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You want me to ask a question about indigenous history.





Is that the best answer you have?

No, this is about you. As a white historian and artist, you have a responsibility to get this right.

Fine. I’ll try. Return to the site. There’s lots of indigenous experience there. Not only historical but contemporary. Koorie kids made those snakes, painted that emu. They are worn our and getting covered in concrete in places, but they’re still there. You spoke of layers earlier; well, here they are physically. So there’s a poetic resonance, a score.

Maybe. Like you said, if you squint too hard it shatters. But it’s always easier to tear down an idea than to sit with it, tinker with it. Let’s try another. If there are no documents about the people here, could you make one? What about retuning to the state library options? There’s also another elephant in the room here: if the First Nations people weren’t literate, why are you looking so hard for literature? Find the alternatives. Experiential. Performative.

Look, I get the appropriation concern. But we try, and we learn. Your alternative was to bury indigenous history in the too-hard basket, and we agree that that isn’t acceptable.

This feels heavy. Shall we pause for tea?

It needs to be asked. But I don’t know how to answer it. The documentation doesn’t exist. Even before it was eradicated, the history of our/this/the place was oral, it was sung and danced. With it all gone and so few elders left, there’s nothing I can do.

Fuck you.


I can't






But it's all bullshit.








But what about-

…

...

Please.