#093 Songlines
Combining the most powerful knowledge systems ever known (Part 2), with Margo Neale
Like our previous guest, Lynne Kelly, in part 1 of this series on Songlines, Margo Neale is a pioneer. Margo is of Aboriginal and Irish descent, from the Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections. And she’s the lead curator of the extraordinary exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, that has made such an incredible mark on Australia, and is about start its high-profile world tour. At the same time, the First Knowledges book series Margo is bringing together has started with an instant best-seller - Songlines: The Power and the Promise, which Margo co-wrote with Lynne.
Margo Neale (pic sourced from The Canberra Times, by Elesa Kurtz).
“They were really strategic and proactive and optimistic. Instead of saying, oh all is lost, doom, the stories are finished, they actually came up with, well, us mob we got the stories, but that museum mob and university they got all the Toyotas, they got the recording equipment, they know how to help us keep these stories. So we’ll just take that mob with us. We’ll just travel that Seven Sisters Songline. And they can come with us, and we’ll use their cars! And Basically, they’re saying, ‘we need each other to keep the Songlines alive’.”
The second book in the series, on design, is out now, and the following one (by Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe) steps straight into the thick of what’s become known in Australia as ‘The Dark Emu debate’ (triggered by Pascoe’s book). That’s the pointy end of our reckoning with our still largely unconscious Western colonial worldview. And it’s doing it in a way that might just help us finally transcend entrenched feuds, and reveal to more of us the enormous benefits on offer in combining our respective knowledge systems - the most powerful knowledge systems ever known.
This is the nub of Margo and Lynne’s pioneering work. There’s something missing in our reconciliation processes, they say, and by extension with our understanding of how to be fully human in the world, intrinsic to regenerating country as the source of all life.
Margo Neale is Head of the National Museum of Australia’s Indigenous Knowledges Curatorial Centre. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Australian National University’s Centre for Indigenous History. In addition to former fame as a touring go-go dancer!
This conversation was recorded online at Kimberley Cottages and its Windjana Wellness centre, run by local permaculture legend Wendy Albert, on 23 August 2021, with Margo speaking from her home away from home near Braidwood in New South Wales.
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Click on the photos below for full view, and hover over them for descriptions where they’ve been added.
Get more:
Tune into the Extra to this episode with Margo (wherever podcasts are found, including here).
And to part 1 of this series on Songlines, with Lynne Kelly.
On Margo Neale.
Margo has curated several major pioneering exhibitions including the multi-award winning Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters.
Songlines (pictorial companion book to the exhibition), by Margo Neale.
Post by Margo with some great photos on how the communities were central to the success of Songlines.
Margo is editing The First Knowledges book series and co-authored Songlines: The Power and Promise with Lynne Kelly.
The rest of the First Knowledges series of books, kick-started by Songlines.
Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.
Closing tune by Jeremiah Johnson.