Miyurr Mi:wi: Working from home in the spirit of Country

Miyurr is a Wergaia language word which my mother’s Wotjobaluk people refer to as spirit of land/home. Mi:wi is a Ngarrindjeri language word for my father’s people that refers to inner spirit. These two things empower me in my everyday life and my creativity—and they allow me the luxury of living in a rural part of our Country and participating in film and theatre in the larger cities. I wasn’t going to write something so raw and candid here. Trust me, I tried to write something else. But here we are, and here I am, in all my vulnerability.

More from this Issue

Lin Onus: The Land Within: A curatorial conversation crossing Yorta Yorta Country

Paola Balla, Belinda Briggs and Shelley McSpedden

Lipstick and Land Rights: A poetic response

I paint my face as my mother’s mothers have done before me

In this new ritual sitting on my bedroom floor

We name each pigment after revolutionaries

Because I am my mother’s daughter

Lorna Munro

Tribute: B. Marika (1954–2021)

Terri Janke

Sovereign city, sovereign self and Warrior Woman Lane

My formal arts education began in a strange place: the Elisabeth Murdoch building at the University of Melbourne where I took an art history elective. Built in 1885 by Joseph Reed, the Gothic architecture reinforced the rigid authority of the colony. Glaringly elitist, it resembled both church and orphanage. It was full of confusing hallways, which remained impossible to navigate. Inside its constructed edifice, middle-aged white men in paisley shirts lectured, with exotic hand gestures, on First Nation artists (when they were spoken of at all). And white women in the faculty asserted a self-righteous paternalism that was far worse.

Timmah Ball