7 minute read
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
Cross-cultural collaboration on Gurindji Country
WORDS GINA DAHL
Gurindji Country is located about 460 km southwest of Katherine and is home to Wattie Creek and the Victoria River. The land holds the legacy of the historic Wave Hill Walk-Off, a significant landmark event in contemporary Australian history.
In August 1966, Vincent Lingiari guided over 200 Gurindji, Warlpiri and Mudburra pastoral workers and their families off Wave Hill Cattle Station, protesting poor working conditions, fair wages, and aboriginal land rights. The Wave Hill Walk-Off was an eight-year-long strike that changed the course of contemporary Australian history.
The Wave Hill Walk-Off initiated the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, a nationwide social movement and a keystone in local identity and heritage. The event is celebrated annually during the local Freedom Day Festival that celebrates the achievements, culture and resilience of the Gurindji, Warlpiri and Mudburra people. Today, the Walk-Off Route is a National Heritage listed site associated with this unique moment in contemporary Australian history. The community celebrated the 50th anniversary of this historic event during the 2016 Freedom Day Festival, which attracts thousands of visitors from across the Northern Territory and beyond.
The festival marked the official opening of the award-winning Wave Hill Walk-Off Pavilions initiated by the Gurindji Aboriginal Cooperation and co-designed and built in partnership with Bower Studio – a postgraduate design studio from the University of Melbourne School of Design. The pavilions sit along three key locations following the Walk-Off Route: Jinparrak, where Vincent Lingiari initiated the Walk-Off; Jurnarni at Gordy Creek, where the strikers sought drinking water; and Kalkaringi outside the Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre, close to the end of the Walk-Off journey.
The relationship between Bower Studio and representatives from the Gurindji, Mudburra, and Warlpiri language groups in Kalkaringi and Daguragu began in 2014. Bower Studio was invited to engage in a partnership with the community and develop an architectural gesture marking, acknowledging and celebrating the narratives and landscapes surrounding the Walk-Off Route. The design process focused on participatory cross-cultural collaboration with local community representatives. As a result, the design approach was guided by the many stories of Wave Will Station as told in conversation with community elders and representatives.
Jinparrak is the location of the old Wave Hill cattle station. Historical artefacts are embedded within the landscape such as bed frames, remnant foundations, structural frameworks, or even a typewriter. Some artefacts have been preserved for educational purposes, whilst others remain as an intrinsic part of the landscape surrounding the old settlement. Each of the three pavilions uses the same architectural language and is grounded in meaningful cultural narratives that reflect stories and memories linked to specific locations along the Walk-Off Route.
Community elders requested the design be grounded in the landscape, allowing the pavilions to mark the Walk-Off route across Country. In addition, the architectural language frames the track passing through the structures and follows the contiguous journey of the strikers. The three pavilions provide opportunities for reflection, celebration, and acknowledgement of the significance of the Walk-Off journey to reclaim the land stolen from the strikers.
Contemporary western designers have a lot to learn from indigenous knowledge systems – a process that requires deep listening and respectful engagement over extended periods of time. Instead of focusing on a set goal, result, and predetermined linear design process – designers must work in partnerships that embrace flexible, ongoing, and cyclical design methodologies encouraging listening, feedback, and collaboration.
This approach opens the doors for culturally sensitive and effective cross-cultural consultations that guide the design process. In turn, this can encourage nuanced design thinking and challenge linear approaches to time, design and collaboration. Process is a design methodology in and of itself that can guide relationship building by acknowledging that deeper connections and communications take time to become established.
Bower Studio began in 2008 as a postgraduate architecture studio at the University of Melbourne, initiated and led by Dr David O'Brien. Broadly speaking the studio follows a design/build process, however community-based research and consultation activities remain a key focus and partner with community groups to support infrastructure needs. The studio has worked by invitation at dozens of remote communities in Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Australia – these partnerships have resulted in co-designed and co-built culture facilities, classrooms, health hardware and housing.
This program provides a unique learning opportunity for students to engage with the complexities of local indigenous cultures and the value of indigenous knowledge systems. The studio prioritises the students’ engagement with community, their construction labour on-site and time spent on country prior to developing their own design contributions. The ensuing community consultations have accommodated knowledge-sharing opportunities and rigorous feedback developing a greater sense of community ownership over projects.
Following on from the Walk-off Pavilions, Bower Studio has maintained its relationship with the community and several additional projects have emerged from this collaboration.
THE KARUNGKARNI ART CENTRE EXTENSION
In 2018, Bower Studio co-designed and coconstructed the Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre Extension. The existing building, a decommissioned power station, faced challenging environmental implications such as seasonal floods, overheating, and dusty winds.
The extension includes a shaded outdoor pavilion with weld mesh and louvered walls.
The permeability of the facade filters the visual connections into the artist workshop. An important design feature is the discreet horizontal break in the weld mesh that provide unrestricted views towards the town square when looking out from a seated position. Consequently, improving the capacity to observe the movement of people around the space. This design approach has proved highly successful and responds to both socio-cultural practices and country.
The blurred visual connection between the inside and the outside evokes a sense of calm and security during the heat of the day while subtle breezes cool artists as they paint and tell stories.
BIG SHADY
Three pavilions have been built by the local workers and Bower team: two in the local park and a third by the ‘town square’ by the shop. Nicknamed ‘big shadies’, the most popular is by the shop, close to the Child and Family Centre and a short stroll away from the Karungkarni Art Centre. The seating arrangements are carefully considered to accommodate intricate sociocultural relationships within the community. The shady has become a well-used feature in the town square of Kalkaringi – a highly successful social place perfect for observing the everyday life of the community.
SHADE STRUCTURES AT KALKARINGI AND DAGURAGU CHILD AND FAMILY CENTRE
Three sculptural shade structures were assembled in mid-2021 and officially opened with the Child and Family Centre later that year. Each structure builds on the same narrative and architectural language as the Wave Hill WalkOff Pavilions and feature a similar perforated screen cladding that speaks to the remnant artefacts of the old station. In addition, the screens filter the light and create a dappled light effect on the ground below speaking of the movement of the sun across the landscapes. THE CULTURAL HERITAGE CENTRE
The long-term aspiration of the Gurindji community has been to establish a centre to accommodate their cultural heritage collection and include artist workshops, gallery and exhibition areas and space that supports local community gatherings.
The audience would include both indigenous and non-indigenous visitors keen to celebrate the Gurindji peoples’ stories and culture. The community’s vision was first shared with Bower Studio during the initial design consultations in 2014 and remains an ongoing aspiration for the community while funding is being sought.
Taken as a whole, the completed projects form an iterative consultation process where design and construction become a communication tool for co-imagining new projects. This provides opportunities to include design strategies already known to the community while moving towards appropriate design ideas leading towards the development of a facility that supports Gurindji heritage and culture.
In this context, it is important to address the complex and sensitive nature of crosscultural partnerships with remote aboriginal communities. Collaborators working with community have a responsibility to develop an understanding of the cultural, social, political, historical and environmental contexts.
The design process must be driven by culturally sensitive consultation methodologies grounded in deep listening and thinking. By challenging contemporary western design methodologies, collaborators can aspire to design with, and for, the cultural landscape. This approach can provide opportunities to establish meaningful relationships that draw on a deep respect for cultural engagement that can establish meaningful cross-cultural relationships over time. Through culturally sensitive consultation practices we can establish new ways of understanding what it means to design responsibly driven by the broader social context. Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Dr David O'Brien for his feedback and advice in the writing of this article and for his support as an academic supervisor and mentor over the last year. Thank you for your continuous support and generous insight, it is greatly appreciated.
Gina Dahl graduated with a Master of Architecture from the University of Melbourne in 2021. Here, she was invited to focus her postgraduate thesis on a cross-cultural collaboration with the Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre. ‘The River Land’ project looked at strategies to improve the existing art centre and was awarded the 2022 DesignInc Positive Legacy of Design Award.
