“We know that to break a race the first thing you do is take away their language.” – Brian McKinnon.
Yamatji and Noongar artist, Brian McKinnon’s work is on display at the Wurrung: Tongue of Land exhibition set in the Alliance Française of Melbourne
This exhibition is dedicated to the Boonwurrung people, the traditional owners of the land where the French cultural institution is located.
Featuring artworks by Indigenous artists from the University of Melbourne; the event highlights the importance of Indigenous languages, the critical loss of these languages in Australia and globally. This theme draws from the United Nation's International year of Indigenous languages (2019).
According to the curator, Brian McKinnon’s paintings show the journey of pain, caused by racism and discrimination for a group of people lost on their path to becoming accepted for who they are.
Brian concurs adding that it wasn’t until he was ten years old that he was finally counted as a person.
“My work speaks strongly of where I come from and trials that we have had to live through with the loss of Language and then loss of Country and the loss of Culture. But we are on the road to rebuilding all of these things,” Brian McKinnon says.
His mother is a survivor of the Stolen Generations. She was removed from her family and placed in an institution where she would spend ten years of her life. Brian learned that in this institution his mother was beaten every single day for defiance or simply speaking her language.
Brian McKinnon says banning Indigenous languages is part and parcel of colonisation. In every colony the first thing the colonisers did was to ban the language and religion of the colonised peoples. This practice made it easier and quicker for colonisers to subjugate conquered peoples.
“If the colonised didn’t have their own culture, they couldn’t access it. They couldn’t practice it. Take away the language and you've taken away a link to the land and the culture,” Brian McKinnon says.
“We know that to break a race the first thing you do is to take away their language. Once you take their language away you take their access to Culture; you take away their access to memory.”
Fortunately, Brian Mckinnon says, Indigenous people do have a memory and they are beginning to practice their cultures and speaking their languages.
