ponrabbel: 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.

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“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.

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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

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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.”

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Sunday, 23 February 2020

Retracing the history of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Shell Necklaces

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