Artist Reflection

My poem is inspired by the theme ‘Learning from legacy, healing our country’ and the sayings ‘blak loud and proud’ and ‘close the gap’. I incorporated these quotes throughout my poem because I think these ideas are the keys to healing our broken world. These quotes are keys because they tell us to turn to the indigenous people of these lands, learn from them and help them help us help them heal our broken world. Artist Statement Our school trip to Goodooga inspires My Artwork. In this artwork, I wanted to show all the different aspects of Country. The five dots forming a pentagon with one dot in the middle is the Yuwaalaraay symbol for a star. The five circles with U shapes surrounding them represent people sitting around a campfire, with each U shape representing one human. The arrow split in half are kangaroo tracks; the right angles with lines down the middle represent Emu tracks, and the E shapes with the tail mark down the middle represent Goanna tracks. I picked these symbols because some of these I learned on my trip to Goodooga, and they all show culture.

Reconciliation means…

To me, reconciliation means not only acknowledging that the Aboriginal people are, were and always will be the traditional custodians of the land but also taking action, raising awareness and encouraging people to learn and experience more about Aboriginal cultures and traditions. For example, 40% of children experience racism in Australian schools. Another big problem is that the Aboriginal people are not once mentioned in the constitution, it doesn’t even have an acknowledgement of country.

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