National Aboriginal Art Gallery under fire over proposed building site
Indigenous Australian elders in the Northern Territory have called the development of the National Aboriginal Art Gallery (NAAG) a “complete joke” due to its insensitive proposed building site.
The $130 million project is set to celebrate 65,000 years of First Nations history and culture, while also ramping up future tourism prospects in the NT.
However, the government wants to build it on the town's football oval precinct, which, critically, overlaps a sacred women's site.
Doris Stuart Kngwarreye, a proud Arrernte woman, described the five-year consultation process for the project as a "complete joke" and said she would continue to fight to protect her cultural heritage.
"If you're there and they're consulting with you and you say 'no, end of story' consultation goes on without you there," she said.
"The boxes have been ticked."
The main issue for Ms Stuart is that the gallery will layer other First Nations' songlines and stories, expressed through the artworks proposed for the gallery, over an Mparntwe sacred women's area.
"If you put a building up there with stories that don't belong there, how do you think the ancestors will feel towards that?" she said.
"Where's the respect? We have our boundaries here."
Western Arrarnta elder and artist Mervyn Rubuntja has been painting his homeland in vibrant watercolour since he was a teenager, and said he felt uneasy about displaying his artwork on the potential site.
"It's a woman's site," he said. "You need to talk to the ladies first if they say yes or no, because it's important for every non-Indigenous person to listen."
The fight over the location first began in 2017, when a government-funded steering committee, led by Indigenous art experts, said in a report the gallery should be built out of town and should have major input from the local Indigenous custodians.
The NT government is still consulting with the community over the designs of the building and that consultation process is expected to be wrapped by late 2023, but there is no clear timeline for when the building will commence.
For Ms Stuart, she said she is disappointed that the government is pushing ahead with the project but said she’d continue to speak up for her country no matter the outcome.
"All I want is respect for all this land," she said.
Image credits: Getty Images