Maree's Backyard: Intercultural Collaborations for Indigenous Sovereignty in Melbourne

In this article, four women engage, talk, and write about Indigenous sovereignty in Australia's southeast—the region of Australia most devastated by colonial incursion and the site of vibrant cultural activism in the present day. We are two non-Indigenous academics (Sabra Thorner and Fran Edmonds) working together with two Indigenous artist-curators (Maree Clarke and Paola Balla) in a process of collaborative, intercultural culture-making. We mobilise two ethnographic examples—Maree Clarke's backyard and the 2016–2017 Sovereignty exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art—to assert that decolonising is an ongoing process which requires that non-Indigenous peoples acknowledge their own privilege, learn Aboriginal histories, imagine both difference and coexistence; and that the goals of decolonisation are as diverse as the activists calling for it. In both contexts, art/culture-making, alongside storytelling, are crucial forms of Indigenous knowledge production, led by Aboriginal women via their engagements with the artworld(s) in Melbourne and beyond.