yarrabah

The I Do! Wedding Stories from Queensland exhibition at the Queensland Museum is featuring never heard before stories from Djunngaal Elders and Yarrabah community members. The exhibition features a mission style basket and commissioned wedding dress designed in partnership with Djunngaal Elders, Gunggandji descendantand Yarrabah artist Simone Arnol and Cape York Peninsula, Umpila, Djabuguy, Yirrganydji man, Bernard Singleton. With strong roots in Yarrabah and over 20 years working in Indigenous law and Native Title, Arnol has been part of the arts and fashion industry for five years. "I use strong connection to family and Country as a foundation to all my works, always keeping it grassroots while respecting the Elders, our keepers of knowledge," Arnol told NIT. She said what started out as an artistic commission of, "a perspective of Indigenous weddings for a traditional wedding ceremony" soon turned into a 12-month long process of storytelling the Yarrabah Elders narrative. "Soon into consultation with the Elders of Yarrabah we found that there was a more important story to be re-told," Arnol said. The story in question would instead shed light into the dark history of prior policies of forced protection and assimilation and how this affected cultural traditions and lore. "The girls and boys when they fell in loveâ€"they couldn't come out of the dorm in the yard to be with their boyfriend or husband ... they had to stay behind the fence," Granny Hope said. "The girls were inside the fence, [while] the boys were outside the fence." In many cases mob weren't afforded the privilege of marrying someone they loved, however this wasn't the only restriction they faced. "This impacted harshly on them as it included separate education for Aboriginal children, town curfews, alcohol bans, no social security, lower wages, State guardianship of all Aboriginal children," Arnol said. "Laws that segregated Indigenous people into separate living areas, mainly on missions, special reserves outside towns or in remote areas." That's why when first asked to do the commission, Arnol was quick to establish the true purpose. "Everything we do is a voice for our Elders ... It is not going to be a pretty dress." Source: nit.com.au/09-11-2020/1512/aboriginal-designed-wedding-dr...

It is hard to imagine Christianity being taken in worse circumstances to a people than has been the case with Aborigines throughout much of Australia. Christianity has been an intrinsic part of the colonization process and, as a consequence, has been a companion to frontier violence, dispossession, disease, depopulation, and degradation. Christianity was the religion of the white conquerors who assumed authority and control over Aboriginal people. Missionaries were part of the new law that dominated Aboriginal law. This has certainly been the case in North Queensland (Loos 1982). The missionaries were, of course, as much prisoners of their culture as other colonists. From the hindsight of the twentieth century, many of their attitudes toward Aboriginal people can be seen as offensive. Yet, unlike the other colonists, they came to give Aborigines the greatest gift they had to offer: the salvation they had found in Jesus Christ. They confused their salvation with their culture and both with the 'civilization' they tried to impose on Aborigines. Source; Concern and Contempt Church and Missionary Attitudes Towards Aborigines in North Queensland in the Nineteenth Century Noel Loos

TYPES OF HOUSES. The people live in nicely built houses of timber with thatched roofs. Some of the houses have grass walls and others use plaited palm leaves. These houses (about 80) look very attractive, and many of them are surrounded by beautiful gardens of tropical nature. All of them are spotlessly clean. The head settlement consists of three streets of houses and all buildings are supplied with electric light. The building is continually being undertaken, but the demand exceeds the supply of timber for the mission's mills, which, by the way, is quite up to date though at present it is in a temporary location. It is interesting to recall that some 20 years ago the one-time Archbishop of Brisbane and The Bishop of Salisbury (Dr. Donaldson) gave £6000 for the sawmill. The Queensland Government later also made a substantial grant. The Government annually assists the mission and last year the grant was increased to £5 ahead. Source: The Northern Herald 02 Jul 1938 trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/150831287