home | news l

Island's name is now truwana

29 May 2005 - CAPE Barren Island will be known by its Aboriginal name, says the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

TAC state secretary Trudy Maluga said the Aboriginal community would refer to the island as truwana.

The island was returned to the Aboriginal community in an official handover by Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon last month.

Ms Maluga said the Aboriginal community already used the island's original name.

"Cape Barren Island will probably always be Cape Barren to white people," Ms Maluga said. "But we name all our land".

University of Tasmania researcher Shayne Breen last week raised the prospect of using Aboriginal place names to help the community recognise Tasmania's 30,000-year human habitation.

Dr Breen, from the Riawunna Aboriginal Studies Unit, said the non-Aboriginal community could approach the Aboriginal community for permission.

"We might negotiate with the Aboriginal communities to adopt more extensive use of Aboriginal place names," Dr Breen said.

But he warned against "appropriating" Aboriginal culture.

"As soon as you start using Aboriginal culture to make ourselves feel better it can be seen as appropriation," Dr Breen said.

"All you can really do is each of us say what we think about this issue.

"There is a strong desire in Australia to understand more about Aboriginal culture and a growing awareness this is an Aboriginal country."

Dr Breen said Tasmania was an Aboriginal landscape and many were coming to realise that.

"Many Tasmanians are making a break from European culture and the way they see the land, to see the country in terms of its resources and how it can be transformed into saleable quantities, many have begun to question this," he said.

"Many people in Australia who don't have Aboriginal descent are coming to more of an Aboriginal perspective that the country is deserving of respect and it needs to be cared for.

"There's 30-plus thousand years of occupation here and we're not respecting that".

Source:The Mercury

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links