IN CONFERENCE
ATYARRABAH
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER
VISUAL ARTISTS' CONFERENCE
One of the highlights of my time with the Arts Division has to be the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Visual Artists' Conference held at Yarrabah Aboriginal Community, east of Cairns.
This conference was initiated by Campfire Consultancy Directors, Michael Eather and Marshal! Bell. Both Michael and Marshall are visual artists and while travelling in and around the outback regions networking and gathering information for the ATSI visual artists' database, they received a definite message of unrest amongst our people. The main message was that the other States seemed to be getting all there was in money and support and Queensland was missing out. So the Conference was conceived.
Locating the conference within an Aboriginal community gave the ATSI artists a more relaxed and confident air and no encouragement was needed to get them talking. Many issues were aired and as several support organisations and funding bodies were invited and sent representatives, the forums and following workshops made for very interesting listening and debate. Some concerns were copyright, the gathering and forwarding of information, marketing, postage of works to exhibitions and, most of all, the vast distances people have to travel to attend conferences and exhibitions.
An issue that I found quite disturbing was that a lot of the traditional people, having been moved from their own lands and relocated, have enormous cultural problems. These people have their dreamings and legends but cannot have access to the sacred sites. They respect the sacred sites of their host tribes but cannot go about their sacred lore-business on someone else's lands. This causes a loss of spirit within these people... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline