Menu Close

Articles on Indigenous arts

Displaying 1 - 20 of 32 articles

People perform during the Boi-Bumbá in Parintins. The city’s annual festival has shown how remote communities can thrive despite isolation.

Parintins: A remote Brazilian city overcoming isolation through a festival

The “Festival do Boi-Bumbá” changed the fate of Parintins, Brazil. Its success shows the crucial role that cultural festivals play in isolated territories that often lack material infrastructure.
Mukurtu is a Warumungu word meaning “dilly bag” or a safe keeping place for sacred materials. Nina Maile Gordon/The Conversation CC-NY-BD

Mukurtu: an online dilly bag for keeping Indigenous digital archives safe

Mukurtu: an online dilly bag for keeping Indigenous digital archives safe The Conversation71.5 MB (download)
Mukurtu - Warumungu word meaning 'dilly bag' or a safe keeping place for sacred materials - is an online system helping Indigenous people conserve photos, songs and other digital archives.
Plays like ‘Where the Blood Mixes’ (with actors Kim Harvey and Billy Merasty) help shed light on Indigenous stories, helping to educate Canadian audiences. David Cooper

Indigenous theatre would thrive with funds from the Canadian government

Indigenous theatre and storytelling provides an opportunity for all Canadians to honour the directives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Canadian government should support this mission.
Sabbia Gallery - Alison Milyika Carroll working on a pot at Ernabella Arts ceramic studio, 2017. Photo Ernabella Arts, Courtesy of Sabbia Gallery

All fired up: Clay Stories is a triumphant display of contemporary Indigenous ceramics

Clay Stories, a travelling exhibition, showcases ceramic art from Indigenous artists across the country. It is a triumphant display of specific stories and Dreamings, standing against cultural and political amnesia.
Shiralee Hood performing in 2016: being a left-handed, Indigenous woman, she describes herself as a ‘triple threat’. Supplied

Deadly Funny – a new brand of Australian comedy

Aboriginal stand-up comedy is thriving and no topic, it seems, is off limits. As the Melbourne International Comedy Festival opens, here’s the lowdown on Indigenous humour.
Indigenous games like ‘Honour Water’ can teach Indigenous values and ceremonial practices. Honour Water/Elizabeth LaPensée

Video games encourage Indigenous cultural expression

A strengthening movement of Indigenous designers and developers is working to show Indigenous cultures, teachings, languages and ways of knowing through video games.
Actors read a new Indigenous play at the Yellamundie Festival. © Jamie Williams courtesy of Sydney Festival

Joyous, comic and grim: the best new Indigenous playwrights

A development festival for Indigenous Australian playwrights showcased a range of stories: from the sharply comic tale of a woman hunting for her wayward husband to a powerful exploration of prison violence.
Dan Sultan played a defiant version of Midnight Oil’s The Dead Heart at 1967: Music in the Key of Yes. Prudence Upton

Celebrating the songs of Australia’s civil rights movement

From My Island Home to Treaty, Indigenous musical luminaries gathered in Sydney on Tuesday to sing classic songs marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum.
A picture of strength: lifelong activist Bonita Mabo OA in front of her portrait as a young woman, which features in her granddaughter Boneta-Marie Mabo’s first solo exhibition. Josef Ruckli, courtesy of the State Library of Queensland

Black Velvet: redefining and celebrating Indigenous Australian women in art

Boneta-Marie Mabo’s art responds to a colonial past in which Aboriginal women were fetishised as “black velvet”. But it also celebrates strong women, including her activist grandmother Bonita Mabo.
Mariaa Randall delivers an impressive performance in HA LF at the Footscray Arts Centre. Photo by Jeff Busby

HA LF’s ‘kooriography’ shines at the Wominjeka Festival

As part of the Footscray Community Arts Centre’s Womenjika Festival this weekend, Mariaa Randall (Githatbul and Gidabul) and the DubaiKungkaMiyalk (DKM) Dance Company’s moving performance HA LF places…
Indigenous land management jobs have been a popular, growing area of employment in recent years. AAP Image/Peter Eve

Would you risk losing your home for a few weeks of work?

Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Carly Sheppard is performing in Melbourne as part of Next Wave. Gregory Lorenzutti

White Face – some notes from a fair-skinned Aboriginal

Carly Sheppard’s latest work, White Face playing as part of Melbourne’s Next Wave festival this week, is a contemporary performance addressing personal experiences as a fair-skinned Aboriginal person based…
Australian Indigenous performance traditions are a unique expression of what it is to be human. Tali Caspi

We’ve lost 98% of Indigenous music traditions – who cares?

Australian Indigenous performance traditions, among the oldest in the world, are also among the most endangered. According to a Statement on Indigenous Australian Music and Dance endorsed in 2011 by the…
Aboriginal Mimi ‘trickster’ spirits are genderless. Making Camp at 'Forest, Cunningham's Gap, 1856', 2009, pigmented inks on 310gsm Huhnemuble German Etching Paper, edition of 5, 29.5 x 42 cm (paper size). Courtesy of the artist, Troy-Anthony Baylis

The art of seeing Aboriginal Australia’s queer potential

Since European contact Aboriginal people, such as myself, have been constructed as “straight”. This cultural default has contributed to the difficulty of proving so-called “real accounts” of sexual and…

Top contributors

More