how First Nations people take ownership of their cultural stories through fashion

Image details

Dress displayed at the exhibition Manburrba: our story of printed cloth from Bábbarra Women’s Centre. Image source: Ad(dressing) Indigeneity

By Treena Clark, University of Technology Sydney

November 22, 2024

Once located 250 metres to the east of the Art Gallery of South Australia, the grand beaux-arts style Jubilee Exhibition Building was constructed to house the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of South Australian settlement.

Hosting interstate and international participants, the exhibition presented various items, including machinery, fine art, textiles and produce.

In the South Australian section, the Protector of Aborigines, responsible for controlling Aboriginal people in South Australia and the Northern Territory, exhibited cultural implements and artefacts.

Some of these items included bags and wallets made of “native hemp” from the Northern Territory.

This colonial presentation of forced and unpaid fashion labour from First Nations people was a practice that had commenced decades earlier.

In 1866, the Central Board for the Protection of the Aborigines showcased baskets, bags, and bonnets at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia.

In the Queensland Court of the 1888 Melbourne Centennial Exhibition, pearl jewellery from the Torres Strait Islands was exhibited.

By the mid-20th century, these wares ceased being displayed in the exhibitions and First Nations people had more autonomy in their craft production. This rise of self-determination led to the first wave of First Nations fashion design, of contemporary garment-makers and textile-designers.

Today, First Nations artists and designers are self-determining the ownership of their cultural stories and the appropriate practices within the fashion, gallery, library and museum sectors.

Many First Nations artists and designers are presenting across multiple mediums and ensuring their designs and practices are culturally, environmentally and economically sustainable.

The First Nations pieces featured in the exhibition Radical Textiles traverse art and fashion design, taking the item off the body and onto a mannequin or frame. These works of art share a common thread of honouring and celebrating tradition, ancestors, family, community and Country.

Read the full article at The Conversation!