Combining technology and art to celebrate Indigenous stories
i’ll never forget that day that i got
off that plane
in 2017. i had arrived in a remote
aboriginal community that i had never
been to
before i am a social entrepreneur
and it was my responsibility to engage
with the women
in this community to find out what
activities that they would like to do
that would give them
meaning a sense of meaning and purpose
it was during this time that i fell in
love with this community
and many of the beautiful people there
jumiji is located near the border of
queensland and the northern territory
there’s approximately 1200 people
who live alongside the picturesque
nicholson river
and when you’re down at the nicholson
river it’s not uncommon to see a
crocodile swim by
one of the other things that i love
about jummaji is that most afternoons
you’ll see
families fishing along the banks of the
river
whatever they catch becomes dinner that
evening
so when i got off that plane back in
february 2017
i was feeling really concerned i was
really worried i had never worked in an
aboriginal community before
and i didn’t know if these ladies would
like me
if they would want to talk to me if i’d
be able to build rapport
and if they would share with me the
types of activities that they were
interested in doing
and the truth be told our two worlds
couldn’t be
any further apart but i needn’t have
worried
as soon as i shared a project with the
ladies about a
work i was doing in papua new guinea
where we were making care bags for women
who lived in isolated villages these
beautiful women in jummaji said to me
yolandi that’s something that we want to
do
we can’t believe there are women less
fortunate than us
we want to make those bags it was while
i was sitting around with the ladies
that they were telling me that once upon
a time dwimaji did have a pottery studio
it was run by locals and it was an
activity
that people really enjoyed so i shared
this with my client and asked if they
would be prepared
to invest in a cure and some clay and
could i bring up
a really well-known cans potter felicity
berry
to work with the community for a week
they agreed
felicity came up and in four and a half
days
over a hundred people came through our
pottery doors and they made over 120
pieces of pottery like to me that was
incredible
but it really told me that there was a
desire in the community
for this type of activity unfortunately
my client told me that there were no
funds available to continue that project
and i was really heartbroken because it
was obvious to me that this was
something that the community
really enjoyed
in december of 2018 i became aware of a
funding opportunity
and with the help of 78 dormitory
residents
we put in an application and we were
successful
so when we decided to open the pottery
studio
we wanted to keep it simple we wanted it
to be easy we wanted to be able to
engage the whole community
regardless of their age regardless of
how talented they thought they were
so the goanna tile seemed like the
easiest thing for us to do
there’s a direct connection back to
jummaji because
we do have goannas in domiji and i did
learn that local folks often
hunt gowanus and enjoy the goanna tails
for a meal so we cut out templates we
got people in
they started cutting out the clay into
the shape of goannas
and then they would decorate them fast
forward
we now are making the most exquisite
goanna tiles
these tiles are part of a wave
that we install in the community
currently at the dumiji airport terminal
when you land on a plane
what you are greeted with are these
exquisite tiles and as you walk through
the terminal
these goannas they cover the walls
so that people in jomoji who have made
these goannas who may be at the airport
to greet their loved ones or to send
their loved ones off on a flight have
the opportunity to see
their own work out in the public domain
so this got us thinking how do we use
technology
to share their stories with the rest of
the world
well maybe with those people who are
flying in and out of dumaji
or tourists that are driving through
and then felicity said to me that she’d
come across
a app that the very famous french
photographer
jr uses he had taken a mural
of the prisoners in a prison
in california and you download the app
you click on one of the prisoners and
then their story comes to life
felicity said what if we were able to do
that for our artists
which was a fabulous idea so then we
came across
the low-cost easy to use technology that
now we’re all
using regularly qr codes
we’re not the first to think of qr codes
as a way of capturing
stories but this allows us to share the
stories of our artists
in dumaji so you have a go on a wave if
you’ve got a smartphone
you scan the qr code and then one of the
artists
maybe two or three of the artists for
that particular wave
will share their story and a little bit
about what life is like in georgie
but can you imagine that our next goal
is to be able to sell the goanna tiles
on behalf of the artists
what if you are living in the other side
of the world
and this beautiful parcel arrives which
you open up and there’s this exquisite
unique handmade goanna and with it a qr
code
you scan that code and you are taken
straight
to domaji where you get to hear
a little bit from the person who made
that goanna
i mean it’s almost like being in an art
gallery but you’re doing it
in your own home or in the community of
dumaji
this is one way that we have the
opportunity
to showcase emerging artists in this
small
remote aboriginal community it’s a way
we can pay our respects
and honor our first nations people
you