A Celebration of Art in the Landscape for NAIDOC Week 2020

“A Musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” ~Abraham Maslow 1908–1970

It is NAIDOC week in Australia where we stop to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples. Steve and I were very fortunate that in the 5-years we lived in our motorhome, we were able to visit so many Aboriginal communities and cultural sites to learn a little more about the oldest living culture on earth spanning, somewhere between 60,000–120,000 years. The conversations we had while spending quality time in these little communities will live on in our memories but also made us wonder why the history and culture of the First Australians is not valued and visited more by the migrants who came more recently?

This is an image from Halls Creek, a little town situated in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, taken last year. It was truly wonderful to discover so many Aboriginal women engaged in sharing their connection to Country through their art but also to realised that it had transformed Halls Creek itself into a…