02 | Shooting the Past | Camp Sovereignty

A photograph of two men, one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous, holding hands leads Clare Wright to investigate the history of First Nations resistance in Australia

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  I'm Claire Wright and this is Shooting the Past, where every picture is worth at least a thousand words, if not a whole history. Last year, I went to see an exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. It was curated around themes and there were literally hundreds of stunning images. But there was only one that I was still thinking about long after I'd left the gallery. The photograph lingered on the blurry edge of my consciousness for months, begging me to draw it back into focus. I finally heeded the call and tracked the image down to its permanent home at the Koori Heritage Trust.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Taken by Indigenous photographer Lisa Belair in 2006, the image freezes in mid-frame, the backs of two men walking away from the camera. One of them is shirtless, the black skin of his broad muscular back glistening in the sun. He wears a rasta hat and red board shorts. Beside him is a white man in a light blue shirt. He wears a dark blue peaked hat and dark blue slacks. There's a walkie talkie strapped to his belt. He's a policeman. The men are walking across a green lawn in the direction of a group of people. It takes a minute to realise that the two men are holding hands.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  It's this detail, the simple act of hand-holding, that embeds the photo in my memory. Is the policeman leading the black man away? Or is the man in the board shorts guiding the policeman? They don't seem to be in conflict. Their touch appears somehow intimate, trusting. So what's going on? I really need to know.

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  Camp Sovereignty was established in King's Domain during the Commonwealth Games as part of a camp...

• 2:42Speaker 05

  The area is a burial site. Fire stays, it's a win today.

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  This camp has opened our eyes that how much we really love our country, what we'll do to get the point across and to hopefully get it back.

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  I've come to the King's Domain in Melbourne, the large public parkland where Indigenous activists set up a protest camp in 2006, the setting for Lisa Belair's mesmerising photograph. I'm here to speak to Camp Sovereignty organiser Robbie Thorpe, who takes me to the spot where the photo was shot. Robbie identifies Robert Corowa as the man holding hands with the policeman. So what else can Robbie tell me about this image?

• 3:23Speaker 07

  I just wonder who's leading who there. It's so often been the way that we're being led away by the police, but it looks like Robert's leading the policemen somewhere. He might be taken into the fires. Robert had a lot to offer. He's very much a diplomat.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  So Robbie, take us to 2006. You were one of the organisers of Camp Sovereignty. What was your thinking behind it?

• 3:49Speaker 07

  I attended the 1982 Brisbane Games and seen the effectiveness of exposing Australia at a critical time.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Exposing Australia to the world, to the international community.

• 4:01Speaker 07

  I remember one of the sayings was, "The whole world is watching."

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  From that time, from 1980, that's where we look for the international spotlight and see how we can get our message across. So we've done the genocide thing.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 07

  So this was sovereignty and the law of the land, the sacred fire. Such incredibly beautiful stories we have about our law in this country.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  So tell me about the fire. What was the significance of the fire?

• 4:32Speaker 07

  Well, this was connected to the struggle at Tent Embassy and we carried those ashes through country.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  So they were actually the ashes or embers from that fire?

• 4:42Speaker 07

  Who had been mixed with the ancient fires of fire and the Germanic ancient fires, you know, Nagasaki's dust in there as well. I always think about the Bringing Them Home report, where our children got stolen. You need to bring them back to the fire because home is where the hearth is.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  So did you have white fellas that were attracted to the flame as well and came and stood with you?

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  Too much.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  It was having a peaceful protest, one of the main objectives?

• 5:08Speaker 07

  Always is. Yeah, kids here.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  So 60 days, the camp was in operation. Run me through what a typical day in camp would be like.

• 5:18Speaker 07

  I'd crawl out of my tent and there'd be half the world's media with their camera coming as you're coming out of the tent.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  So you get up, you face the paparazzi, then what happens next?

• 5:28Speaker 07

  We go and cook a food. We had two fires, one for cooking and one for ceremony. We'd go and cook a food and talk about what the plans were for today.

• 5:38Speaker 07

  Always had a great plan.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  So there's a whole sort of series of rolling protests that were going on within the larger camp? And how many tents would there have been, set up here on this beautiful grassy plain that we see now?

• 5:51Speaker 07

  Right down to where those people are sitting there, right along there, right at the back to that foothill.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  So hundreds, I'm imagining.

• 5:57Speaker 07

  We had a couple of caravans in here.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  So there were women, families, kids?

• 6:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

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  Dogs?

• 6:03Speaker 07

  Yes.

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  I'm imagining...

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  And this was the attraction. We had one of the band members from the Rolling Stones come up here and tried to buy this peace hock for 10 grand. We wouldn't sell it to them. He walked all the way around here in the rain, couldn't find a place. He folded his nose with the gums and he found it here in the middle of the rain. You know, we had a good relationship with the local council, John Say. John Say was up here talking treaty. He was the mayor at that time. You know, I think John Howard intervened and said, "We can't allow this fire to take root."

• 6:37Speaker 04

  So that was the end of it, when John Howard intervened?

• 6:39Speaker 07

  No, we said, "No, you can't touch the fire, there's a ceremony going on." So they took us through the heritage legislation. 30 days later, they came to enforce.

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  The local government shut it down.

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  The activists have been granted a 30-day emergency heritage declaration.

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  The Aboriginal protesters in Melbourne's King's Domain must pack up their tents by 2pm.

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  I think all Australians would stand up for the right to protest, but would stand against this farce that's developing in King's Domain.

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  When it all ended, because basically you were moved off, how did you feel then? Did you feel like you had achieved the goals that you'd set out?

• 7:25Speaker 07

  Felt that we'd achieved, you know, doing what we set out to do, getting that limelight. Felt deflated too, when they actually put that fire out. It was, you know, people felt healed from it. Something very special there, you know. So I think we really felt sad that it went, but we thought, "Look, we can do this again."

• 7:49Speaker 04

  So the goal of it being a peaceful protest, that was achieved?

• 7:53Speaker 07

  Yes.

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  No arrests?

• 7:54Speaker 07

  No arrests. Families that brought their kids here, who were sort of, "Oh, you can't do that, you can't..." They stepped through that and they found, "Yes, we can do this."

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  Robbie, what does sovereignty mean to you today?

• 8:12Speaker 07

  Sovereignty in any situation is the law of the land. The fundamental law of that land is the sovereign. We are that.

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  And we held our state here. And we had law that it was attached to those, the way we used land and looked after land. We had an entrenched law. That was our sovereignty and that's what needs to be recognised, you know.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  So this photograph, you've said, to you, it looks like unity.

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  And as an optimist, would you say that there's a way that there will be unity between Aboriginal ideas of sovereignty and the British legal notions of sovereignty? Can they come together?

• 8:56Speaker 07

  Well, Confucius said, "You can hide three things only for so long: the sun, the moon, and the truth." And sooner or later, that truth will come. And that's why we don't, we're not going to do nothing violent. All the activism I've ever done, we've had our kids with this march.

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  So in a way, Lisa Belair captured the moment that the police and other wider media didn't want to be seen, this actually peaceful moment.

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  Completely disarming that.

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  Well, Robbie, thank you for taking us back to that moment. It feels very special. I wish we could be standing around a fire. And I really appreciate you just walking us through it.

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  Thank you.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  I'm Claire Wright, and this is Shooting the Past, where each week, a different photograph helps us dive deep into Australian history.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  From what Robbie has explained, Camp Sovereignty was a significant nonviolent protest that went on for weeks. That explains the people sitting down under the trees and the presence of the police in Lisa's photo. But now I'm keen to know just how far back the push for recognition of Indigenous sovereignty can be traced. Historian Richard Broome, an emeritus professor at La Trobe University, has written extensively on Aboriginal history. How did the traditional owners assert their rights at the point of first contact with the British invaders?

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  Many groups had a physical resistance to the Europeans. That was always difficult because of they generally being overwhelmed in any local area and eventually outgunned. And of course, settlers had horses as well as guns, which became much more efficient after the 1850s. So that the resistance wasn't a long-term strategy. And therefore, I think they had to work out ways in which they could retain their Aboriginity and retain as much autonomy and connection to land as possible while living in this changed colonial

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  world. So that very early on, Aboriginal people, particularly in the Melbourne region, for instance, the elder called Billy Belairia asked for land in 1843. And he, I think, was being a realist in saying that we would farm like whitefellas and we would make it work. Eventually, they played a role in where the new reserves would be in a number of cases when the government finally realised they had to do something. Aboriginal people then tried to make these reserves work. And they were told, particularly by some of the people they trusted, that if they farmed well and made it work, the Queen would give them this

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  land. So they made appeals to the Queen in the 19th century and, of course, was going over the head of the local authorities that they saw had the real power in their lives. So these efforts to get land went on right through the 19th century.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Who were some of the other heroes of the Australian Indigenous resistance?

• 12:34Speaker 07

  Just to take the case of Victoria, some of the important people, you know, are William Cooper, Bill Owens, Doug Nichols. And then a whole host of younger people that come through in the Advancement League. And one standout, I suppose, is Bruce McGuinness, who ends up becoming head of the League and goes off to the Pan-African Congress in 1970. And while there, he puts a petition to the United Nations on questions of land and also one about genocide. Again, you've got that strategy of appealing to wider audiences

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  and higher authorities than Australian governments.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  And tell me about the Tend Embassy. It seems to be a bit of a touchstone for the Indigenous resistance movement. It's 1972, Whitlam. Set the scene for me.

• 13:33Speaker 07

  Yep. Well, I think there were precursors to this, and what was happening in the League was one of those. But it was a dramatic moment because the notion of having an embassy really asserted we were a sovereign group of people. And of course, it got a lot of attention being on the lawns of Old Parliament House. It got a lot of people upset. Eventually, they pulled it down overnight after about three or four months.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  The government pulled it down?

• 14:07Speaker 07

  Yeah. But Gough Whitman, the leader of the opposition, went out there and met with people and talked about what their demands were. And the demands, for instance, they wanted return of Aboriginal reserves, they wanted a percentage of the gross domestic product of Australia, they wanted recognition of Aboriginal law and culture and protection of sacred sites. So those things were important because they are Indigenous issues. No longer are people fighting for civil rights, that we want equality with other Australians, but they wanted things that were special and particular to Aboriginal Australians.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  And were these events, the Tend Embassy, the Commonwealth Games, were they important in establishing that pan-Indigenous identity?

• 14:58Speaker 07

  Look, I think they were manifestations of it because in the 1960s, I think that's when it all starts to gel. There are magazines coming out, one's called Identity, which is, of course, a very pertinent title. And it was reporting on Aboriginal events across Australia. And there were also the beginnings of, for instance, in Victoria, the holding of Aboriginal-only meetings called Aboriginal Congresses, where the people discussed the problems of housing and work and everything else. One Aboriginal historian has called this Aboriginal nationalism emerging.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  So, Richard, Camp Sovereignty, 2006, and other Commonwealth Games. Can you put Camp Sovereignty into the context of this longer history of Indigenous resistance?

• 15:52Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I think it just stretches way back to those first moments where Aboriginal people said, "Well, what's happening is not right." They were making moral claims on the settlers. You know, "You've taken our land. You have left us in an abject situation. And there's been enormous loss of life and things." So Camp Sovereignty, I think, was about reconciling differences, getting people around a fire and discussing issues. So I think it's in that same stream where Aboriginal people are trying to get gestures of engagement.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Richard, how is it important to an understanding of Australian history to consider the history of Australian Indigenous resistance?

• 16:38Speaker 07

  It's just vital and essential because otherwise, you're talking about half a history, you know? Since 1788, we've been bound up as settler people, bound up with Indigenous people. And it's a sort of a drama that is still ongoing, but it cannot be untangled. It just has to be made right. And so you can only understand settler Australians by understanding their relationship with Indigenous Australians and what the situation of Indigenous Australians was and is.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Richard, could you have a look at the photo that Lisa Belair took? When you look at this photograph as an historian, what is it that you see?

• 17:24Speaker 07

  Well, it's sort of arresting in a way, to use a bad pun, because throughout the whole history of relations between Aboriginal people and settler Australians, the police have been at the forefront of conflict and problems. The border police on the frontier was a case in point. So they were the face for Aboriginal people of the powerful ones. When there's been demonstrations, it's the police that are pushing Aboriginal people back, conflicting with them. You know, they have had a long history of, I guess, racial profiling and the way they police on a daily basis. I'm not totally overly critical of

• 18:07Speaker 07

  police, but they've been doing a job for the rest of Australia, basically. So when you see this photo, it's just quite astonishing to see, you know, a man in uniform and a man in an Aboriginal uniform, if you like, holding hands, walking, I'm not sure where, but I guess trying to negotiate, trying to make things a bit better around this protest site. So it's quite astonishing. And it's, I suppose, typical of Lisa that she would come out of something from left field to produce a wonderful image like this.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  Lisa was all kinds of things. She was passionate about higher education. She was a qualified social worker. She was a poet. She was a broadcaster. She was, she called herself a community photographer.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  That's Kim Kruger, a Mariner and South Sea Islander woman who grew up in the Melbourne Aboriginal community and who now works at the Mundani Balak Academic Centre at Victoria University. Kim curated a retrospective exhibition of Lisa Balair's photography in 2016, 10 years after Lisa's untimely death at the age of 45. The exhibition was called Close to You. Kim and Lisa were also cousins, so she's certainly the right person to tell me about the artist who created this compelling image.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Lisa was born in Melbourne. She's part of the Balair and Korowa family. And there's not many of us born in Melbourne. There's probably only a handful of us. Lisa called herself a 'Gumpu woman'. She also identified with Mingable country, so round tweed heads there, and Strabberack Island. And her mother moved down here, Anie Binkie, and passed away when Lisa was very, very young. And Lisa was left in the care of a childcare service

• 20:21Speaker 05

  and was adopted out when she was very young. So she grew up apart from her family, our family, even though her grandmother had tried to get her back. So it's very distressing for us that she was adopted out because her family wanted her.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Does she identify as a member of the Stolen Generation?

• 20:44Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes, she was very active in Stolen Generations activism and advocacy. She was, she helped set up the Stolen Generations Victoria, which became Connecting Home, which was a service for members of the Stolen Generations. And she was also very active when the people were testifying to the, what became the Bringing Them Home Report, supporting people to testify, because she was a qualified social worker. And so we worked together in a lot of different ways. I worked in theatre, she came and did a comedy show with the Whidgery Theatre. She was a founding member of the Whidgery Theatre.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Kim, Lisa tragically passed in 2006 and you co-curated an exhibition after, 10 years after her death, of her photographs. How did you come to be involved in her work?

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Well, it's a 20-year story. But, well, first of all, her passing was really traumatising. Because she was only 45, she wrote a poem where she wondered if she would live to 46 because the life expectancy of Aboriginal women in Victoria in the 1990s, when she wrote the poem, was 45. So, you know, to see her pondering these things 10 years earlier and then it happening 10 years later was just, you know, astounding. So, yeah, so that was very traumatic and it's still, we still carry it.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  None of us that were very close to her, and there were a lot of people that were very close to Lisa because she was so, she went everywhere. She was everywhere all the time. She was always there supporting other people.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  So she was nothing if not prolific. I think there's something like 20,000 photographs in the collection that the Koori Trust has of her work. And it seems to me, looking through some of them, that one of the motifs that comes out is of policemen. She liked taking photographs of them and capturing them in very, I would say, she captured policemen off their guard. What was it that you think that she had, her particular interest in policemen?

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Well, policemen are very problematic figures for Aboriginal people. They're the people that removed Aboriginal children. They're the people that lock our men up. They're part of the surveillance and the control of Aboriginal people. And I know that there's a lot of work that's gone into the justice system to, you know, try and create better relationships with Aboriginal people and the police. But in the main, they're very scary people. They're figures of authority. They're figures of the state. So, yeah, Lisa's photos of police are very interesting. And, yeah, I've thought about that a lot. I mean, when I was going through the 30,000 photos,

• 23:49Speaker 05

  I found a picture of my daughter and her cousin that Lisa took, sitting on the back of a paddy wagon. And I don't remember this happening. So Lisa used to babysit my daughter. So it was obviously, they did that when I wasn't there. And I was horrified. But then I was looking at them and they're so cheeky in the photo. And the police are looking quite amenable. I think part of it was about trying to, trying to make them unscary. Like trying to look back at them and, yeah, catch them off their guard and try and make them find their humanity, I guess, in some way.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  There is a sense of the profound in Lisa's photos, but often a sense of the ridiculous as well. There's a lightness of touch. Can you speak to that?

• 24:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, lots of Lisa's photos were just about graffiti, like sort of visual jokes with signs. Sometimes she'd just take photos of vomit in the gutter. Or one of my favourites was a picture of herself in a newspaper article and the newspaper was scrunched up and chucked in the gutter. I love that. It was like, oh, this is, you know, for all my high mightiness by getting it written about in the newspaper, I'm still in the gutter, sort of thing. So those sorts of things, I think, were really playful and she was always laughing. She had a really good sense of humour.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  If Lisa was still here with us today, 12 years on from Camp Sovereignty, what do you think she'd be taking photographs of now?

• 25:21Speaker 05

  Well, she would have been taking photos at Camp Freedom on the Gold Coast, at the Stolonworth Games. You know, there's a legacy of protest and activism around those games. I think she would be very proud of really strong voices of young Aboriginal women that are coming out, especially of the warriors of the Aboriginal resistance. And she would be very proud of Lydia Thorp being in Parliament. So the same old stuff, really. But, yes, a lot of young women now and who are, you know, amazing people in their own right, like writers like Ellen Van Neven and Celeste Little, pay tribute to her as an influencer through her writing and her broadcasting.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  And she would be absolutely tufted by that. Artists have a responsibility to address the issues. Address the issues of family violence, address the issues of alcoholism and also incest and takes a lot of guts and courage to realise that we've done wrong to each other. And then, once you acknowledge that, then we've got to move on. But also other issues as well, and that's the issues about how we can love each other and the laughter and the aunts and the uncles and the sitting around by the campfires.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  That's Lisa Balair, speaking on ABC RN's Away in 1994. My thanks to guests Robbie Thorpe, Emeritus Professor Richard Broome and Kim Kruger.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Shooting the past is an ABC Radio National production, recorded on unceded war-onjury land.

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