This exhibition is a celebration of Indigenous culture as told through the personal recollections of 12 outstanding ‘story-tellers’, all of whom are committed to passing on their knowledge to the next generation. Captured in photographs and on film, their emotive, personal stories focus on 12 different objects, each carefully selected from the collections of the Queensland Museum, for their powerful links to people, place and experience.

The title of this exhibition pays homage to a pivotal play, You Came to My Country and You Didn’t Turn Black, staged at the Queensland Museum in 1990. One of the actors from that play, Roxanne McDonald, was invited back to the Museum as part of this exhibition project. Roxanne held a photograph of herself, taken 25 years ago, as she performed a poem by celebrated Indigenous poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (who was also known as Kath Walker). Roxanne remembered the powerful poem, This is my heritage — and it became the title of this exhibition.

The play was devised by theatre director, Sue Rider, from the writings of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and was first performed by The Acting Company of South Australia as part of the 1984 Adelaide Festival. The script was subsequently revisited and enriched with additional poems by Maureen Watson. Together with Queensland Museum curator, Judith Bartlett (later Wassell), these strong women managed to stage the controversial play, which ‘explored the joy, the anger and the laughter of an Aboriginal in modern Australia’.

To complement the play, Museum curators also devised an art exhibition, in the main display gallery, and asked a number of Indigenous artists to respond to the works of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Maureen Watson. The development of the performance and exhibition was no easy feat because there was no precedent for such an elaborate event in a Museum setting. With persistence, the small team of dedicated professionals was able to translate the importance of such an event, at that point in time, and they secured funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.

The Queensland Museum production was directed by Sue Rider, with Kathy Fisher as co-director, and music composition and performance by Heather King. The cast included five young Indigenous actors: Roxanne McDonald, Ben Dillon, Natasha Gulash, Lesley Marller and Billy McPherson.

The accompanying art exhibition included 24 Queensland Indigenous visual artists, who presented more than 150 works. Many of the contributors were at the beginning of their careers and the exhibition brought well-deserved attention to artists such as, Marshall Bell, Gordon Bennett, Fiona Foley, Ron Hurley, Rick Roser, Judy Watson, Richard Bell, and others.

The political nature of the poems and the responses from the visual artists were integral to the overall success of the project. At the time, it was a major coup and a notable change of direction for the Queensland Museum. The project captured the mood of the era through a collaboration that involved an insightful creative team, the Indigenous communities and Museum staff.

When we set out to bring these stories together, we could not have envisaged the inspirational journey that was to follow and we could not have asked for more engaging story-tellers. All were extremely generous with their time and in sharing their curiosity and wonder about the Museum objects, their deeply moving family stories, and the many life experiences that have shaped their identities. They did this with such integrity and such honesty that they deserve to be the focus of this exhibition.

Michael Aird and Mandana Mapar, Exhibition Curators

Introductory essay excerpt, Queensland Museum 2015 - 2018

Photography for the project by Mick Richards and Michael Aird.