But I found the experience of visiting them very strange
The North Terrace of Adelaide is a showcase of colonial history
I've been here before and seen the Yuendumu doors. I have a copy of the book and I've read it
The school doors were painted in the 1980s by some of the men in Yuendumu, as a way to deter graffiti and make the schoolchildren familiar with Warlpiri jukurrpa stories. They remained there until well into the twenty-first century, collecting a new layer of graffiti over time, which the Adelaide museum made great efforts to remove when it acquired the doors as part of its collection
But what exactly is the collection?
It's as though Aboriginal culture is considered to be history, to be displayed alongside natural history and ancient civilisations, washed up on the banks of the colonial parade
But in many parts of Australia, Indigenous culture is far from being history. The doors, in a way, are proof of it. I don't think they belong in a museum
But where then? It's great for people to be able to see them. In a gallery, where they are not displayed among artefacts like this?
As I walked back to my hotel I passed this
A massive building site. And on the hoardings around it, this
And this visual representation of how it will look
I hope this will be the cure that Adelaide needs, another of the many steps needed to reconcile the different cultures still existing in Australia
POST SCRIPT
When I was last in Yuendumu, pre-pandemic, I was helping out in the print room of the school, and noticed these, leaning unnoticed against a wall. My teacher friend helped me pull them out and take these photos. Why they are not in the collection I don't know. Possibly because of the louvres. Lovely though, aren't they? Representations of a living culture.
