Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Gunditjmara Elder Ivan Couzens', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

My name is Ivan Couzens. I’m going on for seventy-nine year old. I’ve probably been around for a long time, too long. I was born at the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve and I lived out there in little old huts, in the scrub, in the early days. Just a dirt floor and hessian bags for window screens. I will never forget being brought up, I was only five years old. After, when I was only five years old we moved from the huts on the mission's scrubs into ten acre allotments that were given to the Aboriginal people that were living on the settlement. On the 10 acre blocks they were new timber houses being built. One good thing about this is that they had toilets just outside, bathhouses, and we also had water tanks rather than going down to the spring at the Hopkins River to cart our drinking water and so on up. If we want to take a bath would go down to the river and it was cold. I preferred the summertime of course.

Mum and Dad moved into the allotments and 10 acre blocks. It was a really big improvement on the huts and living in the scrubs etc... And us kids reckoned it was absolutely fantastic. There was not really big houses and there are eight of us in the family plus Mum and Dad. It was pretty crowded.

My older brothers Gordon and Stan were able to get jobs in the local farmhouses cutting grass and so on, milking cows etc... and digging potatoes. About four or five years later Mum and Dad decided to move into a farmhouse and was about five miles away from the mission station and we move to that. That was a big eye-opener for us kids because there was cows everywhere. We had to bring the cows into milk them and cut thistles and all those sorts of things.

It was a five mile bike ride to school and return it was a 10 mile bike ride each day to school and if we couldn’t ride the bikes, if they punctured or broken down or something we would cross the Hopkins River into the forest and walk to school which was three miles and made it six miles a day. That was the good old days I can say. I think of all the things that we did, that we had to put up with and they never hurt us. They just learnt is that we were lucky I suppose. With the kids on what they're getting today in comparison what we had and what we were able to get is just incredible.

But that cloak, it’s absolutely terrific. The possums skin cloak that Vicki instigated and got all the girls involved. All me granddaughters - Vicki's girls and the other two, like Debbie. Lisa was living in Geelong I think at that time. But it was a real thing that really got us all stirred up about knowing who we are and where we come from and all those sorts of things. I know when Vicki and Deborah and them started school here in Warrnambool. They went to the Warrnambool West State School. And I warned them, when you go there the kids call you a black fellas and black so-and-sos and I said that doesn't matter. I said you are black fellas, even though you don’t look black looking. I said you are, so say: ‘Yeah I'm black and you are white, so ha ha ha’.

It was a good thing they learned a lot about the Aboriginal affairs and who they were and where they come from, and what their grandparents were and where they came from. There was always that racism thing happening with a lot of the schools. I know it used to happen to me when I was playing football. I remember one bloke. I put him down one day, fair and square, and he got up calling me a black so-and-so. I just run away laughing at him and about five minutes later he was in the same position. I put him down again. While he was there gasping on the ground, I put my hand down and pulled him up and he was puffin’ and pantin’. I said: ‘How's that for a black bastard mate? He ran away and after we went for our drinks in the hotel, after the game was over, he come up with a can of beer and he said, ‘Here you are buddy. I'm sorry for what I called you’. And I said, ‘I am black fellow, I know I am’, I said. ‘It didn't hurt me. He said, ‘No, I shouldn’t have said it.’ And I thought: ‘That’s great, there are good people in the country, who listen and take all of those sort of things in’.

But looking at them today. Sarah come along and took me photo of me wearing a possum skin cloak, so I was absolutely. It was really hard to tell a feeling. I was overwhelmed and you try to stick your chest out and parade around, even though there wasn’t anybody there watching us. It was a fantastic thing wearing them and that's how I feel about it so I’m really proud of what the girls did. It wasn’t only Vicki. It was some other girls from other organisations. It went right around Victoria. They all started producing them or having a go at it.

Being proud of who she is, knowing who she is. I think that is one big issues with the kids - knowing who they are and why they should be proud of who they are. That is one of the big thing about kids today is to establish that thing with them; because a lot of the kids, if they get any racism and remarks about them. It not only happened to our kids but that happened of our people coming in and wanting to stay in Australia. I think it is getting a lot easier for them because people are accepting them as well.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Boonwurrung Elder Carolyn Briggs', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

My name is Carolyn Briggs and I'm a descendant of the first people of theee Boonwurrung language group. I'm from the Yallukit Willarn. My Country goes from Werribee River to Mordialloc and then it enters into another band of the Boonwurrung language group.

Our language goes from the Werribee River, or what you'd know as the Bay Ray Rung and it travels all the way to the east and then to the south again to Wamun or Wilson's Promontory.

In that were bands, the Yallukit Willam, Ngaruk Willarn, Mayune Baluk, Boonwurrung Balug, Yownegerra and the Yallock Balluk. These are the different bands, but all spoke Boonwurrung. When people entered our Country, they must be welcomed on the Country and they must be presented with the stories so that people have this connection to know where the water is, where they need to travel, and be acknowledged by the owners of those areas in language, Boonwurrung.

So this is what our cloak - it represented us to continue telling the stories. The story is where we travelled. It shows Country. Mine depicts language of Country. The shell middens. The river. The stories. I say bik, bik. I see mun gruk. I see Boonwurrung. I see language of our Country. I see places that indicate where we've travelled. I see a map of our Country.

So this was about telling a story. It's another part of the storytelling. So the possum, the possum which kept us warm would traditionally have been caught. They are the willet, which means possum, the possum skin. We would adorn this and we travelled.

Everyone would have significant markings on there. How they've trod across the mountains, the rivers, the creeks and these were named on your map through symbols. So when we had to do this and we wanted to showcase it to the world that opportunity that the arts council and Vicki Couzens, who is a Keerray Wurrong woman, asked us to present our images to the world through the Commonwealth Games. So that was a part of the vision. That's only one part of our vision.

To continue that vision is to look at symbols, to look at dance, look at song, look at language. To do a reclamation of who we are and where we are today. It's been a part of my lifetime. But it's the legacy that we must honour of our Ancestors. That did leave us those legacies. And we need to learn to see them again, the hear them. So it is a part of the deep listening. It's about learning to see again, learning to hear, learning to speak. So this is part of the speaking tour, showcasing that culture has survived. And it's still a living link to our past, our heritage of who we are.

So that's the importance of maintaining. The importance of evolving and adapting and allowing the future generations to be a part of these stories. And to see the Country that they're a part of now.

Some of the stories that are on this cloak are from the shield that we were able to access from the museum – Bunjilaka (Museum Victoria). You start to see designs and imagery that portrays where you come from. This was a part of the natural process of trying to understand these images that were on the original cloaks. We found one of the last of our cloaks that is in the Lyon in France which we'd like to go and visit and get photos of to showcase some of the works that our people gave as gifts to visitors or maybe the museums just sent them around.

Why is your physical health is so dependent on these customs?

The old people say what's in the heavens is reflected on earth. We have to learn to see the in between. Moral indicators or nature's indicators are out there and that's probably what they meant by you need to learn to see, you need to learn to hear.

Everything tells you that were being pushed into this Western paradigm. We've forgotten to go back to our Indigenous ways of knowing. We need to start to reconnect to our heritage to make sense of our purpose in life.

That means understanding our food sources that have been revived. I've been fortunate enough to learn to understand it. Only parts of it but I wanted to show that to the world as well. Understanding our food is now being perceived by science as the super foods because they haven't been genetically impacted on at this stage. They're still in their natural state. They're high in all the trace elements that we require for our body.

You can fish when the time is right. Not during their spawning season. You can eat the meat of the land after their birthing cycle.

So you sort of know when the time is to hunt. You don't eat the emu during its nesting period. You know that the male sits on the nest and he almost starves. So you're not going to eat from him, because he's got nothing to give us. He's skinny. So I tell that story to children. The woman goes on to produce more eggs. You can take certain eggs when the time is right. There is knowing how to track an emu, to take only a few because it's about the survival.

So you're taught these things. You're taught that only special people know the knowledge to track because the stars guided you. The constellation would tell you when the emus were nesting so you would not hunt the emu. So you didn't expend time running around spearing animals. You had to know that when the water was drying up, the animals would come in. You had to take on the spirit of that animal to be able to honour that animal, to consume that animal.

Certain people had birthrights - they had totems. They couldn't hunt certain animals so that there was always a balance. Some people have dreamings of parts of the animal that they cannot consume and that's taken generations to understand that complexity.

We are hearing how other people are connected to their Country. How they understood their laws of marriage rights. Who they could marry, who they couldn't marry -- wrong skin, wrong blood. It kept the balance because it was a way of stopping the in-breeding. Science now tells us the genetic structures. Maybe we understood it. Maybe if western paradigm hadn't come in we wouldn't have been interrupted.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Baraparapa Elder Esther Kirby', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

I'm Esther Kirby. Originating from Balranald. I now live here in Kerang and I have connection to several tribes. The first two being Waradjuri, which is my paternal grandmother, and Yorta Yorta, which is my maternal grandmother. My grandfather, Billy Murray, he's connected to this Country here which is mainly Wemba Wemba. He's also connected to Burke.

A lot of the story is connected to my family anyway, because we're river people. Everything that's on here also represents right up and down the Murray River.

These are important because, these are just keeping it real. It's not just for covering. It's for staying connected and for the woman's place. Not to keep her, what's the word? Not to keep her in line but this is a pride and a sense of belonging.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Wadi Wadi Elder Phoebe Nicholson', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

My name is Phoebe Nicholson. I've lived in Kerang for nearly forty years. My mother's tribal connections are Wemba Wemba, Yorta Yorta, Wadi and Barap.

We’ve gone back home along the Murray River and then across to the Murrumbidgee. We've had all our holidays basically on the river. Since school has finished we pack up the trailer and the kids and pets and everything and head off out to the river and camp out there. Spent quiet a few Christmas's out there over in the Barham Koondrook Forest. Along with, you know, a few of our other close family and friends. Esther used to come out, that's my sister, and my other sister Laila, all bring our tents and, you know, we had the tents all around. All the kids used to play there and we'd cook out there, sit up and still tell stories during the night and wanted kids to go to bed early, we’d tell them some scary yarns [laughs] and frighten them off to bed. Sometimes we'd frighten ourselves a little bit too, I think.

Just watch out for different kinds of birds that bring messages. You’ve got the little willy wagtail. If he comes hanging around, you know there is trouble coming soon or, you know, something that's not very good. We call him a little bad news little bird.

And then you've got the plover and the mopoke, that's a night owl that comes out and knows to bring you. You know soon after you hear them, there's bound to be sad or bad news coming. Curlews are similar, similar type of message bird that, they’re like all message birds. That's about as far as the birds go.

We've spent most of our time mixing in with Wadi, Wemba, Yorta Yorta, Barap, Waradjuri - that's my Dad's people.

So, getting back to the skin. They were pretty curious to see, you know, how I was going to make this and … pretty excited. Mum's going to be doing something for the Commonwealth Games. They were quite interested in what was happening. Yeah, yeah I've got me daughter's design up on the top. So we've had a few different ones who have had input into it, which all I thought was a good thing that community members were involved in it.

This one across the top is my daughter's contribution to the design. A little bit more contemporary art with the two rivers running to the Murray River, which flows right down through the middle of the design and that covers the first three panels. So it's good.

My son came up with ideas about the scar trees; evidence that Koori people were here and that's a pretty good landmark when you see that. So that was one of the other things.

One you can't see very well there, but on this end you've got a bit of the men going out hunting on the river in the canoes and some of the things they might catch, like fish and ducks, turtles. As we go on, you'll see in more detail what's on each panel. . . different pictures.

I've done it in my own style of drawing or painting you know. It’s how I perceive it must have been back then. So I’ve kept this end for what I thought the men might do, and they'd be comfortable going out and doing those things, like as you would when you take your kids out to the bush. The men and the boys go off and do something. So that's how I saw it fit into this particular design.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), ' Interview: Taungurung Elder Mick Harding', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

My name's Mick Harding and I'm from the Yowung-Illam-Baluk and Yerrun-Illam-Baluk clans of the Taungurung people - a tribe of the Kulin nation. My clan Country's sort of Mansfield area, so that's my connection.

Having the opportunity to be part of it (the possum skin cloak project) and then being asked to be the lead artist is a bit of a buzz for me. It’s a real opportunity to do something that our old people have done maybe 150-200 years ago. We're actually capturing that again and doing that again in a modern world.

The exciting part was that give and take of our symbols and of our stories from the past. To breathe some life back in them again. That was really, really exciting.

I’ve been part of cultural heritage for probably 20 years, I took all that sort of knowledge of things that I'd seen - Elders that I'd talked to, other Koori people that I'd talked to, and just loads and loads and loads of different types of observations.

So then I sort of thought that there's a few symbols that I could see that really were us and they were sort of half an arc shape - what would be called a chevron today or half a diamond. Since then I've just sort of taken those to be really dominant in lot of the stuff you see, throughout the whole of south-east Australia. Then I started to incorporate them in my own artwork prior to this.

So I suppose that was - you might even think of it as being my bias - and I took it into the process and wanted to incorporate that stuff. I think with all those things, what you see is you see whenever I've seen it from older shields or some cloaks that we've seen. There's one that we see that's got this sort of arc shape in it and it's used over and over and over and over again. And when you see the shields you'll have chevrons, but you won't have just one, you'll have chevron, chevron, chevron.

So it all keeps going, keeps going, keeps going; it's just concentrations of it. I try to portray it like sort of a vibration of us, of the earth, of the animals, because I really don't know exactly, because one of my Elders has not passed that information onto me. So I just try and take all those observations and all those things that people have said to me and try to get them in the pot and mix them all together and try to make some sense of them. And that's the way I look because every time you see it, you see it's always not in just one form - it's always concentrations, like it's a vibration, and so I see that.

When you look at other art from other areas throughout Australia, you know when you look at those dot paintings, it's this constant continual stuff like a vibration, like a connection to that vibration, to that spiritual connection to that countryside. I sort of see it like that and try and then think about how I'm going to do it like that. I suppose that's what led us partly to do it like this as well because as I said before, I come with that sort of bias to it, so I'm trying to use that mindset on it and I'm still doing this art, you know. You look at any of my artwork that I'm doing today you'll see it constantly.

My children, Mitchell and Corey, they've taken part in every workshop that we did to craft the cloak which I thought was really important for me. And I suppose that the important part of that is that for the first 25 years of my life I never knew about my Aboriginality but they will know and have taken part in their culture from the outset, from when they're little kids.

So they'll have the first 25 years, and this is part of it. And they've done other things like language camps and cultural camps and dancing; they've been part of dance groups. I've really made sure they've been exposed to it and been part of it, and this is just another one of those sorts of things that I'm really conscious of and I really want them to know who they are and be proud of who they are.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Wemba Wemba Elder Fay Muir', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

I'm Fay Stweart Muir. I'm an elder of the Wemba Wemba and Boonwurrung clan. Wemba Wemba is on my Dad’s side, who was born in Tresco, near Lake Boga. His mother was very proud and strong in her culture, and so was he. So when the cloak came about, I was honoured to be able to wear the Wemba Wemba cloak. I had to go through the protocols of asking my dad and another elder if I could wear it in the coming days. And I was given permission, which was beautiful, but then we had a lot of work to do. The cloak was already made but there were no drawings or any designs on the back of it so we had to work over two nights before the actual time that we were wearing it and design what was on it.

So what is on the cloak is the red tail black cockatoo, which is our totem from my dad's side. There's also the lake that's depicted on the cloak, which depicts Maboga and also the ruler, the Maran ruler, which is also very strong in our culture as well.

There's also lot of other little totems that's also designed onto the cloak. So there was a lot of love and effort and laughter that was put into that as we designed the cloak.

As I said it was also an honour to wear it, out there with all the other cloaks, on that very warm summer's day in 2006. We all had a ball with the choreography, getting everything right, and presenting our cloaks. We wore the fur on the outside to start with, and then we showed the world the designs on every cloak as we turned it around. And that was really great.

Cloaks in our culture are very, very important. They were used as a tool for bartering between tribes and they're also very important for the women because the women made the cloaks. The men caught the possums, they skinned them and dried them and then the women sewed them up. They used kangaroo sinew as a thread and kangaroo bone as a needle. Their work was very, very fine, as you can see in some of the old cloaks that are still available.

Six were sewn together for a baby to be wrapped in and there was up to thirty for an adult. Thirty pelts sewn together for an adult to keep them warm, to be worn as clothing. As the child grew, more skins were added to that cloak, until they got up to an adult, so that they have thirty pelts.

They were used for ceremonies, when all the tribes got together, because they used to get together where the MCG is now situated in Melbourne. That was a big gathering place for all the tribes in Victoria, and they come together to arrange marriages, and trade the cloaks there. They'd also have lots of games and lots of fun, as well.

Today, to have the cloaks back in focus for all people to see, I think, is very important, because they don't understand that the cloaks were used as clothes and a trading tool.

The possum pelts were also used for the first football. They were sewn together, I think there was eight sewn together and then they were packed, the footballs were packed with grass and the men used to play football. It was a great entertainment. Some of these football games would go on during the day and also during the night, they can go on for hours. There was always a lot of people around, as well, at these football games. And it wasn't just the number that's on the ground nowadays. There was you know maybe thirty or forty people together playing.

The cloak travelled through from birth through to the adult age, until death. When Aboriginal people died they were put in trees. So that they would be away, wrapped up and put in trees. Probably in paperback and put in trees to dry. And they were away from the animals so the animals couldn't get to the body. And when it was just the bones left they would get the bones down and wrap them in the possum skins and bury them.

So that was another way of what happened with our people when they died. So it was really a different way. A lot of people don't realise that. But it's a different way of looking at how we prepared our people for death.

But it was still sad but it was very enlightening, as well. For the tribes to know that their people, the spirit was still away in the tree. They could fly, the spirit could fly back to the dream time. So that was one of the things that they did.

To start with there's only part that was put on. As the child grew there was more stories added to the cloak. And there was more stories told to the child so that they'd understand it. And a lot of children were told stories to keep them safe. So they were only told so much. But as they grew old they were told more and more of that story until they were old enough to understand the whole story. But most of them were to tell children to keep them safe.

Like I was told when I was a child about little hairy men. If we went down near the holes the little hairy men would get us. But I didn't realize that until my grandmother always told me that, and my mom. But I suppose I was early teens before I knew that the hairy men weren't around.

What was down the holes was a rabbit warren. But it was to keep us safe. Keep us away from those great holes in case we fell and hurt ourselves. That was mostly what stories were told to children for.

I can't remember them what my dad used to tell because it was so long ago. Yeah, which is a shame. I would have loved to pass those on to my grandchildren. And I was a girl so he only spoke to my brother about different things, as well. Because there was women's business and men's business. They were stories to tell to son's and for women to tell to their daughter's. But seeing I was an only child for quite a while I got told sort of things by my dad.

On my mother's side, her family is the Boonwurrung people. And they come from around the coast. Down around Melbourne down to Wilson's Promontory. My Ancestors had a lot to do with the coastal areas. They knew about fishing -- when they could catch the fish. They knew about spawning, not to touch when the fish were spawning because there wouldn't be some for the next year.

When a lot of our people, when they died, especially down around the sands, they were buried in the sand. And they have been, our people have been found down there, Ancestors, aerating the sand still and with their tools. So it was great. So it's history.

We're still learning these different things that are found in the sand. Because sand preserves it much better. So there's a lot of our artifacts still found in the sand that we can trace back 20 or 30,000 years ago.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Wergaia Elder Professor Eleanor Bourke', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

My name is Eleanor Bourke. I was born Eleanor Anderson and I identify as a Wergaia woman through my mother. I was the oldest granddaughter of Archibald Pepper, from whom we know some of our language and totem, which is the pelican, and stories about our identity and about our place.

When the Commonwealth Games project with the cloak happened, it was intended to ensure that all language groups were able to participate and be part of the opening ceremony. We older ones expected that the artists in our family would, in fact, have done the artwork. But, because of the politics, I guess, and the nature of people, for and against Commonwealth Games, it didn't happen.

So, my sister and I decided that we would do the cloak, and, so, we made this cloak. We did our own design. Of course, we didn't do anything really artistic, except to try and draw the pelican, and I was inspired by another piece of textile design that I learned to do the pelican in this way.

The symbols and designs are very Victorian. The straight line, the linear triangles and shield shapes are particularly Victorian. We used those as the basis for a pelican standing in the past or on a lakeside or on the sand, or whatever you might want to envisage.

In relation to how we identify growing up Aboriginal, well we rely on our older folk to tell us the stories. And we were lucky enough - lucky in one way, but it was through adversity in another, that we had a lot of time with both grandparents who were able to tell us stories.

Growing up, we were in a very small school and we were the only Aboriginal family, but I was lucky enough to live near my grandparents. They used to talk about their backgrounds or their life. And as a result of some illness in my family I spent a lot of time with my brothers and sisters, with my grandmother, who always talked about her father and the stories that he had told her which were to do with our identity and the fact that the pelican was our totem coming from the Wergaia tribe in Victoria.

These stories were passed on to many grandchildren and assisted us in feeling strong about our identity and not feeling, you know, not cringing about our Aboriginal identity; which, you know, was a difficult thing because you notice that Aboriginal people won't talk about who they were publicly. We weren't allowed to express an identity and it's only in recent times that it's easy to say who you are and have people accept it without question.

And those stories get passed on. Well, my grandchildren, also, know these stories and they want to know more. See, my grandsons up there in corroboree, they expect to know about their identity. We just have to bring the rest of the country along with us, really.

My great grandfather's name was Albacutya. He had three names that we know of. We don't know enough about the way people were named. We know about how people were named in other parts of Australia now. He was sometimes called the Pelican Man and his name had Albacutya in the title, which is Lake Albacutya where one imagines would have been a place of pelicans when there was a lot of water.

It's been a dry lake for about 30 years, I believe, and it's only filled up this year, which is probably, hopefully, a good omen. But in our family we identify very strongly with the female line, the pelican totem, and the male line, with the cockatoo. If you're travelling around Australia, you often meet other people who have the pelican.

That sort of gives you a sort of sense of kinship, really. We always feel good when we see pelicans. We think it's a good sign. We're a bit superstitious about when something's going wrong. An example, my sister, who couldn't be here today, doesn't like seeing one pelican on its own. She thinks it's bad luck so we have all these beliefs around it that manifest themselves somehow from these stories.

I can't remember all the stories my grandmother told me - this is the sad thing. When you're a child you don't really take any notice, you just listen and you think. It's easy to remember that the pelican's part of our identity. But she had so many stories and we just didn't think it was - well it wasn't written down so we just can't remember them all. We've got an oral tradition. We are very lucky because the Wergaia language was recorded, both from my grandmother and one other older person, and so it is available for people to learn. It is being taught in a small part, in some schools in Victoria, in the region, which is good.

I do sit on a couple of committees - one for the government, the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, which I chaired for two years and also Native Title Services Victoria, which is responsible for assisting some groups firm up native title claims. Our group, Wergaia, we're in what is called the Wotjobaluk clan but so many of the Wimmera Clans - five clans - were recognised by the Peoples Court. The Wotjobaluk, the Wergaia, the Jaadwa, the Jadawadjali and the Jupagulk people were all recognised in a claim. There's not much to the claim, but, for me, it was so important to have the recognition that Wergaia people exist. And, for my grandmother, it was a wonderful thing to be able to have that recognition.

And, in the court hearing, I remember when our legal person spoke on our behalf - it was just a small statement. He was able to speak of my great-grandfather and one other person, Walter Kennedy, who were responsible for the language being retained in terms of the recordings that were made by Walter and by my grandmother.

It’s great for historical record, really. It's more that you just talk about how those connections mean something, and the impact on that is about one saying: ‘I'm an Aboriginal woman. I am Wergaia, and the pelican is my totem’. And then, when you go on from that, you get into other things. Now, you don't create other stories, but like my story about moving house. When we moved, we were only moving three and a half kilometres from one house to the other. Going down the road, four pelicans came and they were at a dam that was on the property that we were leaving. And I thought, oh, my goodness, I've never seen pelicans here before. I wonder where they're going. And, when we got to the house, these pelicans stayed on the dam. Two stayed for two weeks, and the other two stayed for four weeks. Which to me, it was like a blessing, to have a good move, and somebody was watching over me. So, things like that, you have an interpretation of something. And, as I've said about my sister earlier, if she sees one pelican running around, she expects something bad to happen, and that's sort of how these stories go, I guess. But the other thing is, when we go to places where there are lots of pelicans, you feel good. You think it's a good place and all that sort of thing, and you tell other people, oh, you're being looked after. So it's like representation of the spirits. It is about belief and spirituality.

The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was really an historic moment for Victoria and Aboriginal people because it brought together the 36 language groups at one time for work on things to do with stories and heritage and identity that people could talk about and, perhaps, write down.

Some people worked as groups and others, like my sister and I, just did it as a family because nobody else was going to. It was a great moment. We captured it with the photographs of all the people in cloaks in the group photos and the preparation for the games when we were together talking about how we did what we did, which was also really important. So, that's now on the public record, again, as part of an ongoing tradition and identity of people.

The second thing in relation to Henry Atkinson's comment on education, my daughter uses her cloaks as teaching tools when she talks to groups. As an artist, she will use a cloak and talk about each panel and what she intended with each pattern on a separate panel. At the moment, one of her cloaks is in the permanent display at the Koorie Heritage Trust. Used in an educated way for people to understand that these are Aboriginal people of Victoria here and they're still here.

It's because of the history of dispossession and dislocation. In the beginning, when you're a colonised society, people really don't want you there because you remind them of the bad things that have been done in taking over the Country. There's whole waves of experiences that people have, right up until when we got the protection phase, which lasted for about 60 years in Victoria, where people thought we were going to die out, that was the general belief. Because the authorities counted what they called was 'full-blood' people and this was enshrined, at least, in legislation, so there was this sort of countdown that we were going to die out, and there are many records showing census figures that have 10, 15, you know, small numbers of people, few hundreds of people for the whole of Victoria, which we find ridiculous because what that meant was that they were saying, well, you know, half of the rest of the population didn't count and weren't Aboriginal, and that's why there's been such a strong reaction, even to the extent of what we called ourselves.

The authorities just talked about Aboriginal people generally, or people that were Goulburn-Blacks, or Murray-Blacks, or Barabuls or whatever, not even using our proper names, so it's quite miraculous that people can identify their own clan name or travel name, and indeed know some stories about their totems and things that are really part of the identity from some generations back. And that's the reason we feel so good about it. Because it's survived despite all the bad things that happened in between.

Well, I didn't grow up where our Country is but I've travelled through it many times. I went to see the lake, and was horrified when I found it was dry. The cloak with the pelican on it really just symbolises the place for us because we're not there. In Victoria, most people have been dislocated from their Country for the way so called progress has happened. And the way people have gone to chase work and to get an education or have gone into mixed marriages. There's all of those experiences. So that's what makes this precious in a way.

We are possum cloak wearing people because of our climate. So it was a skill people had in the past. It's the identity. It's the continuation of that identity. It's like I said before, and it really in our case with the pelican, it's about the people and the place because we're not there even though we did get that native title finding that's a positive determination that we do exist. It's all part of that package.

Well when we did it, we told many members of our extended family what we were going to do and why. So that we could say, well look if nobody else will do this, this is what's going to happen. Most of them said yes, that's great, I'm glad that's happening. So for us that was positive because it would've been terrible to not have been there. We would've been invisible. The same struggles that we've had in our lives would've happened for the grandchildren and so on.

As far as healing goes, I didn't have that as an issue, even though I tell you all the negative things that have happened in history. I was more feeling constructive that we can do this. The opportunity was there to keep the historic information and keep it on the public record. To me that's really important because it talks to an ongoing presence of people and that's the most important thing to me personally.

Your photograph and your use of the photographs will continue that perpetuation of people. Knowing that we're here and they can see that this group of people existed and there's groups of people that existed. To me, that is the biggest thing. And I don't really care what people say. They can say hurtful things but that's not the important thing. It's not lost from the story of Victoria. We've been here and we still are.

The photos of my grandmother and her sister-in-law - they're quite amazing in a way because when you think about it, they were fashion plates. They were striking women right until the later years. That sort of came about from their experiences because they were made to feel they had to be as good, even better dressed, than other people. And so they stepped up on special occasions and I think it's quite interesting that they did that. In a time when there were obviously Aboriginal people but Aboriginal people were treated in a particular way at that time.

Women worked like the men in those days. People lived on the land so they worked on the lands. Women were cooks or cleaners; domestics. And the men worked on the stock and sheared and so on. In our family everybody worked back in those generations. They were hard working people.

I probably should mention the most obvious thing. I'm named by my grandma. She was Eleanor Jesse Pepper and I am Eleanor Anne. I was named after her and had one other cousin who was named after her as well. So that has created a special sort of bond between us. I should also mention that this photograph was taken when my grandmother was 19. I'm not sure if you call it a photograph with the tinting. And when my mother went to work she had it made into this picture and this frame, from a smaller black and white, when she was 16. So I grew up seeing this picture in my grandmother's house. When I was little, she used to say when you grow up this is your photograph. You can take this. And of course, as she got older and older, she used to tell me towards the end of her time living in her own home, that I should take this picture. Of course I said no, I would never take it while she was living. Eventually she left her home to be cared for by an aunt of mine and I did get the picture before she died. So that was a bit sad because I never ever wanted it at all until she was gone. There was never any question that she was going to go and so, here we are.

Film - Sarah Rhodes (producer), 'Interview: Yorta Yorta Elder Professor Henry Atkinson', 2011, Koorie Heritage Trust

My name is Henry Atkinson. I'm an elder of the Wolithiga Clan of the Yorta Yorta Nations. I was the former spokesperson of the Council of Elders of the Yorta Yorta Nation. To me, keeping alive our culture, regardless of what clan, what nation, or what group of people we come from, I think it is very important that we really attempt at the highest level to make sure our culture is alive, especially for our younger generations.

Now, before I get into talking about the possum skin cloaks. I just want to say this that, this project or the possum skin project, or anything to do with our culture, is not about revitalising or bringing back. To me, our culture has always been with us.

It's just that it has been denied to us to carry it to through into from generations and generations. So our culture has survived. It has not died, we are not revitalising it. It is constantly with our Elders, and it's up to the Elders to make sure that it is passed onto the younger generations, so we do survive for another 75,000 years or more.

Now, the possum skin cloaks, to me, certainly was one way of keeping our people warm, but for certain people, the possum skin represented who those people are, their status in their society. That was by the markings that were on the possum skin, on the inside of the possum skin cloaks.

The possum skin cloaks from each of the individual groups tell the story of today. It tells about where they're from, what the landscape was like, and it also tells who that person is in status in their communities.

The possum skin cloak was worn with the markings on the outside so other people could identify who those people were. They wore the cloak with the fur on the outside when it was raining so the water would drop off and keep the people dry.

Original cloaks

Museum Victoria or the Museum Melbourne has two possum skin cloaks that are very, very old, and one of them is from my particular part of the Country - Wolithiga.

Those markings on that original possum skin cloak tell the story of the landscape such as the waterways, the rivers, the Dungala, and all the other connections that run into the Dungala like the Eldon rivers.

Of course, the other possum skin cloak in the museum is a Gunditjmara possum skin, and it also tells a story as far as the markings.

We've got to continually keep that alive for the younger generations for their self esteem and build them up to be proud of who they are and where they come from, and with possum skin cloaks, this is one way we can do that.

The possum skin cloaks, when you think about North American people, the first peoples of Canada for instance, what did they do with the buffalos. They took the skins of the buffalos and used them as cloaks. Our culture is much, much older than those cultures but it's just one way of showing that we do have connections to a lot of Indigenous people around the world and their cultures are very, very similar in certain ways.

In getting these possum skin cloaks produced, it helped to bring together our peoples in each of the communities to work on a project and to get ideas from the younger ones, what they want to put on the designs of each of those nations' possum skin cloaks.

We Exist

The Yorta Yorta people, we went through native title and we weren't successful. Of course, the judge on that day really denied us our rights as Indigenous peoples in his formal assessment of the Yorta Yorta tribe.

I really think that projects such as this can prove, and help other Indigenous peoples, that yes we are alive. We are people. We are Indigenous people and we do still have that culture that is very, very strong.

I have family, adoptive family up in the top end of Australia in Alice Springs. I just want to make this point that it's very hard for Indigenous people in south-east Australia to be really recognised as Aboriginal people. A lot of non Indigenous people think that there's only Aboriginal people at the top end of Australia. That is not true. We are Indigenous people down here in south-east Australia and we have a culture. It's just that what's happened to our people has not happened in a strong sense to those people up in northern Australia.

So I congratulate those three girls that started this project off, especially Vicki Couzens, the Gunditjmara woman. She's still carrying on that culture. She's still carrying on the fight for her people and her right to be recognised as Indigenous peoples.

Younger generations

I really want to see my younger generations succeed in life. I know we have some great sports people and yeah, for sure they do succeed. But what I would like to see is our younger generations to be used not just as role models in sport but good role models within their own selves. The only way they can get that is through good education and to be business people in their own right or to be a politician or a legal person or whatever. That can be achieved.

What I do here at the faculty of education at Monash University is I teach teachers how to teach and I teach them, in a sense, history, not culture because I cannot teach culture. Culture is so diverse and so wide. I teach the interconnections between how student teachers can relate to an Indigenous student for a start.