Just delivered on NITV are this year’s First Nations Arts & Culture Awards – headed by the Red Ochres. And the two top winners – one male, one female – are WA artist and Wardandi elder, Sandra Hill and Kamilaroi musician and activist, Bob Weatherall.

The citation on Sandra Hill’s Red Ochre Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement states:
“Ms Hill’s contributions to First Nations Arts in Western Australia are unparalleled, and of regional, state and national historic significance. For nearly 40 years, Ms Hill has mentored, influenced and trained emerging First Nations artists, worked in and supported First Nations community organisations, and inspired nationally important conversations in truth-telling, culture and contemporary arts practices.

“Her arts practice, saw her work featured in the 3rd National Indigenous Triennial in 2017 and has seen her works acquired by major galleries and collections in Australia and overseas. Ms Hill’s unique practice has involved three streams simultaneously – cultural immersion, public arts and fine art.

“Her 52 public art works interpreting significant cultural and historic sites throughout Noongar country are of immense historic value and have responded to the voice of the Elders and community through some of the most important periods in Western Australia. Ms Hill has recently been recognised for her community contribution taking up leadership roles on the Karri Kaarak Corporation, Southwest Land and Sea Council, Cultural Advice Committee (Native Title Prescribe Body Corporate) and the Undalup Association”.

On the Mossenson Gallery website, Sandra Hill states:
“My recent work refers to the Government’s attempts to superimpose ‘white’ domestic values over South-West Nyungar culture and on to Aboriginal women in the late 1950s and 60s.
“As part of the Assimilation Policies of that era, Aboriginal families previously living in makeshift dwellings on the fringe of towns, were taken and placed in modern white housing, they were then expected to learn how to take care of the property literally, overnight. The work expresses the absurdity of this preposterous notion.
“The women, in particular, were expected to disregard 50,000 years of Indigenous ‘learning’ and take on the white ways as they relate to domestic situations.
“The work represents the sense of alienation, unacceptance and acute disapproval that Aboriginal people experienced because culturally, they had little to no appreciation for the materialistic trappings of ‘white’ domesticity”.

Bob Weatherall’s citation offers:
“Mr Weatherall’s outstanding lifetime commitment, contribution and achievement spans 60 years. He is a pioneer whose impact has created significant generational change in the cultural rights of First Nations Peoples at a national and international level.

“Mr Weatherall is a Kamilaroi and Ngemba man, born and raised on the Balonne River in Southwest Queensland. His life’s endeavour is driven by the reclamation and transmission of knowledge for future generations. Mr Weatherall is a senior creative and cultural knowledge holder, a respected social justice activist who traverses art, culture, heritage, language, country and lore. His disciplines include, writer, musician performer and cultural mentor.

“Mr Weatherall’s father was a drover, shearer and ring barker and he and his brothers worked in the shearing sheds, before moving to the nearest big town of Toowoomba 1960s. Mr Weatherall attended Darling Downs Institute in the 1970s, studying performing and visual arts, and worked briefly as an actor with Black Theatre in Redfern alongside Bob Maza, Athol Compton, Betty Fisher and Jack Charles. Bob’s music career has encompassed folk, jazz, rock and now the significant artistic and cultural project – ‘Restless Dream’”.

For further information on Weatherall’s ‘Restless Dream’ project, I turned to the Country & Western record’s website to find it was issued in August 2021 and was a collaboration with Brisbane band Halfway and with yidaki maestro William Barton:
“This album tells the story of the Repatriation of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains. Restless Dream is a very personal story, yet it touches all Aboriginal Nations as they grapple with the task of repatriation and reburial, just as it acknowledges those who have taken on the task of uncovering the past and advocating for the Rights of the Dead.
“Aboriginal ancestral remains and secret/sacred objects are scattered across the globe, in museums both overseas and in Australia. In Aboriginal religious law, there will be no spiritual peace until the dead have been returned to the place of their birth and received their last rites in accordance with their traditions”.

Also on the receiving end tonight was Deline Briscoe, awarded the First Nations Arts and Culture Fellowship. She is a Singer-Songwriter from the Yalanji nation in far north Queensland. Her music career spans over 20 years, beginning as one of the Briscoe Sisters, before relocating to Melbourne. There the Victorian Art Centre has committed to the development of her show BLAKTIVISM over the next few years with the help of legendary facilitator Nigel Jamieson and her ongoing mentorship with Dr. Lou Bennett.

Then there were the Dreaming Awards established to support the creation of a major body of work through mentoring and partnerships. The recipients of the Dreaming Awards are Phoebe Grainer, a Kuku Djungan, Muluridji, Wakaman, Tagalaka, Kunjen, Warrgamay and Yindinji woman to help develop her play, “Pearl Ada Elsie”, in partnership with Sweatshop and Darlinghurst Theatre Company; and Naarah Barnes, a proud Gija woman from the East Kimberley for the development of her musical theatre project “Broadway but Blak” – a cabaret concert that takes the audience through a journey of musical theatre from a First Nations perspective.

Finally, the First Nations Emerging Career Development Awards, open to artists aged 18-30 to pursue professional development, were presented to two recipients:
First Nations and Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Dean Brady, to help with the costs of songwriting collaborations with some of Australia’s top songwriters; and Kamilaroi producer and playwright Emily Wells, to help with her development as a playwright and producer through cultural exchange with leading Maori creatives.