WAKE THE SNAKE

There’s a new exhibition in the WA Museum – also know as Boola Bardip – called Wake up the Snake,  designed to raise people’s consciousness about the significance of water. 

https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/boolabardip/wake-snake

It’s an oddly designed exhibition with a lack of clarity around the Kimberley part of the story but some great story boards and visual imaging around a Kids on Country project in the Great Western Woodlands area of WA, a phrase I’d never heard before, used to capture the lands around Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. Led by grandmothers, the custodians of the Kalaako cultural custodians, young people are taken out bush and introduced to language, stories and Country.



I was lucky enough to be shown around the exhibition by one of the kids, Emma, who pointed our her grandmothers and cousins and told me stories about water holes and a prison tree to which indigenous people were chained if they breached curfew or the white man’s law. It was great to hear the stories through the perspective of a child.

Emma (with her permission)


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