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Perth Now
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Australia's dark past woven through powerful exhibition
Sandra Aitken's woven baskets greet visitors entering the atrium of a beloved arts museum, survivors of a brutal regime which tried to unravel their possible existence. Each of the four pieces serve as storytellers of a culture once silenced. They form part of a powerful exhibition aimed at confronting the dark heart of Australia's colonial history while celebrating the richness and resilience of Indigenous cultural traditions. The exhibition - 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art - features hundreds of works, including rarely seen pieces, which mark the grand reopening of Melbourne University's Potter Museum of Art. Aitken, a Dhauwurd Wurrung Gunditjmara artist, says the exhibition is incredibly important. She continues to teach and practice the basket-weaving technique of the Gunditjmara people, a cultural tradition nearly lost after colonisation. Her great-great-grandmother used the technique in the 1800s to trap food such as fish and eel. She passed her knowledge down her family line until it was forbidden. "My grandmother wasn't allowed to teach my aunty how to weave. It was almost lost," she said. Her aunty relearned the craft over decades, but when it came time to pass it on, she couldn't. "She said the government would come and take us away from there. We ended up getting her to show us, but it was behind closed doors and windows." Aitken's work is one of 400 pieces by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists included in the collection, which spans three levels. Co-curated by Marcia Langton, Judith Ryan and Shanysa McConville, the exhibition does not shy away from brutal colonial history, but also offers new insights into the first art of the country. "Beginning the exhibition with the womens' weaving in the atrium, we are looking at the story now," Ms Ryan told AAP. "We wanted it to be truth telling, anti-colonial. We wanted to take things further and to destroy and subvert stereotypes." The exhibition includes pieces by William Barak, Lin Onus, Albert Namatjira, Rover Thomas and Emily Kam Kngwarray, with the majority on display drawn from the university's collections. "It's about encompassing the whole gamut of what First People make in Australia and there is no prediction of what First People's art should look like or mean." Marking the museum's reopening on May 30 during Reconciliation Week after a six-year renovation, the Potter Museum of Art will welcome the public to the exhibition running until November 23. 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14
Gulf Today
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Pope Francis, voice of sanity and humility
He has been ailing for some time. He was in hospital for nearly two months because of an attack of double pneumonia. Though the doctors had advised bedrest for two months, Pope Francis would not rest. He spoke out against the violence against civilians in Gaza even till the last. It is this willingness to speak out against violence anywhere, and plead for peace and harmony everywhere is what has endeared him to people across the world, beyond his own flock of Roman Catholics spread across continents. People respected the man of conscience. His courage came from his inner resources. He apologised and sought forgiveness from people who had been hurt and victimised by the Roman Catholic Church. He apologised to the First People in Canada because the Roman Catholic Church had abducted their children and brought them up away from their families. And when he apologised, he did it with humility and in full view of the world. It is not surprising that leaders from all over the world, people from different ideologies and faiths, are mourning the death of the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis has been called a radical for the progressive decisions he took to clean up the cobwebs that had accumulated in the Church. There was opposition from the conservative quarters from within the church. But he went about his job with intense faith that the corrections have to be made, forgiveness sought and penance done. It was because he was not willing to overlook the problems of omission and commission within the Church, that he had won the respect of political leaders across the world. Of course, he could not stop the wars, nor provide economic support for the poor in the world. But the fact that he spoke for the poor in the world was a great solace to the suffering millions. It was indeed a moral voice in the wilderness, but it has not gone unheeded. There was a sense of shame among the political leaders. The more important thing that Pope Francis had done as the head of the Roman Catholic Church was his openness to other religions. Earlier popes had tried to reconcile the many sects of Christianity. But Pope Francis was the one who reached out to Muslims, Buddhists. He was the first Pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula when was in the UAE in 2019 for three days, and he had a private meeting with the Muslim Council of Elders. He had also signed a joint statement about inter-religious fraternity with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al Tayyeb. UAE President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, paying tributes to Pope Francis, said, 'He worked with the UAE for years to promote these values for the benefit of humanity.' Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and the Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said on X, 'We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis @Pontifex, a great leader whose compassion and commitment to peace touched countless lives.' It was through the sheer personal force of his moral courage that Pope Francis commanded the respect and affection of people in so many countries, and he did it through disarming simplicity and sense of piety. He did not ever forget that his calling is that of a humble priest risen to the highest office in the Roman Catholic Church. It was through his humility that he won hearts and minds among people of all nationalities and all faiths.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oh, Canada … you're not the enemy (that's coming from within)
A Canadian flag at a park in Quebec. (Photo by Anakay via Flickr | CC-BY-SA 2.0). Perhaps if you grow up in penthouse on top of a gilded tower in the middle of the predatory capitalist shark tank known as 'New York City,' your world view is eternally corrupted by your pitiful life experience. Perhaps you think every human and nation on the planet are wholly focused on trying to rip you off every day on every thing. But when you bring that sorry and twisted perspective to the White House you make real mistakes in discerning who is or isn't your enemy, who is or isn't trying to wheedle every nickel they can get out of you, and who is or isn't a threat to our nation. So it seems as Donald Trump tries to convince the American people that somehow our oldest, most loyal, and kindest neighbors and allies — the Canadians — are an enemy bent on destroying the United States through imaginary economic attacks. Such are the mistakes made when one sees the world through the blurry and myopic lens of greed, driven by endless avarice to always want to take what others have for yourself. But then there's the rest of us. You know, the people who have actually lived in border states, traveled the breadth and length across the vastness of Canada's incredible landscape from ocean to ocean. And most importantly, interacted with and received the kind and courteous reception of which Canadians are justly proud and internationally famous. As those of us who have spent time in the Great North know, Canada is indeed a nation of immigrants, but who are welcomed rather than vilified and demonized, and rounded up in detention camps for deportation — legally or not. Canada has also treated its Indigenous citizens, whom they name the First People, far more honorably and fairly than the U.S., going so far as to give Nunavut, the nation's largest and northernmost province, to the Inuit people to self-govern. And no, Canada has no ambitions to take over Greenland, Panama or threaten the rest of the world by interjecting itself as a destructive influence in the lives and governance of other people and nations. Nor does Canada threaten the planet with vastly more than enough nuclear weapons to completely end life on earth — that would be the U.S. The Canadian people do not in any way, shape or form deserve the treatment they are receiving from Donald Trump. Where, in any form of international diplomacy, is a threat to simply subsume another sovereign nation accepted — particularly when both nations are long-standing democracies and allies? Nowhere but in the twisted mind of Trump who thinks insulting Canada's Prime Minister as 'governor' is acceptable. None of this makes any sense for the rest of us and runs completely contrary to our personal experiences with Canadians. As a friend who recently returned from a week skiing in British Columbia related, there is now a proliferation of bumper stickers that simply say 'Pro American, Anti-Trump.' Indeed, that phrase is finding wider use across the globe as the rest of the world wonders what happened to the United States and how we went from considering long-standing friends as enemies? And so I say to my lifelong Canadian friends: 'I am flying the Canadian flag to say I'm sorry and embarrassed by the baseless tariff war, the insults, and the aggressive threats to take over your nation — and urge others to do so.' Remember, more than 75 million Americans voted against Donald Trump, who failed to even crack 50% of the total votes cast. We are still here, and we will continue to be pro-American, pro-Canadian — and anti-Trump.
