truth will appear
.
Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman and activist-poet from South Australia. She is a Research Fellow at Flinders University with an interest in decolonising state archives, currently engaging archival-poetic methods to research and document Aboriginal women's domestic service and labour histories in SA. Her words have been installed and projected in exhibitions comprising text-object-video projection, including collaboration with the Unbound Collective. She has written for
Overland, Southerly, TEXT and
Cordite, and her first poetry manuscript,
Dirty Words, was published by Cordite Books in 2015.
