Occupation A publication of speculative drawings about Aboriginal Australian histories, Indigenous culture
June, 2020
The Publication is also available on Issuu via this link
Occupation publication would like to acknowledge the people of Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded land we meet.
We respectfully welcome and acknowledge their ancestors and eldest past and present.
We also acknowledge the traditional custodians and their ancestors of the land and water across Australia.
I would like to thank my tutors Millie Cattlin, Jasmine Hocking and my classmates who have helped develop ideas and provide feedback for the accomplishment of this publication.
Contents
06 08 10
12 14 18
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A Manifesto A note from Us Prologue Drawing Begins Current Pedagogy To Unlearn Indigenous Culture
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Case Study
32
Bung Yarnda
38
Coranderrk
44
Cummeragunja
52
Place making
68
Epilogue Index Bibliography
70 71
a manifesto
Embrace processes. There is no end result really. They all immerse in a process, and the process and experimentation results are what drive the designers to keep exploring, making testing, creating, reflecting then exploring, making...
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Make a map Make a map, do research from a cultural perspective and approach the design process with respect and empathy towards the Indigenous culture and history.
Listen and give honest feedback
Filter of interest could mean comprehension of a topic could be different amongst individuals. Hence why it is important to embrace slowness, taking time to listen to others and understand each other’s ideas and thoughts. Listen, allow time to listen and give honest feedback
Ethics comes first Embrace sensitivity, allow time and slowness to understand and empathise with Indigenous culture. Always approach with an ethical framework as the first step.
Embrace processes Embrace processes. There is no end result really. They all immerse in a process, and the process and experimentation results are what drive the designers to keep exploring, making testing, creating, reflecting then exploring, making...
7
A bit about you
Where are you from? Do you feel connected to this place?
What is your culture? Do you feel connected to this culture?
Who is your community? What is the most important thing in your country?
8
a note from us
My name is Anh Tran. I am an Australian immigrant, like many other people, I was born and raised in Vietnam. I am very proud of my culture and being a person growing up in the roots of my own culture. Culture definition for me deprive from little details in our lifestyles such as the food we eat, music to cultural celebration, our beliefs and norms. Being in Australia since 2012 has slowly transition my life to adapt to a new culture, new community. However part of me still urges to truly understand history of Australia, a place that I now call home yet havent been exposed to the Indigenous history of the Country. I would like to reach out to the immigrant community in Australia and people who have not been exposed to Indigenous culture to tell story of Aboriginal Australian through a drawing process. These drawings allow us to follow a speculative storyline in order to approach sensitive topics with respects. Occupation publication allows readers to understand the complexity of Aboriginal culture also by introducing references that enable you to find related topics and explore further based on the reference provided within this publication.
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Prologue
Occupation publication seeks to understand the three Aboriginal missions in Victoria: Bung Yarnda Coranderrk Cummeragunja Through the practice of annotation, speculative mapping and drawings to unfold complex history of these sites. 10
Practice of annotations Draws, mappings, Highlights, examines As the processes
To - Unlearn Chapter. 1
Occupation invites the audience to unlearn what you have known in order to immerse yourself into something you have not yet known. This can only be done by breaking through the traditional drawing conventions which are believed to limit the sensitivity and complexity of the Indigenous stories embedded within the land and country.
Indigenous dark history Chapter. 3
This publication would like to acknowledge the advanced Indigenous lifestyles, knowledge of land, country and Aborigines’ achievement through the story of Aboriginal stations in Coranderrk and Cummeragunja. On the other hand, the publication also addresses the dark history that the Indigenous communities have suffered under forced assimilation and policies that were trying to remove the first Australian from our land.
Intro to Indigenous culture & beliefs Chapter. 2
The key themes of Occupation publication start with a prologue that introduces the concept of unlearn in order to view the main Indigenous concept with a fresh mind. Then connect non indigenous concepts with the indigenous culture through the comparison between Indigenous and non-indigenous culture and beliefs. Especially in the ideas of country and future.
Place-making for Indigenous communities Chapter. 4
Today, after many years of delegation and protests, the Aborigines have been given back their land across many areas of the country. However the topic of place-making for Indigenous communities still put a question on whether the Aboriginal people are able to make place in our land or these are purely an act of acknowledgment without the practice of place making.
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1 Drawing begins...
Current Pedagogical System
How can we create an educational system?
To Lean and to Un-learn
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CURRENT PEDAGOGICAL SYSTEM
Situating Us - Alessandra Pomarico Slow Reader - A resource for Design Thinking and Practices.
An excerpt about current pedagogical systems and what purpose of learning we are seeking.
1. Current pedagogical systems has constrained the learning process, contracting debts instead of promoting the process of learning, creating oppression. 2. With regards to the questions of how to approach learning process, I used the method of cutting out the white space to highlight potential answers.
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POSSIBLE ANSWERS:
Situating Us - Alessandra Pomarico Slow Reader - A resource for Design Thinking and Practices.
An excerpt about How to create post-neo-liberal education that resist the principle of profit, extraction, competitiveness and exploitation?
3. How to create post-neo-liberal education that resist the principle of profit, extraction, competitiveness and exploitation? 4. Some ideas from the slow reader reading “Situating Us� that amplify the different among the approaches to learning.
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Slow Reader
A resource for Design Thinking & Practices
Situating Us - Alessandra Pomarico Slow Reader - A resource for Design Thinking and Practices.
An excerpt about an approach to un-learn About current pedagogical systems and what purpose of learning we are seeking.
to learn, (un)learn re- learn to create space brave space space to learn you have to un-learn It is urgent to study, to learn, to practice, to prepare ourselves to attempt this task. We need to know that we don’t know, to un-learn in order to learn, and to re-learn with others; in the disruptive process of reimagining, taking into account the pedagogical process is crucial.
It is in this legacy that I hope to inscribe my search, with gratitude and admiration for all who, in the present as in the past, contribute to the creation of those ‘brave spaces’ where sharing knowledge differently is a way to create a different world.
Learning should be conceived as a holistic process, accelerate the possibility to learn from each other, sharing space and time. We should resist feeling overwhelmed by the task, as we are in a phase of preparation. If teaching is a process of transcending 21 oneself into the other, then learning is becoming something more (or less).
The crisis that neoliberal forces will continuously generate is also a crisis of the imagination: we seem unable to think and even dream about the possibility to live differently, forced to function in a system embedded in almost every aspect of our lives. ‘Being aware of the gravity of the current situation, the question about education or learning changes radically. Learning is translated into survival, learning to learn in a context of war is fundamentally learning to defend and create life
to learn.
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20 Slow Reader A resource for Design Thinking & Practices
Situating Us - Alessandra Pomarico Slow Reader - A resource for Design Thinking and Practices.
An excerpt about current pedagogical systems and what purpose of learning we are seeking.
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2 Indigenous culture & beliefs
Indigenous and NonIndigenous beliefs
Why didn’t they teach us our history in school?
Settler-colonialism and Australian urbanisation
CARING FOR COUNTRY COMMUNITIES NON-LINEAR AND TIMELESS LINKS BETWEEN PEOPLE, ENVIRONMENT AND COUNTRY FUTURISMS PRIORITISE REBUILDING RELATIONSHIPS DYSTOPIA IS ENDING COLONISATION, REMOVAL OF NATION STATE OF AUSTRALIA, AND RETURN TO OUR FUTURE. FUTURE IS NOW
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INDIGENOUS
Dystopia as linked to the end of the world is not relevant to Indigenous futures. In Indigenous speculative imagination of our utopia, it is the end of the settler occupation.
Indigenous Future and Sovereign Romanticisms Belong to a Place in Time - Hannah Donnelly
An excerpt about the comparison between Indigenous and nonIndigenous beliefs of Future, Sovereignty and about Dystopia.
PRIORITISE SETTLERS LOOKING AS INDIVIDUALS. FUTURE RELATES TO TRAUMA AND SUBJECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE. FUTURE IS FANTASY OF THE DREAM TIME. RELATES TO SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE OF ILLUSION. DYSTOPIAN OFTEN MEANS END OF THE WORLD, POST-APOCALYPTIC. NONEXISTENCE OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE.
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non-INDIGENOUS
Priorities settler - looking as individuals Dystopia = the end of the world, post-apocalyptic of Western civilisation. Perception of Aboriginal people no longer exist.
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Gippslandia - Shannon Woodcock Why didn’t they teach us our history in school?
An excerpt about settler’s colonisation and how white settlers occupied the land, steal the land and policies to remove the first Australian from our country.
27 Why didn’t they teach us our history in school?
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Libby Porter - From an urban country to urban Country. Australian Geographer.
An excerpt about settler’s colonisation and how white settlers occupied the land, steal the land and policies to remove the first Australian from our country.
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Libby Porter - From an urban country to urban Country. Australian Geographer.
An excerpt about settler’s colonisation and how white settlers occupied the land, steal the land and policies to remove the first Australian from our country.
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3 Case study Aboriginal Missions
Bung Yarnda
Coranderrk
Cummeragunja
Bung Yarnda Lake Tyers has been home for many Indigenous Victorians from all the states. However Lake Tyers faced the risk of closing down due to an active assimilation by Mclean Report. The Aboriginal community suffered from poor living conditions, strict and immoral regulations and pressure to live and work among white people, whilst being treated unequally. In 1970, after numerous delegations and coalitions, under the Aboriginal Lands Act, the Victorian handed back land at Lake Tyers to the Indigenous community.
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Bung Yarnda - Lake Tyers 5
Drawing Lake Tyers’ landscape based on: A shooting holiday on Lake Tyers, Caire, N. J’sphotograph of Lake Tyers, and Flora Gregson’s painting 1878
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Drawing Lake Tyers’ speculated map based on A shooting holiday on Lake Tyers, Caire, N. J’sphotograph of Lake Tyers, and Lake Tyers’ Well Location Map.
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An interpretation of forced assimilation happened in Bung Yarnda. People were forced to live far away from their home land, away from their friends and community. Aboriginal were put to live in poor living condition, in houses that they had not been prepared for the move.
Coranderrk Throughout the years being the leader of Coranderrk, with his intelligence, negotiation and leadership skills, William Barak has led a delegation to Melbourne to seek freedom for the Aboriginal community at Coranderrk. He wrote to the minister to show that the station could support itself without any control from the Aboriginal Board of Protection. His will to fight for the freedom of people at Coranderrk has shown through his numerous journey walking from Coranderrk to Melbourne.
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1. A conventional map determining the boundaries of Coranderrk. 2. The process of tracing a conventional map of Coranderrk 3. A speculated map depicting William Barak’s journey from Coranderrk to Melbourne.
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Parcels of land at Coranderrk to grow vineyard and productions 7. This marks an achievement of Coranderrk residents when John Green was the manger. One of the reason leading to William Barak’s was to seek reinstatement of John Green to be the manager of Coranderrk. 8
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William Barak, throughout his life as the head clan of Coranderrk, has lead multiple delegation protesting policies of Aboriginal Protection Board.The Board of Protection has implemented the act to remove Coranderrk’s admired station manager - John Green,created the violent Half-Caste Act to take the Aboriginal children away. On the other hand, all Uncle Barak, with his intelligent, negotiation skills, and his determination, has many times led a delegation to Melnbourne to protests. 8
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All of the time he and his men walked for more than 60 km from Coranderrk. In one of this letter written to the Prime Minister, he said “If they have everything right and the government leaves us here, give us this ground and let us manage here and get all the money. Why do not let the people do it themselves. Do what they like and go on and do the work. We don’t want any board over us.� 8
Cummeragunja Cummeragunja is an Aboriginal reserve situated in Yorta Yorta country on a bend in the Murray River in New South Wales, near the Victorian town of Barmah. Life at Cummeragunja under the control of George Bellenger proved to be disastrous for the station’s residents. Illness and threats of expulsion or removal of rations were constant themes. Under the disastrous management and the Board of Protection’s regulation, there have been numerous telegram and communication from Cummeragunja’s residents to remove current Station’s manager and petitions for change. As the disappointment and disagreement reached the tipping point, a majority of station’s residents packed up and crossed the river into Victoria, in an act of defiance known today as the Cummeragunja Walk-Off. Majority of people left never returned.
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* A drawing that map the journey of Cummeragunja Walk-off leaving Yorta Yorta country (in New South Wales) to other area in Victoria. They built new communities in Mooroopna, Shepparton and beyond. Majority of the families who left Cummargunja never returned. 9,10
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This drawing maps the Cummeragunja Walk-Off, it depicts the dates of all telegraphs were sent between the Cummeragunja residents to Aboriginal Board of Protection and the Minister about the poor living condition and management at the station. After a prolonged period, Aboriginal people decided to leave Yorta Yorta, they move to area in Victoria at Shepparton and some of them never come back. 10,11
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Before the Cummeragunja residents started the Walk-Off, there have been numerous telegraphs sent to complain about the current station manager - Arthur McQuiggan. This is the telegraph record that includes the original petition submitted by station residents requesting that the Station Manager be removed. 11
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* All the date mentioned on the telegram records, including all communication of Cummeragunja residents’ petition, station manager’s and Aboriginal Protection Board’s denial. This records has documented the frustration of the Aboriginal and witnessed their decision to give up and walk-off. 11
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4
Indigenous
Place making
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These drawings capture the beauty of the Indigenous landscape from various regions in Victoria. The scenery was inspired by ABC’s documentary “ This Place: View from the shore”.12 Traditional owners of land and country have been passing on their history of the landscape, the language and the culture through story telling. Sometimes the history were embedded in the song lines passing from generations to generation in the Indigenous community. When we look at the nature, we are actually read the history on the landscape, the story of how the landscape and the boundaries were formed.
LANDSCAPE AND OCEAN
LAKE BURMEER
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MOOLOMBA ROCK PLACE
MOUNT GULAGA
GANOONGA NOONGA FRESH WATER , LOOK
GOORENG GOORENG
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During the process of drawing natural landscape that embedded Indigenous history, I reflect back to previous drawings that i have made then asked myself a question “Would it be fair/ reasonable to resonate these beautiful landscape with Aboriginal culture?” “Am i making a bias stereotype that Indigenous culture only attached to the countryside? What about the urban space which would have all belonged to the Indigenous Australian despite settler’s colonisation?” 15 The fact that very little has documented about urban Indigenous people and place attachment indeed could have provided a distorted perception about the Indigenous community in Australia.
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DOES
It was becoming clear that this was “Black design” by white people, desperate to drive it and take the credit , but unwilling to have the messy conversations and address the crucial question “does this benefit Aboriginal communities”?
BLAK
How do we get mob to acknowledge our own aspirations, not those of white people? Who was it for? What was the purpose? Or was it just an idea developed by, and for, white people? What would it bring to the Aboriginal community who lived near the proposed gallery, particularly those experiencing housing stress and job insecurity?
DESIGN
MATTER?
OR
How do we move beyond symbols and gestures? How will it assists Aboriginal people who continue to experience challenges? Does Blak Design matter or is just a white thing?
JUST
Is Aboriginal art only accepted within the western canon when it suits a capitalist agenda? Does “Blak design only matter when it suits their agenda? How do we move forward to asserting our sovereignty through our work & sprinkling on some archi/design along the way? How do we flip the power play and stop indulging in the frameworks that continue to oppress and control us?
WHITE
A
THING? Timmah Ball - Does Blak Design matter or is just a white thing?
An excerpt about the issue of designs that borrow Indigenous images but does not benefit the Indigenous community.
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This final drawing can be understood in terms of time or space in relation to place making for Indigenous community based on geographical location and historical periods. The initial sketches were inspired by ABC’s documentary “This Place: View From The Shore�. I was extremely amazed by the view of Australian landscape in the rural area, of the sensitive movement of water and how it touches the landscape. The process of capturing these views with lead pencil and charcoal has allow a duration and thinking process that make me consider of what is Indigenous land and territories, where the boundaries are and how these
boundaries are formed and determined. The landscape, even before, during and after the colonisation time, is still our land, despite the stereotype that majority attaches Indigenous Australian to rural landscape, rarely mentioning about Indigenous people place attachments to urban areas 15. The reading of time in this drawing starts with the capture of beautiful natural landscape then transitioning assimilation time. Housing has been one of the instruments used to change and assimilate Indigenous cultures 14. This period also recognises the achievement by the Indigenous communities such as in Coranderrk and Cummeragunja in produces
selling traditional produces. Moving closer to current time and closer to Melbourne, there are still issues relating to place making for Aboriginal community. The concern of whether a design that borrows Blak design idea indeed benefits the Aboriginal communities 13, th e story of class conflict in Bendigo squat, Collingwood are examples and how little we, in contemporary society, consider Aboriginal knowledge of place as a way to shape our future 16.
Epilogue
How can you design and claim to have the tools to change this world for the better when you cannot, to date, find a way to include more of the people who inhabit it? 17 68
Practice of annotations Draws, mappings, Highlights, examines As the processes
Ethical Framework
Approach any designs by considering: Forced colonial, borders, boundaries. Incarceration & resistance Housing and land rights Sensitivity, slowness Visualising events and ideas across time, scale, space
Embrace Slowness and Processes
This project did not specify the outcome when we started. We were driven by the guidance of our tutors and our works/approach to learning. Without the pressure of result-driven requirement, I fully explore the drawing processes through ideas and iterations.
Cultural Awareness
The history of Bung Yarnda, Coranderrk and Cummeragunja has proved how resilient the Aboriginal leaders and the residents are. The Aboriginal lifestyles and the advancement in agriculture and aquaculture, the respect for the mother land and water have taught us a lesson about inhabitation of space and place making. The readings about place making for Indigenous communities have shifted my awareness and scope of work to consider who would be benefited from my designs, who would occupy the designs, who are the traditional owners of land, especially a design related to architecture, and residential. As the designers, it is crucial to remember that whatever we are designing, ethics always comes first. And as the interior designers, we should always try to include more people to inhabit the spaces, especially the traditional owners of the land. Then our designs will become truly meaningful.
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Index
p.12
Situating Us 1 Slow Reader
p.14
Situating Us 1 Slow Reader
p.19
Situating Us 1 Slow Reader
p.24
p.30
Urban Country 4 Libby Porter
p.35
Bung Yarnda 5 Lake Tyers
p.36
Bung Yarnda 5 Lake Tyers
p.37
Bung Yarnda 6 Forced Assimilation
p.40
Coranderrk 7: The Parcels of Land
p.42
Coranderrk 8: Mapping the walk
p.45
Cummeragunja 9 Walk-off
p.49
Cummeragunja 9,10 telegraph dates
Indigenous Future 2 Hannah Donnelly
p.16
p.26
Situating Us 1 Slow Reader
p.20
Gippslandia 3 p.28 Shannon Woodcock
Situating Us 1 Slow Reader
Urban Country 4 Libby Porter
1. Alessandra Pomarico, “Situating Us”, Slow Reader - A resource for Design
Thinking and Practice, Valiz, Amsterdam.
2. Hannah Donnelly, “Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms:
Belonging to a Place in Time” .
3. Shannon Woodcock, “Why didn’t they teach us our history in school?”, Gippslandia
4. Libby Porter, “From an urban Country to urban Country: confronting the
cut of denial in Australia cities”, Australian Geographer.
5. Bung Yarnda Lake Tyers Mission Maps. 6. Bung Yarnda - Summary extracted from Indigenous Rights (2020). History of Lake Tyers.
7. Coranderrk landscape on Google Earth 8. “First Australians: Episode 3 Freedome of our times”, SBS Australia, http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/index/index/epid/3
9. Cummeragunja landscape on Google Earth 10. Cummeragunja - Summary provided by Aboriginal History and Culture of South Eastern Australia.
11. Cummeragunja 1939 Walk-Off Record, NSW State Archives & Records,
https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guidesand-indexes/stories/cummeragunja-walk-off
12. “This Place: View from the Shore” documentary by ABC Australia,
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/this-place-view-from-the-shore
13. Timmah Ball, “Does Blak Design matter or is just a white thing?”, Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture.
14. Timothy O’Rourke, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Domestic
Architecture in Australia”, The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture
15. Kelly Greenop, “Before Architecture Comes Place, Before Place Comes People: Contemporary Indigenous Places in Urban Brisbane, Queensland, Australia”, The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture
16. Timmah Ball, “Last Stone left: Wellneing and Aborignal Placemaking in the city”, Assemble Papers.
17. Colony Design, Instagram Post “ Dear Design, This letter is not about me”, a post in response to Black Lives Matter, 2nd June 2020 https://www. instagram.com/p/CA5vAlGJZdN/
Index
p.50
Cummeragunja 9,10 p.54 telegraph dates
This Place: View from the Shore 12
p.57
Place Making for Indigenous people
p.67
Our Voices, 13 Timmah Ball
1. Alessandra Pomarico, “Situating Us”, Slow Reader - A resource for Design
Thinking and Practice, Valiz, Amsterdam.
2. Hannah Donnelly, “Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms:
Belonging to a Place in Time” .
3. Shannon Woodcock, “Why didn’t they teach us our history in school?”, Gippslandia
4. Libby Porter, “From an urban Country to urban Country: confronting the
cut of denial in Australia cities”, Australian Geographer.
5. Bung Yarnda Lake Tyers Mission Maps. 6. Bung Yarnda - Summary extracted from Indigenous Rights (2020). History of Lake Tyers.
7. Coranderrk landscape on Google Earth 8. “First Australians: Episode 3 Freedome of our times”, SBS Australia, http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/index/index/epid/3
9. Cummeragunja landscape on Google Earth 10. Cummeragunja - Summary provided by Aboriginal History and Culture of South Eastern Australia.
11. Cummeragunja 1939 Walk-Off Record, NSW State Archives & Records,
https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guidesand-indexes/stories/cummeragunja-walk-off
12. “This Place: View from the Shore” documentary by ABC Australia,
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/this-place-view-from-the-shore
13. Timmah Ball, “Does Blak Design matter or is just a white thing?”, Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture.
14. Timothy O’Rourke, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Domestic
Architecture in Australia”, The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture
15. Kelly Greenop, “Before Architecture Comes Place, Before Place Comes People: Contemporary Indigenous Places in Urban Brisbane, Queensland, Australia”, The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture
16. Timmah Ball, “Last Stone left: Wellbeing and Aboriginal Place making in the city”, Assemble Papers.
17. Colony Design, Instagram Post “ Dear Design, This letter is not about me”, a post in response to Black Lives Matter, 2nd June 2020 https://www. instagram.com/p/CA5vAlGJZdN/