Professor Mark McMillan

Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Education and Engagement, RMIT University

My current position at RMIT is Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor of Indigenous Education and Engagement, chair of the RMIT Academic Board, and University Council member. None of those things are responsible for reconciliation, but all of those things are responsible for reconciliation.

Wurrunggi Biik: Law of the Land initially started as a conversation about how New Academic Street (NAS) would inscribe or reflect what a redevelopment is supposed to do—tell a particular story about place and about the relationships that sit within it. The project officers and people who were involved with NAS articulated that the relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and place was absent. This recognition reflected the development of NAS as an idea spanning 10 years and the maturing of the institution by the time NAS was in the final stages of completion.

RMIT has moved into a positive sense of reconciliation about the future. We want to build active relationships between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. At RMIT there is not just the expectation but the institutional support and encouragement for people to situate themselves in the relationship of reconciliation. How do you commemorate or memorialise the relationship of place with Kulin today? Stacey Campton—as one of the principal drivers of reconciliation at RMIT—played a central role in addressing this question. As the driver of reconciliation at RMIT, she brought together the constellations of Grace, Jess, NAS, and Aboriginality more fully. Stacey and I worked with Jess and Grace to talk about the brief we put out to artists and creative practitioners. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with Grace where we said, ‘Let’s talk about Sovereignty as the root of reconciliation or Aboriginal Sovereignty itself’. That moment was the paradigm shift. We weren’t going to ask Indigenous creative practitioners merely to signal, but to explain their creative practice through Sovereignty. That was the change that I am most proud of, and most proud of being able to contribute to. It wasn’t just about what the finished piece would be, but about the ways we could signal relationship in the conception of creative practice. That’s where I got very excited.

For me, engagement with Indigenous students is more than knowing that it is important or performing a structural obligation. The practice of engagement is not about burdening Indigenous students with the question, ‘What do you know about Aboriginality?’ The process of the project invited them to engage with Country on their terms as Sovereigns.

Sovereignty isn’t a Western construct. It’s a word that in English is the bridge between practices. Non-Indigenous people have used Westphalian notions of Sovereignty for assertion of control and authority. On the other hand, Aboriginal pre-existing and continuing Sovereignties are about the relationships of authority and how that is organised around place. Sovereignty in the way that we use it here is the bridge between two ways of knowing. It’s about how we all relate to each other within a shared knowledge of place.

One cannot walk past Wurrunggi Biik: Law of the Land and it be rendered invisible. When you see the sculpture, you cannot help but be moved by it. It invites participation. I like to stop and watch other people’s reactions—there’s always a double take. In their busyness, people walk past the figure, but then they also notice that it’s not moving. I find the double take a powerful moment of real engagement of the viewer asking what the work is, beyond admiring it for its technical or aesthetic appeal. When you look down, you see how it has been put into the landscape. You notice the plating and the design of the plating that holds it in place. The bottom of the cloak is a representation of Bundjil, which is an invitation to be with place, with the knowledge of the conditions of which the welcome is made.

Pieces like this sculpture are designed to not merely represent, they’re designed to affect. Wurrunggi Biik: Law of the Land is a process of absolute affect.