Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-28 Daily Xml

Contents

Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka Exhibition

The Hon. R.B. MARTIN (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Will the minister please inform the council about his recent visit to the Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka exhibition?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:16): I thank the honourable member for his question and his interest in this area. I recently had the privilege to tour the internationally award-winning Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka exhibition at the Bay Discovery Centre in Glenelg.

Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka translates roughly into truth-telling and this exhibition is centred on telling some of the truths of the early history of South Australia, particularly in relation to the effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people that examines the first encounters, the impacts of colonisation and the words of the Letters Patent.

Importantly, this exhibition has been developed under the guidance and input of senior Kaurna elders and community members. I was fortunate to tour the exhibition along with representatives of the local council, with Aboriginal leaders including Aunty Lynette Crocker, Uncle Jeffrey Newchurch, Uncle Frank Wanganeen and Rayne Simpson.

The award-winning success of this exhibition has only been possible due to the strong partnership that the members of the Kaurna community have developed with the City of Holdfast Bay over the last half a dozen years. This partnership continuously showcases the way in which we have embraced working together to deliver shared goals, community projects and outcomes that strengthen the understanding of Kaurna culture and our connections to places in history.

This partnership has included notable initiatives including the Holdfast Bay council formalising policies regarding diversity, antiracism and social inclusion in early 2002. In 2019, the Kaurna nation held a special repatriation ceremony in Kingston Park. The reburial ceremony laid to rest the remains of 11 Kaurna old people which had been returned from the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom and the South Australian Museum.

Over the past few years, the commemorative Proclamation Day event on 28 December at the Old Gum Tree Reserve in Glenelg North has been an opportunity to reflect on a shared history and the important place that has in the state of South Australia. I am informed that the upcoming Proclamation Day commemorations will, for the first time, include a series of signal fires lit on the beach along Holdfast Bay council's coastline.

Kaurna elders and the Kaurna fire team from Firesticks, an Indigenous alliance across Australia reviving cultural burning and landscape management, will lead this cultural event which the wider community will be invited to take part in. Fires will be lit along the beaches at Glenelg South, Glenelg North, North Brighton and Kingston Park in the afternoon following the Proclamation Day morning ceremony, which is held at the Old Gum Tree Reserve in Glenelg North.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Holdfast Bay council, particularly the leadership of the mayor and Kaurna community members, who continue their commitment to working and sharing Kaurna culture and history with the broader community.