The 1988 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade was led by its first Indigenous float, lit up by Aboriginal dancer Malcolm Cole in drag as Captain Cook. American cultural theorist Eric Michaels, then in the last year of his life, teaching Media Studies at Griffith University Brisbane, wrote a report on the event. He does not dwell on this detail, but suggests that this fabulous upending of the foundation myth of the settler colony might count as 'the only politically correct public event of [Australia's] Bicentennial year'.1
The National Apology in 2008 was an important step in Australia reckoning with its past, but in the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum last year voters resoundingly rejected a proposed alteration to the Australian Constitution that would have recognised Indigenous Australians. That there was never a treaty with the Crown continues to mark a clear contrast between Aotearoa and Australia, and gives continued resonance to Cole's provocation.
This February, in another first, the Biennale of Sydney made an official entry in the Mardi Gras parade. Malcolm Cole's twin brother Robert took up his role in a re-enactment (Malcolm having died of HIV/AIDS, seven shown at the University of New South Wales Galleries incorporates video of the event, in which members of the Pacific Sisters can also be seen parading with the float.
