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An Aboriginal view of The Canning Stock Route
supplied by ANU Media 10 August 2015
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new National Museum of Australia (NMA) exhibition curated by ANU anthropologist Dr John Carty will reimagine the world’s longest historic stock route through the paintings of the Aboriginal people whose land it cut through. Kaninjaku: Stories from the Canning Stock Route explores the history of the famous West Australian Canning Stock Route, built between 1906 and 1910 to bring cattle from the Kimberley in the State’s north to the mining populations in the south. “The exhibition is about an Aboriginal interpretation of Australian history, told through the
Artist/film maker Curtis Taylor, with ‘touch tables’ containing his film in the new exhibition, Kaninjaku: Stories from the Canning Stock Route at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Jamila Toderas
prism of that one road,” Dr Carty said. “Kaninjaku is a story of how history unfolded in the 20th century for Western Desert people. It explores how one droving road impacted Aboriginal life, law and ecology in different ways. “It is a story told through art, but it is also a story about where that art comes from.” Kaninjaku: Stories from the Canning Stock Route is a follow up to a 2010 exhibition of the Canning Stock Route collection, Yiwarra Kuju, which drew a record attendance for the NMA. NMA Director Mathew Trinca said the exhibition is an opportunity to showcase new works from The
Canning Stock Route Collection - the jewel in the crown of the National Museum’s National Historical Collection. “The public really responded to this story – we wanted to showcase some new and previously unseen parts of that collection, including 17 pieces which have never been shown before,” said Dr Trinca. Dr Carty said the exhibition was an example of the changing nature of museums and their collections. “This is a collection of truly national significance, providing a living archive of Aboriginal perspectives and experiences of our shared history,” he said. “The scale of this story was never going to be contained by
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Old Days of he Stockmen, 2012, acrylic on canvas, by Mervyn Street.
one exhibition, and this new show explores that fact. It shows the Canning Stock Route Collection not as a fixed set of objects, but as
an evolving and dynamic archive within our nation’s heritage and history collections.� Kaninjaku: Stories from the
Canning Stock Route will be on display from August 3 in the Focus Gallery at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
Puntawarri, Jilakurru and Kumpupirntily, 2008, acrylic on linen by Dadda Samsa
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