alumni M A G A Z I N E
ABORIGINAL LEADERSHIP
| ISSUE 52 | 2021
Acknowledging Tasmanian Aboriginal culture in our public spaces An interview with Professor Greg Lehman
Pro Vice-Chancellor, Aboriginal Leadership, Professor
“I was looking at colonial land, not just looking as an
Greg Lehman delivered the Dick and Joan Green Family
art historian might … I was quite naturally seeing
Award for Tasmanian History Lecture in September,
evidence of Aboriginal activity, signs of cultural
along with fellow award winner Professor Tim Bonyhady.
burning, for example,” Professor Lehman said.
Professor Lehman reflects here on the ways the University is rectifying past absences of Aboriginal culture in our public spaces, providing opportunity to contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal artists, and welcoming community. Professor Lehman (BSc 1984, GraDipEnvSt Hons 1998, PhD 2017) believes that with the campus transformation programs in Burnie, Launceston and Hobart, there are multiple opportunities to expand the University’s acknowledgement of Tasmania’s Aboriginal culture.
That was when it struck Professor Lehman that unlike the colonial art of New South Wales in the 1820s, which typically included Aboriginal people placed in the landscape as a part of a picturesque study, Tasmanian colonial art of the period is defined by the absence of Aboriginal Tasmanians. “The problem is, in the 1820s, there were plenty of Aboriginal people still living on this Country … They were very active in the landscape,” Professor Lehman said.
“One of the things I’ve been very keen to do is look for opportunities for the University to rectify the absence of Aboriginal culture in public spaces,” Professor Lehman said. “The Aboriginal textile designs at Inveresk and at The Hedberg are welcome signs of this beginning to occur. “We have opportunities to not only recognise the past, but support innovation and entrepreneurship into the future, creating learning places that are welcoming to Aboriginal students and community.” Descended from the Trawulwuy people of North-East Tasmania, Professor Lehman draws on knowledge gained from his doctorate at the University investigating
One of the things I’ve been very keen to do is look for opportunities for the University to rectify the absence of Aboriginal culture in public spaces.”
the representation of Aboriginal people in colonial art. His earlier degrees at the University were in the life sciences and human geography, giving him a strong interest in landscape and culture. Professor Greg Lehman
In fact, a state of martial law had been declared against Tasmania’s Aboriginal population. Aboriginal people were only reinstated into these colonial paintings once the last Aboriginal resistance group had been removed from mainland Tasmania to Flinders Island, “almost as a memorial to the sad reality of their removal,” Professor Lehman said. “It took the political acts of the 1970s to reassert Aboriginal presence. “The University, through the work of people like Professor Henry Reynolds (BA Hons 1960, MA 1964, HonDLitt 1998), Dr Nicholas Clements (BA Hons 2007, PhD 2013), Dr Ian McFarlane (PhD 2002) and other historians, has succeeded in creating a body of historical literature which fills that gap in a historical and intellectual way.
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