Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Story of Two Paintings

1997; Springer International Publishing; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0311-4198

Gloria Beckett, Julie Kearney,

Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation

The Stolen Generation In this picture there's a Serpent Lady representing my Aboriginal homeland, a Serpent Lady with a pair of breasts, and instead of having her children in the belly I have painted them in the heart. The Aboriginal people feel this way. We belong to the land and the land belongs to us. We are part of the land. The person on the right is a figure since colonisation, the Aboriginal Protector. The crown represents the British colours and the many blue eyes are the eyes of our Aboriginal Protectors. They are the eyes of the Government searching for Aboriginal children throughout the land. The colour blue throughout this painting represents the Government. The Aboriginal Protector is smiling and happy to take the children away. His heart is all cracked and broken. To me, the Government pretends to be sad about our children but that's only a front. That's why the heart is all broken up, but under that surface they were very hard in their feelings. They didn't care about the family staying together. They didn't care about our relationship to our culture and our land, and our relationship with our people. The Aboriginal Protector is ripping out the children from the womb of the Serpent Lady, and the womb is in the heart. The umbilical cord has been ripped out of the womb, taking the lives and beliefs away from our culture, causing the other end of the cord to bleed, because we were dying. At the time that's what we believed, that we were a dying race. Four of the Serpent Lady's children are sitting on the Protector's arm, black, brown, white and yellow. There is a full blood baby, a brown baby, a half caste baby and a part Chinese baby. All these children were taken away. Behind the Serpent Lady are the many children who are hidden by their families. These are the eyes of the little children peeping behind trees and bushes, boxes and beds. Yet they're strong in their own culture and are untouched by the Government. The hand represents the strength of the culture and the ribbons of colours also represent our culture. These children are untouched by the Government and still remain in their traditional lifestyle. On the right side of the painting are people who have been assimilated into white society but still feel very much afraid of the system, knowing that their exemption can be revoked at any time. Their children are still hidden away due to the fact that they could still be taken away and also put into welfare institutions. Under the nose of the Protector are many Aboriginal people caught up in the Government system who are afraid to speak against their treatment. The Government has full control of their lives as they must conform to the rules and regulations of the Government system. They fear reprisals of imprisonment or removal to another penal settlement. At the bottom of the painting are people who grew up and were sent out to work at a very early age doing menial work for the rich people, slaving for long hours seven days a week. The Government had full control of their wages and those wages still remain in the Queensland Government's coffers. The Dormitory The figure with two sides to his face is the police officer. The white side, being bigger, represents the white viewpoint, the Queensland Government. He is a Native Police Officer who with others patrols the dormitory, an institution for Aboriginal girls who were taken away from their parents. He is like a puppet of the government system whose strings they can pull any which way they want to. He exercises discipline, escorting the 'inmates' to the pictures, the doctor's, the shops, the church. These police officers would escort us, one at the front and one at the back, just like prisoners. The smaller side, the darker side of the Native Police Officer's face shows he's crying. He's crying blood because deep down in his heart, which is shown by the symbol of the lock and the Murri-colour heart, he's crying for his people. …