My country, I still call Australia home: Contemporary art from Black Australia

Each year, Indigenous cultural activists express their anger and frustration in the lead-up to 26 January, when Indigenous and non- Indigenous people in this country might as well be living in parallel universes, watching each other warily, glaringly, from across the imagined and real trenches of widening inequality, increasing limitation, endless miscomprehension and seemingly impossible expectation. On one side of the ever-eroding chasm, Australian society becomes more raucous, proclaiming the joys of Great Southern nationhood, waving the insignia of the mother (and misappropriated) country — the Southern Cross etched into the skins and minds of these young(ish), mainly white, men, completely unaware of its meaning for Eureka Stockade dissidents a century past. On the other, smaller, yet even more passionate side, the original custodians of this continent (and their supporters) rally under the unifying emblem of the red, black and gold, denouncing the whitewashing of Australia’s black history. Each year, the Australia Day Honours List includes a smattering of Indigenous names throughout. Come mid-year, similar gestures are made in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Given the deleterious state of Indigenous affairs in all regions of the country, it is difficult to read these proclamations as anything but glib appeasements of the continuing denial of Indigenous sovereignty, a disavowal of our rightful place as traditional custodians — up front and central — the antithesis to the mindless celebration of this (now neo) colonial outpost’s cultural foundations. History always repeats the song cycles remain the same Brenda L Croft Banduk Marika Rirratjingu people NT/NSW Banumbirr (Morning Star) (no.1 from ‘Yalangbara’ suite) 2000 Linocut, AP Gift of Julie Ewington through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2004 75