All of my creative work, my images and texts, has come out of my own thinking, my own seeing, my own connection with Country. Nobody has asked me to work this way, to relate these events, to map the land and stars, or make prints from cadavers. I have done these things on my own.

None of these stories are part of the Jukurrpa, which has been patiently explained to me by Warlpiri and Bpangerang friends and family over many years, and which I still do not understand. They are drawn entirely from my imagination, from the land, and from my personal relationships.

Declaring any identity, except that of a white person, is a socially dangerous act—capable of undermining a person’s entire creative or intellectual world. I recognise that my own status as a self-identified Aboriginal person of mixed heritage, including Celtic, European and African lineages, will invite strangers to scrutinise the legitimacy of my creative work on the basis of race. 

Before you do that, I hope you will consider how any person with Aboriginal lineage who declares their hybridity, their uncertainty or ambiguity, faces public outrage. Decades of genealogical research and immersion in cultural life is still not given the same weight as a certificate of Aboriginality, granted by colonial powers. As Jeffrey Sissons notes, “the very question of Indigenous authenticity has deep roots within colonial racism”. I’ve watched strangers demand proof from Aboriginal people of their lineage, or evaluate their identity by blood quantum. This is not allyship. It’s racism.

As a young adult I began searching for the truth behind the missing birth certificates on my family tree. I was not the first of my family to do so. Like those who had tried before me, my search hit dead end after dead end. White records were designed to erase Aboriginality and they do that very well. Hoping for clues in the oral histories, I spent almost two decades travelling through remote communities, asking strangers if they knew my family. I wrote to Aboriginal corporations, AIATSIS, community Arts Centres, departments of births, deaths and marriages. After years of little progress, I was taken in by the Warlpiri community of Lajamanu. I was formally adopted into the Patrick family by senior elder Jerry Jangala and given a skin name and Warlpiri ‘bush’ name. I use the skin-name Nangala, at their request. A group of ladies (Myra, Agnes, Sonia, Judy, Lily, Biddy and Kitty) took me hunting and showed me how to identify plants. Their influence on my art practice is significant – my work doesn’t look like their beautiful paintings, but it’s underpinned by a world-view they helped me see.  

It was only after I’d stopped looking that I received an email from Uncle Freddy Dowling, a Bpangerang elder from the NSW Riverina. He’d found one of the hundreds of letters I’d sent to Aboriginal corporations and had recognised my ancestor’s names. With his help I was able to trace my ancestry to the peoples of the Murray River in Northern Victoria and the NSW Riverina.

I wish I could end this story here. I wish I could say that finding answers about my erased family history has brought me peace. But the truth is that Australia is more deeply and violently divided on race now than it has been in many decades. On social media, Aboriginal people are constantly forced to answer prejudice based on skin colour and blood quantum. This kind of ontological violence is exhausting—and it is almost exclusively directed at Aboriginal people.

There will never be a document, a photograph, a reliable DNA test that will give me a sense of certainty in my identity. The authority I bring to my creative work is the experience of wandering community to community, showing photos of my family to strangers, of trying to reconstruct the truth of my family history.

I have no cultural authority from which to comment on who can legitimately claim Indigeneity or on what basis their claims should be accepted by Aboriginal tribes, clans and nations. My views on this matter should not and do not matter. My own identity is that of a multi-ethnic, or mixed heritage, person. I foreground my Aboriginal ancestry because it matters to me. However, I don’t seek or receive material advantages on the grounds of Aboriginality. I have never, and will never, apply for grants, funding or opportunities that are earmarked for Aboriginal people. 

The rise of non-Indigenous “experts” on Aboriginal culture and identity is one of the strangest and most disturbing echos of colonialism. During the lead up to Australia’s failed referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, there were white people who walked into public institutions demanding proof that Aboriginal employees were black enough. Broadcasters debated how black a person should be in order to “benefit” from the voice to parliament. Photography colleagues argued on WhatsApp about whether “real” Aborigines should be treated preferentially to those with more diluted ancestry. I read Stan Grant’s heartrending book On Identity in the weeks leading up to the vote and cried.

In my creative output, across image-making and writing, I make an effort to clarify my position in relation to culture and history. I have written books about my search for ancestry and the uncertainty that comes with that. I have devoted a doctoral thesis to the topic.  When I speak of culture, it is my own personal story – a story of my relationship to Country, to individuals on that Country, and to the culture that underpins custodianship. I am not telling stories that belong to others.

Anyone who has seriously tried to piece together their erased Aboriginal ancestry knows how deeply painful it can be. At fifty-four years old, I am a product of five decades of Western education and enculturation. While interrogating my own identity and connection to Country are recurrent themes in my work, its broader ontologies are drawn from a cultural horizon that predates my relationship with Aboriginality. I am a mongrel and the work that I create has arisen from my dubious DNA.

In Australia, we find ourselves in a situation where intensely personal issues of identity are determined by politico-cultural groups, often unknown to us, on the basis of white-record genealogy or of dubious commercial DNA results. The requirement for Aboriginal people to have their lineage externally ratified by government officials, or representatives of political and cultural groups, overlooks the United Nations articulated right to Aboriginal Identity, confirmed by the Tasmanian high court in 1998.

The colonial gaze requires Aboriginal people to confess inner dynamics of our histories in a detail never required of non-Aboriginal people. Imposing exclusionary definitions of Aboriginality has been denounced by scholars and First Nations writers like Pat Dodson and others as a colonist method of controlling Aboriginal people. Denying the range of diverse Aboriginal family histories divides First Nations people into those who can, and those who can’t, produce documented evidence—an ability that is often determined by relative privilege. You need an education and money to trace your ancestry. And countless Aboriginal people will never be able to produce genealogical  identification, because their connection to history and to community has been severed by the Stolen Generations policies.

And there are real world consequences to being undocumented. Those without confirmation of Aboriginality must either conceal the truth of their heritage or face public umbrage, often from non-Indigenous people on social media platforms. We are creating another stolen generation by silencing people who would identify but for the fear of public rebuke. In 2024, anyone, from any cultural background, can challenge the authenticity of any individual’s Aboriginality. This is particularly true online, where research shows a reluctance to identify as Aboriginal because of the likelihood of exposure to extreme racism and/or lateral violence. Broad surveys of Aboriginal social media users reveal that many feel pressured to post only in ways that immediately signal Aboriginality.

Every person has the right to describe themselves in line with their personal identity, upbringing and lived experience. Where Aboriginal-identified opportunities are being accessed, it is reasonable for funding bodies to request proof of Aboriginality. But ontological violence toward Aboriginal people, online and in public spaces, is never justifiable.

I claim the right to remain fundamentally conflicted about my identity and how that intersects with the cultures of all my ancestors, the right to speak about my personal experience, the right to honour my Aboriginal relationships as well as my non-Aboriginal relationships.

I claim the right to have holes in my family tree that cannot be filled by the white record, the right to be uncertain, illegitimate, multiethnic. These are legacies of our colonial past—the scars. I embrace them.

In occupying the precariousness of my own Aboriginality, together with my other lineages, and finding strength in my ambiguity—I hope to empower others to do the same.