Juno Gemes photographed by Nicholas Walton-Healey.
Our guest for this special edition interview is JUNO GEMES, one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers. Born in Hungary, Juno moved here as a child. In the early 1970s, then a young artist, she spent six months living on Country with Aboriginal communities at Uluru in the central desert. She went on to document the Australian Civil Rights Movement, First Nations activism and social change for five decades.
Juno photographed many of the protests led by Aboriginal activists in the ‘70s and ‘80s, forming lifelong friendships with key figures in the Movement. She photographed the Uluru Handback Ceremony in 1985; marches and activations around the Bicentennial in 1988, and she was one of ten photographers invited to document the National Apology in Canberra in 2008.
International listeners, there’s much to learn from this Episode. Wherever you are listening across the world, these stories are important to discover. It’s obviously not just Australia that grapples with a legacy of colonisation, and if you care about sustainability, the questions linked to all this are fundamental ones: how do we want to live, in relation in one another? How can we heal and listen and unlearn to change systems that don’t work anymore?
THIS IS A 2-PART SPECIAL EDITION ON THE VOICE REFERENDUM IN AUSTRALIA. It came about because Clare kept speaking to people who hadn’t yet read the ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART.
Wardrobe Crisis wanted to help with that, and to be active on behalf of our deeply felt support for the YES23 campaign in this referendum. Part 1 is a mini pod on the Uluru Statement and the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution - it’s under 10 mins, ideal to share!
As Juno says at the end of this interview, whatever happens with the Aussie vote on October 14th, this is part of a long fight for social justice that continues. And there’s hope! “Don’t argue with people who don’t see it yet, because they will eventually … We can see this groundswell of good will, of kindness of wanting to know, to learn, of opening up to each other.”
Photographs from Juno’s archive featuring Chika Dixon and Charlie Perkins.
MODERN AUSTRALIAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - KEY DATES
SOVEREIGNTY WAS NEVER CEDED. Australia’s First Nations people have never ceded sovereignty. The land was taken by force and has been retained by force. Further reading here.
1938 DAY OF MOURNING ‘On “Australia Day” 1938, protestors marched through the streets of Sydney, followed by a congress attended by over a thousand people. One of the first major civil rights gatherings in the world, it was known as the Day of Mourning. Following the congress, a deputation led by William Cooper presented Prime Minister Joseph Lyons with a proposed national policy for Aboriginal people. This was again rejected because the Government did not hold constitutional powers in relation to Aboriginal people. Afterwards, there was a growing feeling that it should be a regular event. In 1939 William Cooper wrote to the National Missionary Council of Australia to seek their assistance in supporting and promoting an annual event. Via NAIDOC
1964 OODGEROO NOONUCCAL (then known as KATH WALKER) becomes Australia’s first published Aboriginal poet, with her book We Are Going. The title poem concludes:
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.
1965 FREEDOM RIDE A group of students from the University of Sydney, including CHARLES PERKINS, drew national and international attention to the appalling living conditions of Aboriginal people and the racism that was rife in New South Wales country towns. Via AIATSIS. Read the full story here.
1967 REFERENDUM On 27th May 1967, a referendum was held to ask Australians to vote on changing the constitution to remove discrimination against Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The referendum asked two questions:
Should the Federal Government have the power to make laws for Indigenous Australians in all States and Territories?
Should Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples be included in the census and therefore considered part of the Australian population?
Australians voted 90.77% in favour of these changes. This was a major step forward for the Australian civil rights movement.
1975 NAIDOC WEEK The first NAIDOC week begins, lasting from the first Sunday in July until the following Sunday. The acronym NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines' and Islanders' Day Observance Committee. NAIDOC Week has its roots in the 1938 Day of Mourning.
1976 ABORIGINAL LAND ACT For 200 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ land rights had been taken away by white settlers. This meant that Indigenous Australian communities had no legal comeback when their land or labour were being exploited.
The issue was highlighted when some communities pushed back against the government. In 1963, the Yolngu people refused to give away some of their land for a mine, but their refusal was ignored and the mine went ahead. In 1966, the Gurindji people went on strike over wages and work conditions at the Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory.
In December 1976, the federal parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, which was the first step in enabling Indigenous Australians to regain these rights. This act recognised ‘traditional Aboriginal landowners’ for the first time in Australian law. This new law now means that 50% of the Northern Territory and 85% of its coastline is now recognised as being owned by Aboriginal communities.
1982 THE WORLD IS WATCHING/COMMONWEALTH GAMES. Protests by Indigenous Australians on 30 September 1982, at the start of the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. Despite the Queensland Premier's ban on street marches, protests were held before and during the Games. Thirty-nine protesters were arrested at a demonstration during the opening ceremony on 30 September. As the police moved in to arrest demonstrators they chanted 'the whole world is watching'. On 4 October, 104 protesters were arrested during a land rights sit-in near the athletics stadium.
“Marcia Langton Illegal Land Rights March in National Land Rights Action” Brisbane, 1982 © Juno Gemes/Copyright Agency, 2023
Above: “Marcia Langton AO (b. 1951), Foundation Chair and Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland. Langton graduated in anthropology from the Australian National University in the 1980s and worked on the 1989 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, writing the report 'Too Much Sorry Business'. In the 1990s she undertook her doctoral fieldwork in eastern Cape York Peninsula; commencing her university teaching career in 1995, she became Ranger Professor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Darwin. From 1992–98 she was the first woman to hold the position of Chair of the AIATSIS Council and was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for her service as an anthropologist and advocate of Aboriginal issues in 1993. Her work as an anthropologist, geographer and public intellectual spans almost five decades in the fields of political and legal anthropology, Indigenous agreements, engagement with the minerals industry, and Indigenous culture, filmmaking and art.
Juno photographed Langton, then in her early 30s, in Brisbane in 1982. In September and October that year, as the city hosted the Commonwealth Games, thousands marched in support of Aboriginal rights and wellbeing in spite of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen having declared street marching illegal.” Via National Portrait Gallery.
1982 MABO The Mabo Case was a significant legal case in Australia that recognised the land rights of the Meriam people, traditional owners of the Murray Islands (which include the islands of Mer, Dauer and Waier) in the Torres Strait. The case, brought by a group of four Meriam men, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Reverend David Passi, Sam Passi, James Rice and one Meriam women, Celuia Mapo Sale, was successful in overturning the myth that at the time of colonisation Australia was ‘terra nullius’ or land belonging to no one.
1895 ULURU HANDBACK When the Hawke government handed back the title deeds for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to the Anangu people in October 1985, it ended decades of determined lobbying by the traditional owners to have their rights recognised.
1988 BICENTENNIAL “A bicentenary is the two-hundredth anniversary of a significant event. On the 26th of January 1988, many Australians celebrated the bicentenary of the arrival of the 11 ships of the first fleet in Botany Bay and Sydney Cove on Bidegal and Gadigal Country. This event signified the founding of the colony of New South Wales, the first colony in what would become the nation of Australia. Events held to celebrate this milestone in Sydney included re-enactments of the first fleet’s arrival, a parade and concerts.
At the same time as the Bicentenary celebrations, more than 40,000 Aboriginal people and non-Indigenous supporters, staged what was at the time the largest march ever held in Sydney. There were busloads of Aboriginal people from other states and rural and remote communities who arrived to join the protest. The protest was held because the colonisation of Australia which caused injustice, suffering and dispossession of Aboriginal people was being celebrated.” Via Deadlystory.com
1990s STOLEN GENERATIONS RECKONING PM Paul Keating made his now famous Redfern Speech in December 1992. “It was we who did the dispossessing", he said. "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine that these things could be done to us".
In 1995 a National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families was established by then Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch. The Inquiry – conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission – received nearly 800 submissions, including evidence from 535 from Indigenous individuals and organisations.
2008 NATIONAL APOLOGY On 13th of February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal Apology on behalf of the nation to Australia's Indigenous Peoples, particularly the Stolen Generations. He said:
“I move that today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment.We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”
“Mum Shirl, Mrs Shirley Smith, prepared to address Police Federation Conference at Town Hall Sydney 1988” © Juno Gemes/Copyright Agency, 2022.
Above: “Shirley 'Mum Shirl' Smith AO OBE (1921–1998), humanitarian, was a Wiradjuri woman. Born near Cowra, NSW, she was brought up by her grandfather, who taught her to 'first love yourself, then spread it around'. Severely epileptic, she never went to school, or learned to read or write, although by the end of her life she spoke many Aboriginal languages. In the mid-1930s her family moved to Sydney, and one of her brothers was jailed. She began to visit him in prison, and when he came out she continued to visit others, encouraging them, finding their families and helping them to regain health. Soon she began acting as support for Aboriginal people in court, and assumed responsibility for countless children. Living in Redfern, where she cared for hundreds of alcoholics and homeless people, she was one of the founders of the Aboriginal Medical Service and the Aboriginal Legal Service. Over time she was involved in the establishment of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, the Aboriginal Children's Service, the Aboriginal Housing Company and the struggle for land rights.
In 2003 the National Portrait Gallery exhibited Juno Gemes' solo show Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978–2003. This photograph of Mum Shirl was taken at the Invasion Day March for Justice and Hope at Sydney Town Hall on 26 January 1988.” Via National Portrait Gallery.
NOTES
PHOTOGRAPHS See more of Juno’s work in the National Portrait Gallery archives here Find her website here. Follow her on Instagram here. Here’s the paper Clare mentions that contextualises the After the Tent Embassy exhibition.
EXHIBITIONS “In the 1970s Juno became involved in the Yellow House at Potts Point, Sydney and worked in Central Australia on the film Uluru (1978). She held her first solo exhibition, We Wait No More, in 1982; the same year she exhibited photographs in the group shows After the Tent Embassy and Apmira: Artists for Aboriginal Land Rights. In 1984 she set up the Camera Future Photographers Cooperative Studio in Kings Cross and became a member of the Australian Journalists' Association Freelance committee. Two years later she established Paper Bark Press (1986–2010) with her partner, poet Robert Adamson; they live on the Hawkesbury River where she has a photography studio. Her 1997 series The Language of Oysters documents the lives of oyster farmers on the Hawkesbury, raising questions of sustainability. In 2003 the National Portrait Gallery exhibited her portraits of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reconciliation activists and personalities, Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978–2003, and has since acquired many of her photographs. Gemes was one of ten photographers invited to document that National Apology in Canberra in 2008. The Macquarie University Art Gallery held a survey exhibition of her work, The Quiet Activist: Juno Gemes, in 2019.” Via National Portrait Gallery.
YELLOW HOUSE “Michael Glasheen has ploughed his own arts furrow since studying at what is now the National Art School. In 1970, “Mick” was a founder member of The Yellow House, Martin Sharp’s iconic arts collective in Potts Point - along with his then girlfriend, photographer Juno Gemes, and a host of other arts pioneers. No longer lovers, Glasheen and Gemes travelled separately to Alice Springs where they filmed Uluru, an experimental documentary based on sacred stories about the monolith they were told by Aboriginal elders…” Read the rest on Sydney Morning Herald.
Read about Juno’s 1960s counter culture memories here.
CAPTURING AN IMAGE? “No thanks, at it’s best photography is a communion between one person and another that’s mediated through a lens,” says Juno.
LAST WORD…
JAMES BALDWIN was an expatriate African-American writer and Civil Rights activist. In 1948, at age twenty-four, Baldwin left the United States to live in Paris, France, as he could not tolerate the racial and sexual discrimination he experienced daily. Read more about him here.
Juno photographed Baldwin in London in 1976. For decades, Juno kept a copy of the below quote, written by James Baldwin to Angela Davis, pinned to her corkboard:
“We know that we, the Blacks, and not only we, the Blacks, have been, and are, the victims of a system whose only fuel is greed, whose only god is profit. We know that the fruits of this system have been ignorance, despair, and death, and we know that the system is doomed because the world can no longer afford it – if, indeed, it ever could have. And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about our kinsmen and our past, about love, life and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.
The enormous revolution in Black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning of the end of America. Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.”
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