Cirrus@Austlit

'Bush Women is a collection of texts exploring the striking history of six Indigenous women artists from the Kimberley: from living on Country, to the arrival of Europeans, stations and missions, to the contemporary era of telephones and acrylic paints, their lives are as underscored by radical change as they are by the continuity of the Dreaming stories of their lands.Bush Women was published on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of a 1994 exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre, featuring paintings by Daisy Andrews, Tjapartji Kanytjuri Bates, Tjingapa Davies, Paji Honeychild Yankkarr, Queenie McKenzie (Gara-Gara) and Pantjit Mary McLean. The contribution of these artists to the history of women's' art in Western Australia and to the expression of 20th-Century Indigenous lived experience is far-reaching and continues to engage audiences in contemporary exhibitions, collections and archives.' (Publication summary)

'In recording and ordering documents considered important, the archive is a source of power. It takes control of the past, deciding which voices will be heard and which won’t, how they will be heard and for what purposes. Indigenous communities understood the power of the archive well before the European Enlightenment arrived and began archiving them. For them colonialism has been a struggle over archives as much as anything else.

'The eighteen essays by twenty authors, seven of whom are Indigenous, investigate different aspects of this struggle in Australia, from Indigenous uses of traditional archives and the development of new ones to the deconstruction and appropriation of European archives by contemporary artists as acts of cultural empowerment. It also examines the uses of archives often developed for other reasons as a means to reconstruct the lives artists and the meanings of their art, such as the use of rainfall records to interpret early Papunya paintings. Indigenous Archives is the first overview examining the role of archives in the production and understanding of Indigenous culture. Wide-ranging in its scope, it reveals the lively state of research into Indigenous histories and culture in Australia.' (Publication summary)

'David Brooks is an anthropologist who has worked with the Ngaanyatjarra people, including the people at Wanarn, for over twenty-five years. He researched and wrote the connection reports through which they gained native title rights over the huge tract of the Australian Western Desert that is their home, and has worked with them on matters from negotiating with mining companies to facing the challenges of making education meaningful to the youth. He has written extensively on the rich desert Tjukurrpa and art, and on the layers of social and cultural interconnectedness of the people.' (Source: TROVE)