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Zeitgeist

By Roger Cox

28 August 2004 - When the first white settlers arrived in the countries we now call Australia and the United States, preserving the art and culture of indigenous peoples wasn’t very high up on their list of priorities. After all, there were claims to stake, wars to fight and fortunes to be made. But now, finally, there is evidence that the white men who currently rule these two nations are starting to think about the creative output of the people who lived there before them.

Let’s start in America - in Washington DC, to be precise, where the Smithsonian Institution is poised to open its National Museum of the American Indian. Located on four acres of prime real estate, the building has been constructed after careful consultation with the native tribes it is there to represent. Its entrance faces east, in deference to native tradition, and its five-storey-high lobby features an electronic welcome board in hundreds of native languages.

There are more than 7,000 objects in the museum - from beaded moccasins to gold statues - and all of them are to be made accessible to today’s native Americans, who see them not as inanimate objects but as living things that need to be continually nourished with ceremonial offerings. More than 12,000 native Americans from tribes across the country are expected to attend the opening of the museum on 21 September - a testament to the success of the project and probably one hell of a party to boot.

In the land of Oz, meanwhile, there are also moves afoot to recognise the contribution of indigenous people to the cultural life of the nation. There, the Federal Government is investigating the feasibility of a resale royalty right. This would mean that, whenever a work of art by an Aboriginal artist is sold to a third party, the artist would receive a percentage of the sale price. It is hoped that this system will inject more money into Australia’s impoverished Aboriginal communities, although art dealers, understandably, are dead against it.

Native Aussie artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula must be wishing that someone had come up with this resale royalty idea a few years ago. In the 1970s he offloaded a painting called Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa for $150; in 2000 it was sold on for $486,500. But it was ever thus.

Source: The Scotsman

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