MEDIA RELEASE

Community Arts Network (CAN) has received funding from the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries (DLGSC) towards the delivery of two powerful projects, both of which provide platforms for First Nations Elders to share their cultural knowledge and stories with future generations.

The multi-layered storytelling and portraiture project Legacies, which will celebrate the unique personal histories of trail-blazing Elders from the Goldfields region, has been funded through DLGSC’s Arts Activities in Regional Communities program.

Charting the unique journeys of up to 10 Elders through critical times in Australian history, Legacies will honour their resilience and courage. Designed around the creation of oral history recordings and a photography series, the project will culminate in an exhibition.

Legacies is inspired by CAN’s groundbreaking 2022 multimedia storytelling project Ngaluk Waangkiny, which shares and celebrates the life stories of 10 Elders from Boorloo (Perth). Presented in partnership with Art on the Move (AOTM), the Ngaluk Waangkiny exhibition will be touring to the Museum of the Goldfields as the Legacies project begins.

Legacies is presented in partnership with AOTM, Museum of the Goldfields, Tjuma Pulka Media Aboriginal Corporation, ArtGold and ABC Kalgoorlie Esperance.

Funded through DLGSC’s Connecting to Country program, the second project, Unfinished Business, centres around Badjaling Elder Winnie McHenry and her unfinished business. At 88 years of age, Winnie wishes to pass on and preserve the cultural knowledge that was shared with her by her matriarchs.

This project will give the next generation of Noongar women access to the traditional knowledge that should have been their birthright and allow them to be the custodians of this information, to hold and hand to future generations.

Leading a group of Noongar women, Winnie will share her knowledge of how to make culturally important objects, and traditional bush tucker and medicine, in particular the process of making the most important things a Noongar woman owns, a booka (kangaroo skin cloak), digging stick and tapping sticks.

Documentation in the form of oral history recordings, videos and photographs will be integral to the project’s final outcome – an immersive exhibition, curated by Noongar artist Sharyn Egan, assisted by Noongar early-career artist Yabini Kickett.