The Federal Government has brought into being an all-Indigenous 10-person board, which will oversee $52m in funding over four years from 2024-2025. The board was part of the government’s Revive cultural policy and was made possible with legislation passed earlier this year establishing First Nations Arts as a part of Creative Australia, the government’s cultural funding arm.

This sounds great – but no one has yet explained how different in form or powers this board is from the old Aboriginal Arts Board that existed for 52 years, with its Chair on the Council itself.

The official line sounds pretty familiar. “The board will oversee the work of First Nations Arts within Creative Australia to support and promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, enhance sustainable career pathways for First Nations people in the arts and increase opportunities to grow First Nations audiences. The First Nations Board will also help guide the creation of significant First Nations works and increase their scale and reach”.

The 10 members of the Board, including 2 Co-chairs, were selected with broad representation across theatre, visual arts, television, film, dance and governance. “Each member”, claimed Arts Minister Tony Burke, “brings a wealth of knowledge and experience that will enable them to make pivotal contributions to supporting and empowering First Nations artists and arts workers”.

And the new Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, added that ensuring broad representation and deep expertise in First Nations arts informed the makeup of the Board.

What no one in Canberra seems to have noticed is that this highly-credentialled board contains not a single member from anywhere in the North or Torres Straits! They are all excellent arts persons, but have no visible connections to tribal Australia with its deep roots in ceremony, itself the well-spring of all First Nations art.

It’s all very well for McCarthy to intone, “Empowering First Nations artists to lead their own cultural expression is essential for building resilient communities. By investing in First Nations leadership in the arts, we foster authentic storytelling and pathways for future generations”. But she herself comes from communities in the NT. How is their resilience represented for the next 4 years?

Not that this is a new question. For the Aboriginal Arts Board, which started in 1973 with equal representation of remote and urban artists, and its successor the First Nations Arts and Culture Strategy Panel have not actually bothered with remote representation since 2008 when one Terry Marawili (more usually known as Djambawa Marawili AM) completed his term of office.

Here’s what I had to say on the whole sad story in 2022 when an event called Purrumpa supposedly celebrated 50 years of ATSI control of funding for First Nations arts.

But another side of this story emerged when I questioned the long-serving Will Stubbs – funded as the Buku Larrnggay Arts Centre director by the Federal Arts Ministry because the old Arts Board refused to fund non-Indigenous facilitators – about the reluctance of his Yolŋu artists to seek positions on the First Nations Arts board. His response: “The travel and language and just the concept that centralised Government has any involvement with art – are all barriers. If I suggested you (as a journo) sit in a room for three days to discuss the ethical position of journalists in Portugal – all in Portuguese – the novelty would wear off pretty quick”.

So, if both sides – the urban and the remote – have such different world views, lacking understanding or even concern for the other’s way of being, then surely, if Creative Australia can’t either attract or appoint remote artists to its board, we do have to consider splitting the First Nations Arts board into two sections. One in Sydney, the other in Darwin. It must have helped in the old, better balanced days that board meetings travelled to its various member’s Country, allowing Borroloola-born design guru, John Moriarty to recall: “In Arnhemland people called urban Aboriginals ‘yella fellas’. Wandjuk (Marika) himself used to say to me, ‘They’ve lost their culture, they don’t know nothing,’ and this took a lot of negotiation, coming together, warm friendships – and these often happened in and around the Aboriginal Arts Board meetings”.

By the way, the new board appointees are:
• Rachael Maza AM (Co-chair) – a Yidinji and Meriam woman and the current Artistic Director and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Ilbijerri Theatre Company.
• Philip Watkins (Co-chair) – part of large extended Arrernte and Larrakia families from Alice Springs (Mparntwe). He is currently Chief Executive Director of Desart Incorporated.
• Clint Bracknell (Member) – a Noongar song-maker, composer and Professor of Music at the University of Western Australia.
• Pauline Clague (Member) – a Yaegl woman from the North Coast of New South Wales. She has worked as a storyteller and producer in film and TV for 25 years.
• Jeanette James (Member) – a practising Tasmanian Aboriginal artist and traditional shell necklace stringer whose work is deeply rooted in her palawa cultural heritage.
• Deborah Mailman AM (Member) – an award-winning television and film actor and singer. Ms Mailman has both Aboriginal (Bidjara) and Maori (Ngāti Porou and Te Arawa) heritage.
• Daniel Riley (Member) – a Wiradjuri man, originally from Western NSW. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Australian Dance Theatre in South Australia.
• Rhoda Roberts AO (Member) – a Bundjalung Woman, current member of the Board of Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Inc. and Director of MusicNSW. She is also the Elder in Residence at SBS Television.
• Dennis Stokes (Member) – belongs to the Wardamann, Luritja, and Warramunga peoples of the Northern Territory and the Wagadagam people of the Torres Strait. He is Chief Executive Officer of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair.
• Jared Thomas (Member) – a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges, he is Research Fellow, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Material Culture and Art at the South Australian Museum.

Wouldn’t it be great if they saw an early responsibility to each talk a remote artist into joining them?