How did you work with the elders to tell their stories?

The process of working with the elders has centred on long interviews, charting the elders’ family stories, their own personal stories and their connections to Sydney. The interviews happened initially at their homes, on their country. We then trawled through the State Library’s collection, searching high and low for any material that connected with the elders and the stories they shared with us.

After pulling together as much material as we could find, the elders visited the Library and we interviewed them as they looked through the material. They provided much-needed knowledge and stories regarding objects in the collection. In this way, the project brings into view the Aboriginal knowledges, histories and voices that are locked away in collections.

The stories the elders generously shared with us have been the driving force behind the project. Collection items have been carefully brought together to help tell these stories. This combination of story and object has really determined the way the exhibition has been planned and displayed. Prioritising the elders’ voices and presence is the real focus. That’s why we have screened their interviews in portrait format so they appear life-sized; the viewer can feel as if they are taken inside the elders’ homes, sharing a cup of tea and having a yarn. My role as curator could easily be challenged, which I think is good, as I see the elders driving the context of the project. They are the curators.

As you supported the elders through this process, what were some of the highlights or surprises?

Although I’ve known some of these elders for a while now, sitting down with them and recording their stories, then connecting those stories with material in the Library collection, was enormously insightful. Stories, some of which I’d heard before, took on a new meaning when illustrated in pictures or filmed on location. Objects woke up some old memories, and the elders really enjoyed connecting with some of the material in the Library’s collection — which could be a photo of their family, or country they remember before it was developed. Aunty Esme, for instance, was overwhelmed when she found a photo of her Aunty May in the collection, whereas Aunty Sandra was not surprised that there was such limited material in the collection on Dharug and western Sydney.

A key moment in the research happened when I was trawling through the collection looking for pictures of the Gladesville, Tarban Creek and Roseville bridges, all of which Uncle Chicka helped construct. As a Library staff member handed me the box of images, she remarked that I must have filled in the wrong number on the request slip as I was curating an ‘Aboriginal’ project and this box was just of Sydney bridges and roadways — implying, I guess, that Sydney’s built environment is not an Aboriginal story. The staff member was shocked, and happy, to hear that I had the right box and that Aboriginal people like Uncle Chicka have been involved in making many of Sydney’s buildings, roadways and tunnels.

It was a sharp reminder of where Sydney’s Aboriginal history exists in people’s imaginations. Aboriginal presence doesn’t just reside in Sydney’s pre- or early colonial history, and then conveniently disappear with the arrival of Cook. The truth is that Aboriginal people are everywhere, in every town, in every walk of life. Sydney’s Aboriginality is deeply embedded in every element of the city. It was at this moment that I realised the project was on the right track. This exhibition clearly shows the ongoing relationship of community to their homelands and the way they have sculpted their country.

What makes a collection like the Library’s important for Aboriginal people?

This is a great question, and it goes to the very heart of the project. The Library’s collection is, in fact, not that critical to Aboriginal people. It holds important material and early notes and documents constructed from other people’s ideas about Aboriginality, but our knowledge is in our families, in our communities and in our elders. The question should really be: why is community so important to collections?

And the answer is: without our knowledge holders, without our storytellers and without our elders, the Library is just a cold archive full of bits of paper with little correlation to Aboriginal people. Founded as edifices of imperial power, institutions like the Library need to be decolonised and become places of community engagement and conversation. We are enormously privileged that these elders have offered us their stories — they show us that decolonising spaces can be both challenging and rewarding.

How does this project connect to your broader practice as an artist, a curator and a researcher?

Like many other projects I’ve worked on, Sydney Elders looks at understanding place, and showing respect to the traditional owners of that place. In Wiradjuri language this is part of the concept of yindyamarra, or respect for the country and the people. Yindyamarra plants a firm foothold and creates a real understanding of where we are. I’ve worked with many of these elders for a long time, and they have helped me understand their homelands of Sydney and, more importantly, how I can be a responsible citizen in their country. Yindyamarra might take the form of acknowledging country in our institutions, such as schools and libraries, or it might be as simple as caring for country and picking up our rubbish.