Small Archer River - Alair Pambegan's Country, 2021. Image courtesy of Gabriel Waterman.
Keith Wikmunea In Conversation
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ONVENTIONAL HISTORICAL RESEARCH, through its predominant written mode – a textual not an aural instrument – tends to produce an abstraction from the daily life of those whose culture is the under study. The hand of an omniscient narrator, dubbed the historian, often guides the reader through the lives of others in the third person, without adequate consideration given to the hegemony of ideologies reproduced in their own voice (Portelli, 1991). Often, an emphasis is placed not so much on how people feel, experience and create meaning from events and memory as conduits of culture, but on constructing an empirical understanding of a progressive line stamped across time to explain and document specific cultural phenomena. This can result in an anti-empathetical approach. In a time where our knowledge of global happenings is cherry picked from a dense foliage of news headlines, the voices of individuals on the ground often become superimposed and sometimes even lost. Oral sources make opportunities for the local point of view to connect with the global, scientific view. It is on this cross-cultural and experiential meeting ground that a multitude of perspectives and varied socio-linguistic origins are related and undergo a process of self-recognition. The dominance of an external narrator as a mouthpiece is challenged through collective participation and dialogue: the interviewer becomes a subject of the discourse as much as those whom they are investigating. Listening to an audio recording also gives greater space for the receiver’s imagination to construct its own bespoke meaning from the undulance, tone, rhythm and velocity in the speaker’s delivery (McHugh, 2016). Oral histories can be productive to a culture’s persistence, serving as educational resources to an upcoming generation for its continuation and development. If language and art-making practices are interlocking puzzle pieces of a cultural landscape at large, accumulative documentation and access to the two are vital for the internal preservation and promotion of that culture, as well as its wider understanding, appreciation and politicisation. Oral expression as a means of passing on knowledge
has a rooted and inextricable place in Wik culture. The following transcript, while being a textual source with the potential to distort the emphases of the spoken word, documents a conversation between the senior Wik-Mungkan/Wik-Alken artist, Keith Wikmunea, Wik & Kugu Arts Centre Manager, Gabe Waterman, and JGM Gallery researcher and copywriter, Antonia Crichton-Brown. Wikmunea was brought up from birth in Aurukun and works from The Wik & Kugu Arts Centre, furthering Wik art and culture in his paintings and sculptural schemes. Through his work and word, Wikmunea passes on his artistic and cultural knowledge to Aurukun’s younger generations. In 2023, Wikmunea was nominated as a finalist in the NATSIAA Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art awards, the longest running and richest art award in Australia. Waterman has an academic background in the social sciences and cultural restoration initiatives. He has worked with the Woyan-Min biocultural project, teaching audio-visual skills to youth to record and maintain the language and culture of Aurukun’s elders. Waterman has a strong understanding of Wik-Mungkan, the Wik & Kugu region’s lingua franca, having lived and worked in Aurukun for many years. He works to strengthen the bonds between language, cultural heritage and art in Aurukun. Crichton-Brown is completing her undergraduate degree at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, focusing her studies on the Aboriginal art industry in Australia, the politics of territorialisation, Indigenous land rights, and postcolonial thought. The following questions were composed by Crichton-Brown in JGM Gallery's London space, sent to Waterman in Aurukun, who then posed them to Wikmunea and provided his own responses where appropriate. The recording of Waterman and Wikmunea’s dialogue is available upon request from The Wik & Kugu Arts Centre. This transcript is not intended to replace it but is suggested as an intertextual resource.
REFERENCES: McHugh, S. (2016). ‘How Podcasting Is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14 1), 65-82. Portelli, A. (1991). 'The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History', New York: State University of New York Press. 9
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