The big picture

For decades, Indigenous people around the world have challenged art museums and galleries to reconsider their engagement with Indigenous materials, ideas, concepts and narratives. The challenge has been to build meaningful and respectful relationships with the communities whose cultural materials these spaces have historically benefited from exhibiting. Since the beginning, art galleries have nearly always been spaces that amplified the voices of a predominantly white few.

In recent years however, particularly since the internet, there has been greater accountability for these spaces to ensure more inclusive stories are being told and that the true diversity of the art world is reflected in what they put on their walls. Groups like the anonymous Guerrilla Girls have built a global reputation as a sort of industry watchdog, holding museums accountable for their gender disparity and racial whitewashing. And while activist artists like the Guerrilla Girls are extremely important, for Aboriginal people this concept of accountability has been around since well before viral posts online.

No Aboriginal person works in