In front of me is the most recent artwork by Wurundjeri Woiwurrung artist William Barak to come back to Country. Along with Parrying Shield, Corroborree (Women in possum skin cloaks) is on display at the State Library Victoria, South Rotunda. Together they are significant cultural objects recently returned to the Wurundjeri community through a crowd funding effort to purchase them at auction.

Three lines of figures move across a horizontal not-quite-square page. They carry digging sticks and babies on their backs. Some carry bags and all wear possum skin cloaks which are rendered in Barak’s signature wavy sections, adding more movement to the scene. His materials were a combination of traditional Kulin media such as ochre he mixed himself and charcoal, alongside European-derived paper, card, lead pencil and watercolour or gauche. Barak painted in the last two decades of his life at Coranderrk Aboriginal reserve, near present-day Healesville outside Narrm/Melbourne.

Because there’s no background detail or setting to add context, my eye dwells on the figures and the subtle differences between them. They move in different directions, perhaps suggesting a procession meandering up the page. The composition has the quality of an inventory, as though Barak has recorded each member of the group, down to their unique possum skin clothing which grew as they did, pelt by pelt, added as needed and enriched with experience.

An inscription in the top corner in French confirms the identity of the artist and gives clues to the previous owner of the drawing. This work was made in 1897 by Barak who was thought at one point to be ‘the last of his tribe’ (a phrase I don’t repeat lightly and acknowledge the offence this phrase can cause, more on this below). The owner was a Swiss neighbour of Barak’s, Jules de Pury, who lived near Healesville in Victoria during the period that the Coranderrk Aboriginal reserve was being established. For Jules de Pury, these appear to be the most important details in need of recording, but audiences today are left with many questions.

You can read the full story of how Barak knew Jules de Pury here. Before the drawing came back to Australia it was auctioned by de Pury’s descendants at Sotheby’s in 2022. I was asked to write the catalogue note for the auction, which is still online at the link above. The process forced me to reflect on my role as both an art historian, and someone motivated to support the community in their efforts to see the two artworks returned to Country.

My reflections on the experience have been published in Crosscurrents in Australian First Nations and non-Indigenous Art (edited by Caroline Jordan, Helen McDonald and Sarah Scott). A preview is available via Google Books, and you can also request your local library buy a copy.

Seeing the artworks come home has been one of the proudest and most exciting moments in my little career. And I’m not just saying that because I spent years completing a PhD on how Barak’s artworks found their way to Europe. This is so much bigger. The space within the South Rotunda has been beautifully transformed by Wurundjeri Woiwurrung curators Stacey Piper, Brooke Wandin and Mandy Nicholson, with moving accompanying text by Bill Nicholson. The Library staff have shown unintrusive support through the whole process and now, after a little wait, the artworks are home, ready to tell their stories.

Usually in this newsletter I would dedicate space to the thoughts of critics, to understand how perceptions of an artwork might change across time. My aim this time is a little different. This drawing has been hiding in a private collection for over 100 years. No one, let alone Barak’s descendants, has had the opportunity to reflect upon its meaning, situate it among Barak’s other drawings, or to speculate about its significance. These things are happening now because the work has been presented to the public, allowing everyone to view and appreciate the life and work of one of Victoria’s most important nineteenth century Aboriginal artists.

I urge you, if you’re able to, to get to the Library and have a look. The exhibition ‘beruk’ continues from 13 December until 30 April 2024. If you visit on a Sunday, you might also join the ongoing protest against the genocide in Palestine which meets on the Library’s steps. As a historian primarily focused on art and colonisation in different spheres it remains a privilege to examine the past, however, this comes with the responsibility to act in the present when the horrors of colonisation and attempted extermination are repeated.

Among their many layers of significance, Barak’s artworks represent the survival of his culture and cultural knowledge in the face of the colonial project enacted on the continent we now call Australia. I witness this and acknowledge the struggle of the Palestinian people to survive a settler colonial invasion on their land.

In the nineteenth century all over Britain’s empire, and probably others, it was expedient to believe in the inevitable demise of the native peoples they colonised. Reading accounts from the period of well-intentioned settlers, explorers, or elites, there is sometimes an accidental and lamenting acknowledgment of their role. ‘Ooops, we brought the small pox’. The victim was blamed for their intolerance to disease, alcohol, etc., thus confirming the superiority of the British and greenlighting their continued land grab.

It’s no accident that such phrases repeatedly end up on Barak’s artworks. His fame as an artist during his lifetime did in part stem from the fact that he was the leader of his people. The audience of tourists, anthropologists, settlers, elites and others who purchased and traded for drawings and cultural objects couldn’t fathom that other leaders, or ngurungaeta, would follow him. They thought he was the last.

The opportunity you have before you in the ‘beruk’ exhibition is to see this new leadership in action. The members of the Wurundjeri community who have worked tirelessly for the return of these artworks are today’s leaders. Ron Jones, in particular, as featured in the 7.30 report from last year on the auction, and all the knowledge holders who we don’t see, continuing Barak’s legacy.

What would the discussion look like if, instead of taking a fatalistic view, Jules de Pury and his contemporaries had chosen to inscribe something else on the drawing? I hope we can celebrate and recognise, rather than othering those people who are different from us.