Coinciding with National Reconciliation Week, Burrinja Cultural Centre is hosting a fascinating collection of art, films, speakers and workshops. All the details can be found at Whats On at Burrinja.
Memories - Contact with White People Exhibition
4 May - 24 June
Based on Patsy Lulpanda’s canvas painting with the same title comes an exhibition of artworks from the Burrinja Collection that explores the theme of contact with white colonisers from the Aboriginal perspective. Depictions of policemen, cattle, prison trees, massacre sites and nuclear test sites tell stories of dispossession, disempowerment and destruction, and yet their telling provides future hope. Entry Free.
Friday 1 June
Indigenous Film Night
Session 1 @ 7pm
Too Many Captain Cooks (1989), Documentary, 18mins
This film seeks to replace the stereotypes promoted by the non-Aboriginal history of white settlement in Australia.
Beneath Clouds (2001), 94 mins
Drama about Lena, the light-skinned daughter of an Aboriginal mother and Irish father and Vaughn, a Murri boy doing time in a minimum security prison in North West NSW.
Session 2 @ 9.30pm
Babakiueria (1986), 30mins
A comic but powerful satire that reverses roles, imagining what it would be like if a black first fleet had arrived in Australia in 1788 to settle an area inhabited by white natives.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2001), 94 mins
Dramatic feature based on the 'stolen generation' theme about three young indigenous girls who are snatched from their mothers' arms and placed in a settlement 1,500 miles away. They escape and use the rabbit-proof fence to guide their way home, as they are chased by white authorities and a black tracker.
Entry Free
Saturday 2nd June
Toy-Making for Children
11am and 2pm
Toy-Making for Children
11am and 2pm
Kids will combine soft grasses with colourful wool to create their own beautiful animals.
This is a 2-hour workshop by Adrienne Kneeborne, and parents are welcome to stay.
Places are limited so please book online or call 9754 8723. Cost $5
In Words: Eileen Harrison and Carolyn Landon
2.30pm
Aunty Eileen describes herself as a survivor of a failed political push to assimilate Victorian aborigines into the wider community by forcing them off the mission at Lake Tyers, and she talks about her life from a cultural, personal, emotional and political perspective.
This talk is free and will go for approx. 1 hour. Places are limited so please book online or call 9754 8723.
Sunday 3rd June.
In Conversation: Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage
Sunday 3 June - 2.30pm
Gippsland resident and author of Convincing Ground, Bruce Pascoe will present his recent book Dark Emu, an examination of the Aboriginal economy as seen by the “Explorers”. Bruce Pascoe will be in conversation with Bill Gammage, who recently published The Biggest Estate on Earth – How Aborigines made Australia, a book that examines land-management strategies used by Aboriginal people around the country prior to colonialisation.
Cost $10/Members Free. This talk will go for approx. 90 minutes. Places are limited so please book online or call 9754 8723.
Basket Weaving for Adults
11am to 4pm
Using coil stitch, thread and locally collected native grasses participants will create one gorgeous basket to take home. Materials provided. Adrienne Kneeborne is an artist from Tennant Creek, NT, living and working in Warburton.
Cost $35/$25 members. Places are limited so please book online or call 9754 8723.