Where does our knowledge come from?

During our May 2024 workshop, the MfN film crew joined us for two days of research and events at MfN Berlin. It was a chance for Uncle Brendan Kennedy and Auntie Glenda Nicholls in particular to share their impressions of their visits and their stories in relation to archival records, drawings and cultural belongings brought to Germany by Blandowski and Krefft.

We started the week with a smoking ceremony at the MfN, probably the first of its kind for this institution. The eucalyptus leaves were kindly provided by the Berlin Botanical Gardens, an institution with its own colonial involvement in Australia. As Caine Muir (Museums Victoria) explained, the aim of the ritual was to cleanse the negative aspects of the past and make way for new, positive developments. This was particularly important as we spent the week looking at drawings and cultural belongings that relate to a difficult colonial past and are of ongoing relevance to communities today.

The film, produced by MfN Berlin, also explores the question of where the knowledge documented in the drawings came from: Blandowski and Krefft worked with communities living on Country, who shared their knowledge with them. In Western scholarship, Indigenous individuals are often overlooked as the original holders of the knowledge that is considered ‘discovered’ by European scholars. As important as it is to remember the First Peoples who worked with Blandowski and Krefft, it is equally important to recognise their descendants as having the authority to comment on this history today. As Auntie Glenda Nicholls says in the video: “It is more about educating people about our culture and letting people know that it is a living culture, we’re still carrying on practices of yesterday. I feel privileged to be able to show people something that my grandmother has handed down, and her grandmother… So it’s generational, and that’s why it’s a living culture. It’s special.”

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