The separation of over 100,000 Aboriginal children from their native lands and families was not an isolated act committed out of mere individual prejudice or governmental misjudgement; instead, it was an intentional, calculated colonial policy designed to completely sever the ties of Indigenous peoples to their land and culture by making sure that Indigenous children could not come into contact with their own kin. Instead, the new generation was forced to assimilate completely to so-called “civilisation”—that is, Western culture and Christianity. By rendering the cross-generation transferral of knowledge and identity impossible, colonists could easily dismantle Indigenous social structures and establish complete control over land, labour, and governance in Indigenous communities.
The collage reflects this layered process. The broken branch is a metaphor for the rupture of over 65,000 years of cultural continuity.
90.77%—that is the percentage of Australians who voted on May 27, 1967 to amend the constitution to be more friendly towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a moment that will be forever monumental in the history of Indigenous rights in Australia. More specifically, the alterations to the constitution in the referendum meant that the federal government could make specific legislation regarding Indigenous Australians as with any other group, and that Indigenous people were counted as part of the population in official censuses. This great change demonstrated the strength of decades of campaigns by Aboriginal activists, who had finally managed to push Aboriginal rights into debate after decades.
However, the referendum did not mean that complete equality was immediately achieved; more change came eventually, but many forms of discrimination and structural inequality affecting Indigenous Australians remain unresolved to this day. What the referendum did do, however, was create the constitutional basis for greater federal involvement in Indigenous affairs and demonstrate an unprecedented level of public support for reform. In that sense, its importance lay not in solving inequality overnight, but in opening the door to further political change and giving greater national visibility to issues that Aboriginal activists had been campaigning on for decades.
These collages explore two major moments in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history: the first shows the Stolen Generations, in which Aboriginal children were forcefully removed from their families by the government between the 1910s and 1970s; the second shows something more hopeful—the 1967 Referendum, in which Australians overwhelmingly voted to remove discriminatory provisions against Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders from the Australian constitution. Through layered textures, the following pictures weave an image of loss and triumph, of powerlessness and strength.
Government policies disrupted families, culture and identity, yet the strength and resistance of Indigenous communities persisted across generations. Together, the two works move from displacement and separation toward recognition and change, showing two important chapters in history that still deeply affect Indigenous Australians today.