The Brag

I Am Eora
By Oliver Downes

I Am Eora seems set to extend the boundaries of Indigenous theatre, incorporating music (including that of desert balladeer Frank Yamma, jazz singer Wilma Reading and hip-hop poet Radical Son), performance and large-scale projections to suggest a story without relying too much on overt narrative.

It’s the brainchild of Wesley Enoch, the first Indigenous Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre Company. Enoch, who contributed to the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, describes I Am Eora as being “like an opening ceremony to a big athletics event”, which although celebratory looks “at the underbelly of things, trying to tell another kind of story, not just the obvious stuff.”

Taking as its point of departure the biographies of three historical figures, Barangaroo, Pemulwuy and Bennelong, the piece explores the different Indigenous responses to contact with Australia’s colonisers – ranging from hostile resistance to quiet refusal to conform, and active assistance.

“The dominant narrative is that Aboriginal people just rolled over and let [colonisation] happen,” says Enoch, “but Pemulwuy resisted, and there’s been a huge resistance in this country since the very beginning… What these figures represent is still manifesting today: the warrior, the nurturer and the interpreter. Many Indigenous Australians experience those three spirits, those archetypes, in who we are in this country today.”

While speaking passionately about the continuities between present and past, Enoch is quick to argue that Indigenous culture is dynamic and constantly evolving. “The people who have a vested interest in creating an image of Aboriginal culture as a static or ‘authentic’ thing from hundreds of years ago are people who cannot deal with the fluidity of even the multicultural Australia… In a pluralist society like [ours], we deserve and should have a pluralist perspective on what Aboriginality is.”

With the show’s title, Enoch (who confesses to having a ‘tortured relationship’ with Sydney) has sought to excavate the meaning of the name traditionally given to the Indigenous peoples around Sydney Harbour: Eora (which translates as ‘people of this place’). “I think it’s actually the people who live in Sydney who are the Eora,” says Enoch. “That’s contentious,” he admits.

“The proposition I’m trying to put forward is that this country can only go forward when we can all say ‘I am a person of this place, I belong here’. I’ll get some flack for it, but I love the idea of art being a little bit contentious … There are lots of different ways of being here, and ultimately to be true to an Aboriginal spirit of ‘being of a place’, people must feel ownership for a place, care for it, feel responsibility for it as well.”

Where: CarriageWorks, Eveleigh
When: January 8-14