"In January 1989, I attended the second national Black Playwrights conference. I arrived at this conference feeling very unsure and insecure with nine small scenes which I had hoped would turn in to a play."
In every area of the arts where Aborigines are participating there is an intense surge of creative vitality. Once could call it a renaissance period. When I began writing poetry, Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonucul) was the only recognised poet.
Looks at the Santa Teresa Community 80 kilometres south of Alice Spring and home of the Arrernte people where the Keringke Arts Centre was established in 1987.
Located in the University of Adelaide in South Australia the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music was set up in 1972 in order that many aboriginal people both urban and tribal may develp effective skills of communicating their cultural, social, political and economic feelings through music to Australian people and the world at large.
"From the time that whites arrived in Tasmania and up until 1983 Aboriginal performing arts especially theatre arts, had become almost as extinct as whites would have people believe Tasmanian Aborigines were. Not so!"
Jujurrpa is a Warlpri word meaning Dreaming and it is the Dreamtime stories that are depicted on the canvases of a group of Warlpri, Pitjantjatjara, Luritja and Anmatyerre women from the Alice Springs area.
Two people suspended in a soundscape - a space punctuated by a stark and corrosive sound. The wail of a dingo, an owl, the grating beat of an iron lung, a gasp, a cry for breath and above all a cacophony of memory.