Quote of the week

“Yes, is you saying, Indigenous people of Australia help us find our way to where we are meant to be as a species, back to being custodial in our relations, to being in between all the species between then and now, between life and death, between today and tomorrow. Help us design systems that can unleash the intelligence of everything, everywhere, all at once. Help us find that joy. Help us find that peace. Help us know.”

Jack Manning Bancroft, CEO of the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, AIME, with a program called Imagi-Nation, promoting the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab, IKSL, modelled on MIT, an advanced Western lab as a basis for exploring indigenous ideas and understandings.

Yeah, nah, a different voice.

There are two ways to look at indigenous affairs: what white society should do to help our indigenous; and how our indigenous could help white society. In the year-long NO campaign we heard endless lies and misinformation about the former, but nothing of the latter. And that’s a tragedy, which could be remedied by design.

We were told that the VOICE would not address the poverty, short life expectancies, drunkenness and domestic violence that besets indigenous communities (a lie). That it could not help close the yawning gap in health, education and housing (another lie). Or that it was not needed at all as colonisation had done no harm to Aborigines (Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s great big BS).

On the other hand, if more people had an appreciation of indigenous ideas and culture, and how it could improve OUR lives, then maybe the racism would be replaced with respect. But so few white Australians have any knowledge of indigenous culture, let alone knowing an aboriginal or Torres Strait islander.

Comparisons have been made to the marriage equality plebiscite: many knew someone gay, maybe wanting to be married, and so it was personal. But very few white Australians know an indigenous person as a friend. It’s not just numbers - people identifying as LGBTI has been estimated as high as 11%, but is usually accepted at a third of that – the same percentage as indigenous. There are so many other factors.

If there is to be a change in our nation’s approach to the indigenous, then one key aspect must be to educate the populace about indigenous culture and elevate respect for them. This column is a first foray, using design as the basis for that campaign. We need to hear a different kind of VOICE.

Indigenous tourism

Hundreds of indigenous sites have recently opened with indigenous-run tourism. White eyes are opened to this vast culture. In a visit to Uluru, you can be driven in a minibus to an open-air restaurant on top of a sand dune for dinner, only to discover when the lights are extinguished later, that the bus driver is the astronomer giving an indigenous explanation of the night sky.

These events lead to a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of indigenous culture. Should you be requiring a guidebook to possibilities, look no further than Marcia Langton's Welcome to Country, an updated volume to indigenous sites all around Australia. She of the extraordinary dignity in her prose in praise of YES, who yesterday declared that reconciliation is dead. Please say it isn’t so.

Caring for country.

There is little doubt that the indigenous have an indivisible understanding for country. 60,000 years says so. They talk of belonging, not owning. We talk property but create suburban alienation (the cradle of NO). They have songlines and rituals for the land. We get lost, even with a GPS.

We are taught to seek the Genius Loci in a site analysis, learnt as the basis of landscape and architecture. The search for the ‘spirit of place’. There is enormous potential to adapt the indigenous ideas of country into that analysis, to better understand the ‘spirits’, and thus take better care for our natural and human made landscapes. Nowhere more pressing than managing country for bushfire, putting in place long-term, secure plans for maintaining our natural heritage.

This is already in the curriculum in progressive landscape courses, and we are seeing CPD events for practitioners that ask participants to take a deep dive into an alternate reality, to see country from a different perspective. One example discussed in Design Notes recently is the Regional Architecture Association’s event on the Shoalhaven this weekend.

Indigenous housing, not housing for indigenous

Inequality is the great expanding sore in Australia, most egregiously seen in housing. And inequality for our indigenous is the most extreme, and worst of all in housing. Architects and designers must press ahead with a positive view to engage with indigenous culture, to sharpen what we do, and to enable us to better help closing the gap. We need to solve both the financial inequality, and improve cultural awareness.

The latter is more easily said than done. Indigenous writings on design are a nascent area of study, often elliptical and discursive. Following their metaphysical and allegorical paths doesn’t translate into the didactic text that Westerners want. Yet patience is rewarded. A prime example is the series of books on aboriginal culture called First Knowledges, which leaves a designer wanting more practical evidence, but that is not the easy indigenous way.

Indigenous Architecture

As examined in an earlier column we now have a second edition of the most excellent guide to indigenous architecture and building traditions: Gunyah Goondie and Wurley by Paul Memmott. I have previously extolled this book as being the most important in an Australian architect’s library.

How these traditions are interpreted in contemporary architecture has been a small field, about to rapidly expand, under the aegis of indigenous architect leaders such as Dillon Kombumerri in the NSW Government Architects Office.

Indigenous designs often entail complex shapes: curves based on yarning circles; flexible, adjustable and open structures responding to the vagaries of climate. Ideas and forms that are difficult to build in western traditional materials of brick, tile and concrete. It is an intense irony that the most modern materials (tensile steel, Teflon coated fiberglass, prefab SIPS panels) may be the solution to the compound curves, movable parts and awkward structures. Reflecting indigenous design intent in contemporary materials.

We're at the very beginning of this process, but already we are starting to see some buildings that would've been impossible 20 years ago, now bought forward as indigenous influenced architecture

Indigenous art and design

The best modern painting in Australia is indigenous. Often women. The remarkable work of Emily Kngwarreye and Sally Gabori. But brilliant work like theirs is often commodified, tea-toweled for the souvenir market. There’s a gulf in design, so easily fallen into, between respect and indignity. Between art and kitsch.

But there are ways in which indigenous designs can enhance our environment. Think no further than the ‘Dreaming’ designs done for Qantas in the 90s, early 00s. The beleaguered airline could do a lot worse than to rebrand ALL of its fleet in indigenous livery. Adopt a branding that speaks to a culture 60,000 years old on the most modern of technology.

And for industrial design? Look no further than the excellent 6-part series on First Weapons currently on the ABC.

Indigenous design education

It works two ways: indigenous design in education and educating indigenous students.

The former received a boost with a recent announcement of an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant: Indigenising the Built Environment in Australia, a $1.4 million project run by Dr Michael Mossman and Prof Donald McNeill of Sydney University’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. The research will examine the 2021 National Standard of Competency for Architects, specifically the criteria relating to Country and First Nations communities and cultures.

Information collated will aim to ‘Indigenise’ discourse between Indigenous Communities and the built environment professions, advocate for considerations of First Nations specific performance criteria and promote greater cultural competency.

The latter is partly addressed through the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation, but given that we have less Indigenous architects as a proportion in our profession, than the population generally, it is time for the AIA and the big firms to offer incentives and scholarships.

Bookends

Usually this column looks at two books from the ends of a bookshelf. This week we look at a whole bookshelf made by Magabala Books, who are “Australia’s leading Indigenous publishing house. Aboriginal owned and led, we celebrate and nurture the talent and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices” (website). Based in Broome in NW WA, they've developed into a powerhouse of indigenous writing.

You know them from Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, but they are so much more, publishing 18 volumes a year and with over two hundred volumes (by my count) in print. They've recently appointed a new CEO, Dr Lilly Brown, who has “spent over a decade advocating for the self-determination of First Nations people, including supporting organisations, particularly in education, to develop practices of cultural safety and racial literacy, and to establish mechanisms of meaningful and sustainable governance that centre the critical knowledge and diverse lived experience of First Nations people”. (website)

Signs off

The penetration of Māori in bilingual signage was discussed in an earlier Tone on Tuesday. Now that we want to remove some colonial names with unsavory pasts, we have the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with names in the local indigenous language; on every street, road, building, place, suburb, city, town, region, farm. Not only will it help us learn some language, but it also gives a more pleasant and resonant sound to our country.

In closing

Saturday night revealed how effectively a NO campaign of misinformation, lies and outright racism can kill off a simple elegant request to be heard. Especially if the YES side is so poorly managed by white politicians.

We have much to learn from our indigenous, and the more we learn, the more we will be able to help them. And the more of the population that understand indigenous culture, the more likely that the next steps for a Makarrata and a Treaty will be met with a better response than the dreadful negativity of suburban and regional Australia.

Next week

What to do with building bad?

Tone Wheeler is an architect /adjunct prof UNSW / president AAA

The views expressed are his.

These Design Notes are Tone on Tuesday #184.

Past Tone on Tuesday columns can be found here

Past A&D Another Thing columns can be found here

You can contact TW at [email protected]