SELF ASSESSED ACHIEVEMENT SURVEY 2017>2019

The institute has been presented with an opportunity to be a part of a survey of the performance and achievements of local governance in 'the catchments' it is focusing upon. It comes at an interesting time.

Local governance's primary functions are all to do with PLACEmaking and PLACEscaping – as is one of the institute's research interests. 

Therefore, the opportunity to engage with, and sponsor, at least an element of this survey work comes at a time when we are mustering resources. The survey's outcomes, whatever they turn out to be, will be informative in further developing projects and possibly publication priorities.

Those engaged with the institute a well aware of self-assessment in the teaching and learning environment. There is nobody so critically aware of their achievement as are the students and those delivering the learning programs. 

Therefore, having Gordon Barton approach the institute, and now, seems too good an opportunity to simply 'let go through to the keeper'. Councils in 'the catchment zone' have already been contacted and asked to consider their achievements 2017>2019.

We didn't ask either the elected representatives or officers to respond. Rather it is 'the council' that is being asked, and however that is imagined/understood, in various 'places'. 

Nonetheless, if individuals wish to respond independently that would also be appropriate. Likewise, any individual who may wish to respond in any way, their responses will be also taken into account.

For more information please contact Doreen Jones institute43-1@bigpond.com

INTERROGATING AND NAVIGATING CULTURE AND PLACEDNESS

Asking a bureaucrat in any manifestation of governance, what ‘culture’ is, nowadays and it will earn you looks of bewilderment most likely. It’s the kind of thing everyone knows the answer to but when push comes to shove nobody, it seems, has a ready answer for you – at least not one that fits some convenient bureaucratic paradigm. 

Culture is the central concept, the corner stone, upon which the study of anthropology is founded. Anthropology encompasses that range of phenomena that are transmitted through social interaction in human societies. 

Cultural universals are found in all human societies. They include expressive forms like art making, music masking, dance, ritual, religious expression, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, modes of shelter, and clothing. 

As humans, we are driven by three fundamental and compelling imperatives: 
• To survive – to have the air to breath and the sustenance needed to sustain life 
• To identify within the group – ranking, prowess, role, etc.; and 
• To procreate – to survive beyond the grave. 

All three are intertwined and are with us all the time and always and they effect everything we do as individuals and a society. There is no escaping this! 

Material culture covers the physical expressions of these things in action. Such things as: 
• Technology – tool making, etc.; 
• Placemaking ­– architecture, landscaping, placescaping etc.; and 
• Cultural production – art making, design practices etc. 

These are the physical manifestations of a culture in a ‘place’ – the place it belongs to and with, the expressions of ‘placedness’. Here we very quickly bump against the quandary, and the questioning, to do with pondering whether or not it is ‘place’ that shapes culture or is it ‘culture’ that shapes place. 

On the other hand, the ‘immaterial aspects of culture’ involves such concerns as the principles of social organization – the practices of political organization and social institutions, mythology, philosophy, written and oral literature, and the sciences, all of which comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society ... its deep histories, its story telling, the local factors that make places distinctive.

In the humanities, culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which an individual, a family group, a ‘tribe’ indeed, have developed/cultivated a particular level of sophistication/intricacy/erudition in their ‘cultural expressions’ – the arts, the sciences, education and/or protocols. 

So-called ‘cultural sophistication’ has been used to distinguish some ‘civilizations’ from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives in regard to culture can also found in class ridden distinctions between ‘high culture’ and ‘the elite’. 

So-called ‘low culture’, or popular culture, or folk culture, perceived as belonging to ‘the lower classes’ is distinguished by the layering of, the stratification of, a community’s access to ‘cultural capital’ – an individual’s ranking and identity. 

In the vernacular, culture is typically used as the ‘markers’ used by ethnic groups to visibly distinguish themselves from each other. 'Identity markers' such as body modification and adornment, clothing and cultural dress and/or jewellery carry powerful messages relative to identity and most often place as well. 

Mass culture talks about mass produced and mass mediated forms of consumerism that has emerged in the globalisation that in so many ways defines the 20th century. 

Schools of thought found in say Marxism and critical theory, argue that culture is a political tool used by ‘the elite’ to manipulate, disempower even, the so-called lower classes in order to create a false or constructed cultural consciousness – a politically constructed placedness, an ideological cultural reality, an alternatively ranked social system. 

In the academic disciplines relative to cultural studies hierarchal perspectives are common. More broadly, a wider social science perspective, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life. 

Humans create the conditions for physical survival, and upon that basis culture is founded and has evolved relative to biological dispositions and geographic positioning. 

When used as a noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society, a community – such as those found in an ethnic group or nation. 

Culture is the set of knowledge bases, belief systems and technologies acquired over time by 'a people' in their 'place'. Thus, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultural realities inhabiting the same place, the same cultural landscape – a collaborative and cooperative ‘cultural reality’. 

"Culture" is typically used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture, a counterculture. Its that throw away idea used to explain difference and 'otherness'. 

Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated given that evaluation is by necessity located within the value system of a given culture, a given place, a cultural landscape. 

A cultural landscape, as defined by the World Heritage Committee, is the "cultural properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man". 
• "A landscape designed and created intentionally by mankind"; 
• An "organically evolved landscape" which may be either a "relict landscape" or a "continuing landscape" 
• An "associative cultural landscape" may be valued because of the "religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural elements." 

Local governance is all to do with ‘placemaking’ – nothing more nothing less. When politicians, elected representatives, set out on an attempt to ‘construct’ a cultural reality they need to be very mindful of the ‘cultural imperatives’ held “near and dear” by their constituencies. 

Moreover, when the bureaucracies that serve them start to assemble ‘their perceptions’ of what that reality, those realities, should and could look like they are treading upon very tender ground. 

Indeed, they need to be able to either convincingly articulate ‘their world view’ or quite simply get out of the way. 

Without personal expertise in the field of cultural geography their role is to facilitate consultation processes that meaningfully engages with the community they are employed to be in service of rather than deem their convenient bureaucratic ‘vision’. 

In the Australian vernacular, ‘blowins’, whoever they are, wherever they come from, need to either step back or ‘know their place’. 

Quite simply, they, the public servants and their underlings, might well have much to offer if they are indeed ‘placemakers’ and not there telling the time in a place on a watch handed to them by a bureaucrat looking for her/his vision of time and one that suits her/his aspirations as an incumbent in residence of some fiefdom or other.

21st Century Placescaping

The notion that 'placescaping' in the 21st C is fundamentally different, and more now than it ever has been, misinterprets the process – and fundamentally so. it is a process that humanity has been engaged in since the dawning of their time on the planet. 

As Homo sapiens we are social beings and we need to negotiate our place in the world and navigate our way to it collaboratively and cooperatively. We must do so in order to survive, in order to identify, in order to maintain ourselves as a species. 

Thus, we need to placescape our worlds in accord with our geographic circumstances. That is how cultural landscapes come about.

 Click on an image to enlarge

Writing as I am in Launceston Tasmania, rather on Trevallyn, rather from 41º26"12'S/147º07"12'E, I look out upon an intensely modified cultural landscape. Its 'home', well for about 35 years it has been and if one is landliterate, and its is March, there is much to be read in it – indeed into it.

The proposition that this cultural landscape in 2020 is 'more sophisticated' than it might have been in 1800 say is an assessment done in ignorance. This assertion stands given that pre European colonisation the 'place' was not measured and assessed relative to itself at that time. 

Sure, there was some European 'geographic mapping' going on but there was no 'cultural mapping' and no anthropology being done to speak of. And, the convenient colonial concept of 'Terra nullius' was in play subliminally if not yet overtly. However, there was placescaping going on even if it bore no resemblance to anything people 'from elsewhere' could or wold recognise or even acknowledge.

For the most part humanity only needs to take a different view of 'placescaping' because, on the evidence the world is changing all around uu and in order to survive we need navigate another way to become a part of the cultural landscaping that we're a part of – that we belong to.

Ray Norman, Trevallyn March 2020

THE QUEEN VICTORIA MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY AND REDUNDANT ANARCHIC NEANDERTHAL LEGISLATION IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE .

OPINION

When Tasmania's Local Govt. Act was framed in 1993 the very first web page had only gone live on August 6, 1991. That web page was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project and was made by Tim Berners-Lee. Since then the world has changed.

That web page ran on a NeXT computer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html . Nowadays, the Internet is ubiquitous, it is everywhere, all the time and all at once.

 

SECTION 62/2 of Tasmania's Local Government Act 1993 is a clear demonstration of its redundancy. In a kind of a way it it is 'the canary down the coal mine' and it is teetering on it's twig. That it might have anything at all to do with TRUST a MUSEUM and CULTURALlandscaping is really troubling. Sadly, it does everything to do with all this down at TOWNhall7250!

That any of this might have a bearing upon accountability and transparency in a 'public musingplace' it is more than concerning. That it might afford the kinds of follies, the malfunctions, the failures, any paucity in the  management of cultural and intellectual property, well that is non-trivial. That the monies involved are such as they are, that is troubling. That the 'trustee' seems not to be caring, thus seemingly unworthy of 'trust', well that is really concerning. That any of this goes on in an paradigm that distances itself from criticism and critique, that too beggars belief. 

That the institution's Community of Ownership and Interest has, essentially, been sidelined is signal that the blurring of the functions of governance and management is deeply rooted in a paradigm discretionary accountability – and let's not even talk about transparency!

How the world has changed and it seems in ways that are BUREAUCRATICALLYinconvenient for EMPIREbuiilders in local governance. It seems that the default position is to do with being on a 'good thing', so why entertain change – fundamental change at least.

IF, as it seems, you have a  MACHIAVELLIANstreak the opportunities ‘digital communication’ offers can/might put way too much power in the hands of constituents. Worst of all, it opens possibilities up for PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY where ‘ordinary people’ get an opportunity to have a say and DISRUPT the status quo, that factor even Ronald Regan acknowledged was “Latin for the mess we are in.” 

In order that bureaucratic corruption/excess/incompetence can be curbed and governance can be TRANSPARENT AND ACCOUNTABLE there must be change – fundamental change. 

The team at TOWNhall7250 that operates 24/7 and simply lets SECTION 62/2 slip by without challenge have much to answer for. Arguably they do it in order to maintain the status quo’s lingering redundancy while ever they can rely upon their stipend turning up in the bank whenever. 

Ronald Reagan hit the nail right on the head when he talked  "the mess we're in" and his observation pertains at TOWNhall7250 24/7 right now in 2020. 

Just look at the Medieval ANARCHIC nonsense on display with 'council around the table'! It's palpable rubbish in the 21st C and the regalia, garb and symbolism of YESTERyear is everything that Ronald Reagan spoke so elegantly of, is right there for all to see. Sadly, it is almost comedic! 

AS FOR THE TRUSTEESHIP OF THE QUEEN VICTORIA MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY THAT IS A SORRY TALE. 

In regard to the QVMAG’s governance and everything that entails, these people that make no real attempt to even masquerade as 'trustees'. They sort of talk the talk when required, but make no attempt to walk the walk, yet they collect a stipend and leave everything to the HIRED HELP. They, the hired help, got busy some time ago blurring the functions of governance and management. 

Functionally, THE COUNCILLORS HAVE ABDICATED thus  any trust invested in ‘The Council’ is SERIOUSLY MISPLACED. 

For far too long the city’s Alderpersons, now Councillors, have treated ‘The Museum’ as a decorative non-core activity whilst conscripting funds from the city’s ratepayers and Tasmanian taxpayers as is the want of the 'rent seekers' who operate the institution ostensibly – and for the most part in splendid isolation as a COST CENTRE. insulated from  the real world and ACCOUNTABILITY. 

Over time a great many people have invested vast quantities of cultural property, historical treasures and scientific reference material in the QVMAG and its collections. So much so that today the QVMAG COLLECTIONS have a ‘value’ beyond calculation. 

It is time to draw the curtain on the all the dysfunctionalism and bring the institution into the 21st Century. Now is almost too late but it can and must be done.

SEE 

1.https://raynormanadvocate.blogspot.com/p/context-i-pose-these-questions-to-you.html 

2. https://raynormanadvocate.blogspot.com/p/qv-bs-image.html

Ray Norman Feb 2020

Retracing the history of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Shell Necklaces

FOREWORD

This paper was first published in MONASH UNIVERSITY EDITION # 5  DISCIPLINE. 

PONRABBEL is pleased to have been asked by the author to post her paper online in order that it might be more accessible to more people. We are proud to be a part of Lola Greeno's story and to have been asked by her to share it with more people.

Lola's story is truly amazing and the contribution she has made to 'the Tasmanian story' should not be under estimated. In her own voice, in her own inimitable way, she speaks both for and with her community. She has shared her knowledge openly and freely. Tasmania is all the richer for her, and her life partner Rex, for being who they are, for doing what they do and have done quite quietly over quite a long time.

Lola's story is not only her story, it is in large part deeply rooted in her cultural reality, the stories that belong to 'The First Tasmanians' and the stories that give Tasmania its 'placedness'.

We have taken the opportunity to add some images and links to facilitate reader's further research. This opporunity hardly exists in HARDcopy publications and we trust that, if you take it, you will enjoy your explorations in CYBERspace.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO IMAGE SOURCE

“All of the work that we’ve done in the past 30 years has put a real value on our cultural practice and we have a real story to tell.”

Tasmanian Aboriginal Women continue to maintain their place in history, through their traditional shell necklace cultural practice. Today women acknowledge the significance of their cultural knowledge and skills, knowledge that is imbedded in their shell necklaces, in the making of stories, and through their traditional shell necklace cultural practice. Today women acknowledge the significance of their cultural knowledge and skills, knowledge which has been, and is being, handed down to future generations. During the past three decades Tasmanian Aboriginal women have organised shell necklace making workshops in country. Through these projects families have strengthened their links with both families and communities. Also, through major projects such as ‘Lola Greeno, Cultural Jewels, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, kanalaritja- An Unbroken String,’ 1 identity and connections to country have also been strengthened.

In the past thirty years, Tasmanian Aboriginal Shell stringing has grown from strength to strength. Since the early 1990’s there has been a huge revival of Elders working with Elders and the next generation of interested makers. However, it was not until a decade later, in 2002, that Arts Tasmania developed the first Tasmanian Aboriginal Women’s Shell Residency Program 2 in the Furneaux Islands for three Elders to accompany mentors to collect shells and make new work.

Although many of the contemporary shell necklace makers once lived on Cape Barren Island, women who had first-hand knowledge to do with collecting and making had acquired it via a family member. Once these women left the island to gain better access to health services and education all that changed, as did their ‘island lifestyle’. Most people found an opportunity to leave the Cape Barren Island once the “Cape Barren Island Reserve Act” 3 ceased to operate in 1951. The social change that this brought about. placed a great deal of stress on the few surviving makers on the islands and elsewhere. Nonetheless, they were still creating new work and they shared their knowledge of collecting places with ‘family’.

Information on how to clean the interior of the shells, plus the removal of the outer coating of the shells to reveal the iridescent pearl lustre of the ‘maireener/marina’ shell was closely held by ‘the Island women’. This knowledge was, and still is, guarded information. The information is protected not only to protect a family’s access to shells but also to look after the environment.

My journey as a maker began for me as a young girl on Cape Barren Island. My mother and other Elders walked on the beach and collected shells in front of our house on the beach at Prickly Bottom. We also helped friends collect shells when we were on the ‘bird island’. When we later moved to Flinders Island we walked the beaches there to swim or to collect limpets and periwinkles to eat.

CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE

FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE

I moved to Launceston to live in 1972. In 1992, when my children were in college, I enrolled in a Diploma of Fine Arts. In the art school we were encouraged to talk aboutwhere we come from and why the shell necklaces meant so much to Aboriginal women in Tasmania. Most people had seen the historical images of Truganini and Fanny Cochrane Smith. These images showed them wearing several strands of shell necklaces. My response to these old images prompted me to talk to my mother about why it was important that she carried on ‘the making’ from her grandmother, and ask about what type shells she collected, where she collected them and what happened to those first necklaces she had made.

A unique part of the Cape Barren Island shell necklace making was that the women gave the shells a common name – ‘community names’ mainly the women of Cape Barren Island. 4 This created a direct connection to the fauna and flora in the context of island life. There are approximately thirty different types of shells used to make Tasmanian Aboriginal shell necklaces – and they are still used today. The makers retain the nine common names. For example, the black shell is called the “black-crow”, the white flat shell is a “cockle”, the cream shaped shell is a “penguin”, the tiny white shell is “toothy”, and the orange colour shell is an “oat shell”, with the smallest shell being a “rice shell”. A flat based shell is referred to as a “button”, a greyish shell is a “gull shell” and the shell used in the traditional shell necklaces is the ‘’marina” shell 

FOR MORE IMAGES CLICK HERE

Prior to colonisation, the ‘’marina” shell was the only shell threaded onto kangaroo sinew and cleaned by smoking in the fire, to remove the outer coating. They were pierced with a tool made from the eye tooth of a kangaroo jaw bone to enable the shells to be threaded.

My work in recent years has developed by using big shells related to food sources in order to create new sculptural pieces. One reason for this is that we need to consider the environment when collecting “marina” shells. It has been seen that the seaweed beds have been reduced as a consequence of global warming and that other invasive species are having an impact on marine life. My new collection of natural cultural material, referring to the food source is being made from wearable material like kangaroo fur redesigned as body adornment pieces.

In my search to learn more about reviving our ‘cultural knowledge’ plus the practical skills and processes we have discovered many institutions that have developed Indigenous collections containing a number of contemporary shells necklaces. A large part of the research carried out by Ray Norman 5 , looked into the series of shell necklaces with one group referred to as the ‘Hobart Necklaces’ 6 . These necklaces were part of a production line,people, non-Aboriginal people by-and-large, who were commissioned to harvest and string large quantities of shells. Shell necklaces labelled as ‘Tasmanian Aboriginal shell necklaces’ were sold by jewellery shops in Hobart and elsewhere while other people ran an export trade selling in two countries overseas – Hawaii in particular.

A private collection known as the ‘Whinray Collection’, 7 was purchased by The Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). It was then housed in the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery because of the lack suitable storage conditions for the Cape Barren Islander community until the island secured a suitable Community Keeping Place.

Most national institutions, museums and galleries have redeveloped their collections and are acquiring shell necklaces and Tasmanian Aboriginal Art from the 1990’s to early 2000. Exhibitions and art programs in Tasmania at this time saw the major research from Julie Gough and Zoe Rimmer that led to two major shows, which in turn helped built the value of women’s work. The exhibitions tayenebe, Cultural Jewels and kanlaritja raised the profile of Tasmanian Aboriginal Artists. 8

Once the work is created and displayed, it is then sent out to influence new marketing requests reaching out from Launceston and Hobart to Canberra and beyond. The sale of Tasmanian Aboriginal art has become a source of income for commercial galleries that are interested in Tasmanian work due to development via overseas markets. The overseas marketing is advertised through the Handmark Gallery, Hobart and Art Mob Gallery, Hobart web sites. 9

Since I made my first shell necklace, I have focused on the important family story about shell necklace making for me. I needed to know it came from my grandmother, to my mother. or me to be a part of sharing the knowledge and cultural experience is vitally important as it will influence the next two generations. It is also important for me to be telling my story to my daughter and grandchildren.

Initially I was keen to learn about how the traditional shell necklace was made, what our early women did to originally clean the shells, and how the shells were pierced and then threaded in kangaroo sinew. So, I also asked my mother how she cleaned her shells for her first necklaces. But today, we must also consider a future for our new generations, by caring for the environment of our marine life. Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural knowledge expands by the ongoing research, gaining access to new information and by being alert to the ways the world changes around us. I have recently undertaken a conversation with a science based academic to find new ways of cleaning with different solutions, using less toxic materials. I’m proud to be a part of all that and our evolving histories.

Lola Greeno – 2019

LINK https://nga.gov.au/defyingempire/artists.cfm?artistirn=19708

LINK http://lola-greenos-maireener-workshop.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

END NOTES
1 This solo exhibition of my work was my organized by the Australian Design Centre as a touring segment of the larger exhibition Kanalaritja: An Unbroken String, a Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery exhibition that opened in Hobart in December 2016. The exhibition marks the eighth in the Australian Design Centre’s Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series, a biennial recognition and national tour of an iconic artist whose body of work epitomizes the best of various Australian craft fields. “The overarching theme of Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels is storytelling: of the meticulous crafting of stories of cultural knowledge, natural beauty, ancient traditions and connectedness with her island home. It is also an exhibition of modern issues, featuring contemporary sculptural works that are part of Greeno’s response to her concerns for the environmental future of shell stringing in northern Tasmania. Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels features 

2 LINK https://www.tmag.tas.gov.au/whats_on/newsselect/2018articles/lola_greeno_cultural_jewels, as read on September 12, 2018.

3 Today the residents of Cape Barren Island consist of an Aboriginal community of approximately 70 people. Most of the residents are descended from a community of mixed descent (European and Aboriginal people) who had originally settled on several smaller nearby islands but relocated to Cape Barren Island in the late 1870s. The Colonial Government of Tasmania established a formal reserve in 1881 and commenced providing basic social services to the community. By 1908 the population had grown to 250 people. More active government intervention began in 1912 with the passage of the Cape Barren Act. The stated purpose of this act was to encourage the community to become self-sufficient through both incentives and disincentives. Government visits throughout the 1920s and 1930s reported poor health and education and proposals were made to remove children from their parents, ostensibly for their own benefit. Under threat of losing their children many families relocated to mainland Tasmania. By 1944 the population had fallen to 106. From the 1950s the government did indeed remove children from their parents. This forced removal of children was part of a wider policy implemented in many parts of Australia and over a number of decades that resulted in the phenomenon known as the 'stolen generations'. From the 1970s a series of changed government policies were implemented that provided increasingly greater recognition of the personal and social rights of individuals. On 10 May 2005, the government released Crown lands on both Cape Barren and Clarke Island to be overseen by the local Aboriginal association. This marked the first official handover of Crown land to an Aboriginal community in Tasmania.” As read on September 12, 2018 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Barren_Island.

4 Women who lived in the Cape Barren Island Community.

5 Ray Norman is an artist, metalsmith, networker, independent researcher, Launcestonian, cultural theorist, cultural geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories. Ray is Co-Director of zingHOUSEunlimited, a lifestyle design enterprise and network offering a range of services linked to contemporary cultural production and cultural research. Roles: Researcher, Designer & Maker, Graphic Design and Web Design Facilitator. Ray is also engaged with the nudgelbah institute as a cultural geographer. That institute's vision is to be a network of research networks and to be a diverse vehicle through which place oriented scholarship and cultural endeavours can be acknowledged, honoured and promoted. For more on Ray please visit: http://raynorman7250.blogspot.com.au/ In 2013 with Prof. Bill Boyd & Ray co-edited COOLABAH an online journal emanating out of the Australian Studies Unit at Barcelona University.

6 In her blog Lola posts a piece titled: Induction to Tasmanianess, a paper has been prepared for the Oceanic Passages Conference by the author Ray Norman which took place in Hobart in June 2010 organized by CAIA – University of Tasmania: “Along with the Thylacine extinction story, apple symbolisms, convict narratives, Huon pine furniture and boats, Lake Pedder and wilderness photography, forest protests, 'Jimmy Possum' chairs, stories about giant squid, enormous crabs, abalone, mutton birds and more, Tasmanians claim these shell necklaces – Hobart cum Truganini necklaces – as ‘theirs’. Unquestionably, shell necklaces figure large in Tasmania’s cultural imagination – and for the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, they are emblems of their cultural continuum.

‘New Tasmanians’ need to know about these things before they can to begin to make sense of their new home. Inevitably these iconic shell necklaces along with the Truganini story will be quietly explained in the induction process. These are the kind of stories that one needs to have explained to you on an island with complex histories under almost every rock. The story that is not told however is a century old one about the theft of an ‘industrial quantity’ of shell necklaces; necklaces like Truganini’s; necklaces sometimes called ‘Hobart Necklaces’. There were 100 dozen shell necklaces stolen from onboard the ‘Westralian’ berthed at the Hobart Wharf on April 2nd, 1907. John Ward, a wharf labourer, was found guilty for having:

“stolen, or otherwise [receiving], a large quantity of shell necklaces consigned to a wholesale firm in Sydney by Mr. Paget, fur dealer, Elizabeth Street. At [his] previous trial the prisoner pleaded not guilty, and the jury failed to agree as to a verdict, whereupon the accused was remanded on bail, to be retried. On this occasion John [Ward] again pleaded not guilty, and was defended by Mr. Harold Crisp, the Solicitor General (Mr. E. D. Dobbie) prosecuting for the Crown.” – Hobart Mercury, May 20, 1908.

The robbery itself alerts us to the scale of the shell necklace trade going on out of Hobart. This robbery was no trivial affair. Ward’s trial alerts us to the fact that these necklaces had been produced commercially and in large numbers, indeed by the thousands, and for some time. The robbery also alerts us to the fact that John Paget was not alone as a trader in shell necklaces. Given the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands possibly, of maireener shell necklaces produced commercially as 'Hobart cum Truganini Necklaces' it seems that it is now the case that any such necklace without strong circumstantial evidence to back up Aboriginal provenance needs to be regarded as having ambiguous Aboriginal authenticity. Indeed, this is the case for a great many of these necklaces in museum collections around the world – even the one from the Exeter museum returned to Tasmania in 1997 and an unknown number in Tasmania's museums. At the time these necklaces were collected different imperatives and sensibilities were in operation. In the end curators can only work with the best available information to hand. This shell necklace 'industry' not only exploited the cultural knowledge of Tasmania's Aboriginal people but also the shell resource they alerted them to. Below the waterline in southern Tasmania it seems that kelp forests were 'clear felled' out of sight and out of mind. These shells were harvested by the bucketful over a long time. In many ways this harvest is analogous to the clear felling going on right now in Tasmania's old growth forests on land.” As read on September 12, 2018 on http://truganininecklaces.blogspot.com/search?q=thylacine.

7 John Whinray is a photographer, researcher, botanist and environmentalist who lives on Flinders Island.

8 Tayenebe opened at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery on 4 July 2009 and toured nationally during 2010 and 2011, funded by Visions Australia. http://static.tmag.tas.gov.au/tayenebe/tayenebe.html. Kanlaritja: An UnbrokenString celebrated the unique practice of Tasmanian Aboriginal shell stringing. This national touring exhibition featured
stunning shell necklaces created in the 1800s, alongside necklaces from acclaimed makers of today and a new wave ofstringers who learnt the tradition at cultural renewal workshops. It was on show at the National Museum of Australia from ... 10 August to 3 October 2017. http://kanalaritja.tmag.tas.gov.au/ breath-taking works using unusual and beautiful natural materials such as echidna quill, feathers, rare Maireener shell and bone, and also features interwoven digital and audio displays.”


OTHER LINKS

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Greeno
2. VIDEO- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn1XNtDt-kc
3. https://australiandesigncentre.com/past-exhibitions-and-events/living-treasures/lola-greeno-cultural-jewels/
4. https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=12134
5. http://lolagreeno.blogspot.com/
6. http://tendays.org.au/2019/lola-greeno/
7. VIDEO – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-6bjpA9ix4
8. https://www.examiner.com.au/story/6183613/lola-greenos-ancient-shell-artwork-honour/
9. https://www.examiner.com.au/story/4775760/the-stringing-of-tradition-photos/
10. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/lola-greenos-purmaner-2/
11. https://www.daao.org.au/bio/lola-greeno/biography/
12. http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/csr/programs-and-services/tasmanian_honour_roll_of_women/inductees/2015/lola_greeno
13. https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/brisbane-qagoma-events-calendar/events/apt9-artist-in-conversation-lola-greeno
14. https://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/honour-roll/?view=fullView&recipientID=2130
15. https://collection.maas.museum/object/13583
16. https://artmob.com.au/artist/lola-greeno/
17. https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4165/pathways-to-art-in-aboriginal-tasmania/
18. http://collectionsearch.nma.gov.au/object/252126
19. https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=560763400431260;res=IELLCC
20. https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/biographies/aunty-lola-greeno-red-ochre-award-2019/
21. http://lola-greenos-maireener-workshop.blogspot.com/
22. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/fbc298c3cec7d3c8ca256c32002418d5!OpenDocument
23. https://nit.com.au/collecting-shells-for-necklaces-in-a-bitterly-cold-sea/
24. https://www.art-almanac.com.au/2019-national-indigenous-arts-awards/aunty-lola-greeno-4/
25. http://www.realtimearts.net/article/60/7410
26. https://twitter.com/maasmuseum/status/616044981485195264
27. https://www.media.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/1205912/Lola-Greeno.pdf
28. http://www.artmonthly.org.au/new-page
29. https://www.womenoftheisland.com/elder-of-shells
30. http://worldcat.org/identities/viaf-95135017/
31. https://www.realtime.org.au/the-jewellery-of-place/
32. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/indigenous-womens-maritime-art-traditions-on-display-for-naidoc-week-20180630-h122o7.html
33. https://www.sea.museum/2016/03/16/living-waters-shellwork-in-indigenous-art-and-culture/palawa-shellwork
34. https://www.redlandcitybulletin.com.au/story/4541504/greenos-cultural-jewels-from-nature/
35. https://www.artnewsportal.com/art-news/lola-greeno-cultural-jewels
36. https://www.snagmetalsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Metalsmith-Vol-39-No-4-TOC.pdf
37. Necklace making and placedness in Tasmania N- https://www.raco.cat/index.php/coolabah/article/view/327764

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newDEMOCRACY & CITIZENjuries

OPINION

CITIZEN’S JURIES

For some time now the newDEMOCRACY Foundation has been facilitating citizen’s juries/assemblies (CITIZENjuries ) to deal with a broad range of governance issues in Australia. A great many of these initiatives have delivered positive and productive outcomes and especially so at a grass roots level.

For the most part, these ‘juries’ have dealt with matters that otherwise would be envisaged as being contentious and 'hard to deal with'. Given that membership of the juries/assemblies are randomly selected rather than elected, the ‘jury model’ cuts through most of the contention and the evidence is that the nominated ‘jury members’ rise to the occasion in much the same way as juries do in criminal trials etc.

 Importantly, the recommendations CITIZENjuries arrive at and deliver to ‘governance’ are not binding. Perhaps more importantly they muster all the evidence required to deal with a matter in open and frank ways unimpeded by political elegances etc. The analogy of juries in the courts is useful to consider here. While a a jury might determine guilt or innocence, it is the judge who determines the appropriate penalty –  even to suspend any penalty at all. In such extreme circumstances the jury has done its job and the judge (governance!) has fulfilled her/his role without question.

Where there is a contest of opinion CITIZENjuries in Australia have at the very least diluted the rancour and unhelpful debates enabling progress to be made. In the end CITIZENjuries are  primarily about 'accountability' and accountable inclusive decision making. In a local government context they have proven to be useful tools in the PLACEmaking local governance is essentially engaged with via their planning processes and strategic determinations.

The evident disinclination in Tasmania to engage with CITIZENjury processes is somewhat bewildering given all that they have to offer in regard to effective and accountable governance. Indeed, the argument all so often offered that it is all too hard simply masks other agendas where potentially self-serving bureaucracies in particular simply wish to maintain the status quo. This is something of a worry.

The newDEMOCRACY Foundation has put in place mechanisms that facilitate the smooth implementation of appropriate processes to meet local needs and aspirations. The links and graphic below offer some useful insights into the foundation’s work and aspirations.

Ray Norman Trevallyn.                    

Cultural Geographer & Researcher

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