Thancoupie World: Thancoupie is an Indigenous Australian artist with a strong Thanaquith background. Born in the late 1930’s the world in which she spent her childhood was rich in traditional customs. One of these customs was to use clay for ceremonial purposes. When Thancoupie was a young girl she knew that clay was sacred, Thancoupie said that where she grew up, ‘The men used to keep the clay in a special storehouse and we kids were not allowed to touch it’.…
English Analytical Essay FINAL Renowned for their inseparable relationship to their land, few people grasp the concept of Indigenous Australian peoples’ inextricable ‘connection’ with the Country. Opposing perspectives regarding the Australian Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) relationship to Country are offered by the author of Purple Threads, Jeanine Leane and Gary Crew, author of Strange Objects. Crew’s representation through the perspective of Wouter Loos’ journal and Steven Messenger includes deliberate literary devices such as characterisation, figurative language and sentence structure in order to describe the lack of ‘connection’ to the land that non-indigenous people have. Leane has utilised similar literary devices to depict a rich and…
On Friday, the 11th of August 2017, Year 7 went on an excursion to Kuringai Chase National Park. On our excursion we learnt many different skills and information about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and how they use their environment. We enhanced our own learning by gaining information from our teachers and a aboriginal ambassador, Jess. We visited many different Traditional rock engravings and paintings that dates back to 600 years, over 800 sites within the Park provide a significant relation to the Indigenous heritage.…
Aboriginal sites are as significant and essential today, as they were thousands of years ago. The sites will continue to play a fundamental role in the lives of Aboriginal people and Western Australian heritage. These places and the grounding beliefs they give expression to, will continue to be of great significance in contemporary social and spiritual life. In conclusion, one has to experience and go through the ways of Noongar traditional customs to get a better grip of what’s Noongar country truly means.…
To the Hmong community, there is an important piece of cultural artifact and that is the paj ntaub, Hmong embroidery. There are two different types of paj ntaub, the clothing embroidery and the story cloth. The different types has their own meanings, but both can be seen as examples of race, class, and gender differences. The history of the paj ntaub has transformed from cultural traditional practices to commercial goods that continues to establish the class and gender inequalities as the stories and experience of the Hmong people progress.…
Later on, Sylvia and the kids learn that the different classes don’t matter because anyone could have what they desire. It might be more work for the lower class people to have it, but as long as they work for it. They will achieve it. In both stories “Christmas Eve at Johnson’s Drugs N Goods” and “The Lesson” the symbols were used to demonstrate the differences between the higher and lower class. It shows how wealth people waste their money an expense fur coat or a one thousand sailboat toy in F.A.O. Schwartz.…
The text focuses on shifting circumstances of the Indigenous people and has potential to fulfill the requirement for cross-curricular learning by implementing both art and history in an English text (BOSTES 2012, p.27; Stallworth, et al., 2006). The text also contains photographs for students to study that portray real Aborigines in their traditional and casual clothing (Danalis, 2009, pp.163-170). Students are also able to perceive and c0mpare their cultural differences to Indigenous people, exemplifying cultural awareness in a classroom (DET, 2008; Weinstein, 2003). In addition, the motif of the “Skull”, named Mary, is a representation of the oppression that the Indigenous people experienced as well as the injustices during the period of colonization.…
Culture is the underlying culprit of one’s perspective. While culture refers to a person's surrounding environment, perspective is defined as how one views others and the world. Beliefs, values, habits and expectations are the basis of perception. Culture affects these elements. Thus, culture always influences the way one views others and the world because it impacts beliefs, values, habits, and expectations.…
Displays of Indigenous “artifacts” in Western museums have long been protested by activists. Critics argue that museums collect sacred and culturally important materials, fail to represent culture properly, and instead offer an unapologetic display of violent colonialism past (Pensley 37). In the poem “how to steal a canoe” by Leanne Simpson, the story of the repatriation of a canoe from a museum by two characters, kwe and akiwenzii, is explored. Simpson’s poem engages with the issue of reclaiming cultural objects and Simpson connect this activism to reestablishment and regeneration of Indigenous identity. This is done through the personification of the canoes and the transformation of the role of the canoe from object to a third character.…
Throughout history, Native American people have used art as a form of self-expression. These artworks have taken the forms of dance, paintings, sculpture, fashion, etc. From the pre-contact period to the post-contact period, Native American art has always been evolving. With different methods comes new and different artwork. These different types of artworks can be seen throughout ancient, modern, and contemporary time periods.…
Native American art has evolved through history and has been used for various reasons such as, insuring cultural traditions, expressing spirituality, and to make sense of existential issues. Modern artists have pieces that tell a story enduring strength of the Native American peoples (Phillips, 1998) .One artist James Luna is notorious for using his body as a means to criticize stereotypes of Native American cultures in Western art. One of his most renowned pieces is Artifact Piece, 1985-87. Luna laid motionless on a bed of sand in a glass museum case wearing a loincloth.…
Traditionally, museums are considered secular sites in which curators display art objectively; however, in her work, “The art museum as ritual,” Carol Duncan examines how museums act as powerful entities which influence the visitors’ perception through the display, organization, and architecture of the space. She elaborates that the museum’s authority actually enables them to represent and define entire communities, which consequently shapes the visitors’ perceptions of said communities. Perhaps Duncan’s claim is best summarized as: “To control a museum means precisely to control the representations of a community and its highest values and truths… What we see and do not see in … museums and on what terms and by whose authority we do or do…
Born and raised on the City of Gold Coast I had little understanding of the ways of Aboriginal people. I didn’t come in contact with many indigenous while growing up. There may have been one or two Torres strait islanders in my class but I never really paid much attention to where they came from I just treated them like other class mates. This didn’t help me broaden my knowledge of their culture, as we never discussed it.…
; the ring symbolizes a promise of marriage to those around me, but it also represents invisible feelings and beliefs. 8. Electric kettle; represents the daily ritual of a traditional custom of drinking cups of tea, almost to the point of it becoming a pattern. 9. The latest smartphone; seen as the in-thing to own and use, it is now seen to be odd in my culture if one does not have a cellular phone, let alone one with Internet access.…
In his poem “William Street”, Slessor use language that appeals to the senses. He does this in order to allow us to go on the journey with him and experience it through his eyes. Slessor appeals to our sight when he says, ‘The pulsing arrows and the running fire spilt on stones.’ From this we imagine arrows pulsing on and off and the lights of pubs and bars streaming across the street, making it seem alive and bustling with people. In the third stanza Slessor appeals to our sense of taste and smell though the use of alliteration to enable us to view the scene as though we were there.…