Well there's three versions of it now, but they all involve blackboard paint on a panel of some material, or just a wall. And then drawing my family tree in conte, white conte, to mimic the classroom.
This is how they taught me at school, with a blackboard. It's referencing that, because I'm putting my indigenous heritage on the wall. When I was at school, there was no indigenous history taught, so talk about what's missing from the curriculum. Also like the, you know, kind of the ephemeral nature of the chalk where you could rub it and you could try and erase the information, but it'll always leave a trace as well.
Looking at a family tree, researching it for, like over four years now on that ancestry site, building a tree, looking at the archives, finding information about family members, trying to work out how I became to be here kind of thing.
You know, despite all the things that happened to Aboriginal people, I know Bigambul people were victims of a massacre that reduced them to 100 people. I've discovered that, my great great grandmother, Queen Susan of Welltown, which is as far as I can go back on the Bigambul side and there's no written record before her. She was living on a large street property called Welltown, with some white owners that were, kind of, you know, friendly people. They were sort of living on the country and protected in a way.
Also, the tree is, evidence of my Aboriginality, you know, Aboriginal people can get questioned if they are Aboriginal or if you looked at the names in the tree and you research those names, you'll see photos, you'll see documents. They're placed in the archives because they're Aboriginal under the acts.
There's lots of material, because they were surveilled and money and accounts they didn't have access to. So you'll see letters about people discussing the accounts of my family, they got this scrutiny because they're Aboriginal people.
