Indigenous Australia Australia was often associated with arid regions and paintings on canvas from the desert. By contrast, much of the museum’s early collection derives from coastal areas, and many early objects were collected by naval personnel, missionaries, and colonists. Turtle shell masks from the Torres Strait are rare, and the exhibition features some of the earliest examples collected. One mask, collected prior to 1855 (fi g. 2), came from the Lords of the Admiralty. Others were collected by the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane of the London Missionary Society and A. C. Haddon, whose fi rst trip to the Torres Strait in 1888–89 is much less known than his later 1898 research expedition (fi g.1). An agricultural charm collected by Haddon from the island of Mer in 1888–89 is used to illustrate the importance of the cultivation and ownership of food crop gardens in Australian law (fi g. 3). Following ten years of legal struggle by Eddie Mabo and others from Mer, in 1992 the High Court of Australia recognized a form of native title in the gardens of Mer, which previously had been denied by the Crown. This precedent led to the introduction of the Native Title Act of 1993 and set a precedent for other Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal groups to have certain kinds of native title recognized. The peoples of the rainforests of northern Queensland have a distinct form of material culture, adapted to living in one of the wettest regions of Australia. Bicornual baskets made of a rainforest vine were used for carrying and for placing in streams to leach out toxins from certain seeds. Abe Muriata (born 1952) is one of the few men to make baskets today, and the exhibition features one of his works, as well as older baskets from about 1900 (fi gs. 4 and 5). Objects from Tasmania are rarely exhibited outside of Australia. Included in the exhibition are some of the earliest shell necklaces, dating from about 1845 and 1851 (fi g. 6). These are made of maireener shells, which can be collected only at certain tides. Aboriginal women in Tasmania continue traditions of shell-stringing today. A club collected at Flinders Island at the northeastern tip of Tasmania in 1832 is one of the oldest objects in the exhibition. A major part of the exhibition is devoted to an examination of the history of British colonization of Australia from 1770, when Cook stepped onto the lands of the Gweagal people at Botany Bay. The legacy of this impact is still evident in contemporary art, such as the portrait of James Cook “with the declaration,” done by Vincent Namatjira in 2014 (fi g. 7). Vincent is the grandson of Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira, whose 85
T76En_internet
To see the actual publication please follow the link above