Editor’s note: These comments were delivered by Ellen Kraly, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of geography and environmental studies, to graduates at Australia’s Curtin University on February 18, 2016.
Good evening chancellor, vice-chancellor, members of the university council, distinguished guests, and good colleagues.
Good evening, and joyous congratulations to the graduates of the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts; School of Design and Art; and Centre for Aboriginal Studies.
Warm greetings and congratulations to your families and friends who join you this evening, or who are here in spirit. These are proud moments to share.
Thank for your kind invitation to deliver this evening’s Occasional Address. It is a privilege to be with you and humbling. I thank you for this opportunity to return to the beautiful county of the Noongar people, the traditional owners of this land, this beautiful country.
Beauty.
As graduates of each of your respective programs, you have engaged beauty — its presence, absence, its fundamental meanings. You have had the opportunity to reflect critically and creatively upon the good, the true, and the beautiful — the definitions of which provide a template for understanding human communities and cultures.
This evening, at these commencement ceremonies, your accomplishments and achievements of these past years of study are formally recognized, commemorated, and very much rejoiced.
Commencement is beginning.
I suspect many (perhaps most) of you have been asked recently, “What are you going to do now?” Some of you have clear answers to the question of what next: continuing to work at a higher level in your positions or assuming new roles. For others, the answer to what is next is still in process. But whatever the next steps, using your phrase, no worries. You are well prepared, well trained, well mentored. So, well done!
I would suggest, however, that as important a question — arguably, a more important question — is, “How are you going to do what you will do?” How are you going to live your life? How are you going to continue to pursue goodness, truth and beauty in your life, within Aboriginal communities, within Australian cities and neighborhoods, and throughout this globalizing world?
Let us use these themes to consider the “how” of life, the ways of doing. I will take each, in reverse order, by first considering beauty and the arts.
For so many of you graduating tonight, your passions for the creative arts have brought you to Curtin University for your training and preparation as arts and design professionals. You will certainly “do” the arts, and will pursue all variations of beauty.
The “how,” I hope, is with energy and an entrepreneurial spirit. I would encourage each of you to unleash the force of the arts within our communities and throughout the world to bring people together, to confront, contest, and commune with each other over ideas and interpretations.
Two weekends ago, I took the train to New York City to see the exhibit of Picasso sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art. It was the last weekend of this comprehensive exhibit, and in spite of timed entries, the galleries were packed — just teeming with people who seemed voracious in their appetites to engage the artist’s body of sculpted work. I was one of them, but I also found myself at the edge of the crowds — just watching — watching the engagement of the people, their intensity, animation, curiosity, bewilderment, humour (Picasso had to be playing jokes on us with some of his pieces). In those moments of observation, I believe I was witnessing the power of the arts to change, to enlighten, to educate.
We have witnessed this power in the art of the children of Carrolup.
Vice Chancellor Terry has described the challenged conditions under which these drawings were produced at the Carrolup Native School and Settlement near Katanning in the 1940s and early 1950s, and then the journey taken by a corpus of the artwork on exhibit to eastern Australia, New Zealand, and then Europe and the United Kingdom. Through a series of interesting steps, these drawings came to New York City, and finally to upstate New York — to a town the size of Katanning, if not smaller, Hamilton, where the pieces remained at Colgate University until their identification in 2004.
My good friend and Noongar mentor, Ezzard Flowers, and I refer to the movement of the art through and from Noongar country as a spiritual geography, which has revealed new spaces for learning and listening.
The legacy of Carrolup embodies the importance of art as a force of education — in the lives of the child artists and presently in the ways the contemporary artists and their work are now teaching us to receive new ideas and relationships.
The drawings themselves teach, and I hope you will see them.
During their time of resting at Colgate, we knew at all times that it was Colgate’s privilege to provide temporary home to these pieces and our privilege to view them. So often, I would sit quietly with these exquisite works of creation in the gallery workroom. The children seemed to speak to me through their artistic expression, especially their presentation of country and landscape. Strokes of pastels and ink, the most intricate composition and subtle perspective, and the content of the individual pieces conveyed layers of proficiency, meaning, and beauty. The drawings hold complex stories, convey complex perspectives that require new ways of understanding people, places, and environment. This art — art — is transformative.
Let us turn to the challenge of pursuing truth, or, more appropriately, as you have come to appreciate in your time here at Curtin, truths, the plural.
The density and speed of connections, transactions, and communications in this 21st century require us to engage diversity in all spheres of life and living. Again, Curtin has prepared you well for this engagement with knowing the world.
But how best to know. Again, we might turn to the lessons of Carrolup for embracing diverse ways of knowing and revealing truths.
During these past years, these children and their creations have taken me on several paths of profound re-education, re-orientation, re-calibration, which have served to give focus to “what to do,” the forming of personal, and, yes, professional vision.
It has been a journey of lessons, learning, and, I believe, love. Love emerging out of people with such differences coming to know one another, listening to another, learning and laughing with one another.
The Noongar people of the southwest — Katanning, Gnowangerup, Onergup, Albany — have been most generous and patient with this wadjela woman. Time shared in quiet Noongar places, between Noongar people and Colgate students, allowed trust to develop in the appreciation of what happened at and beyond Carrolup, as well as revealing the possibilities of what can happen in the future.
The story of Carrolup, which will continue to unfold during your lifetime, points to the significance of the process by which we come to understand one another — the importance of taking time to listen, to linger, to be open to ongoing lifelong learning.
Today, this week, and in the years to come, custodians of the artwork will embrace mutual respect, generosity, and the critical significance of collaboration, revealing the knowledge and beauty of indigenous heritage and culture, for revealing truths that are rich in diversity and complexity.
And finally, let us consider “the good.” How best to continue to pursue goodness in your work and in your lives.
Through their love and support for you, your families and mentors embody commitment to strong and healthy communities. The leadership of Curtin University model the place of higher education and scholarship in building better futures. In this regard, you are so fortunate to have the vision and energies of Vice Chancellor and Professor Deborah Terry.
Simon Forrest, elder in residence; Marion Kickett, director of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies; and their faculty colleagues throughout the arts and the broader university actively express and argue for the significance of culture and creativity in fostering the health and vitality of the environments we share. And they choose to advocate for positive change every day, every time they step into the classroom, a design studio, the library, or log in for a skype session with teachers in a remote community in Australia.
Among the key words here are commitment, strength, advocacy, and action. We urge you to actively continue your forward movement toward positive change.
There are spaces in this world for you, and those places, near and far, need you and your talents.
So, bulup kulung, which is Noongar for “going forward.”
In celebration of your accomplishments, go forward, commence:
with creative energy to advance beauty and art,
with an ethos of respect, collaboration, and generosity to access truth, truths, and,
with both your head and your heart, to advocate for the greater good — even more, the greatest good.
Thank you.