How to Record a Painful History

Join us for a not-to-be-missed discussion on recording and sharing the truths of a colonial past. Aunty Fay Stewart-Muir and Marguerita Stephens will share their experience of collaborating across cultures to create their ground-breaking work “Years of Terror: Banbu-deen: Kulin & Colonists at Port Phillip 1835-1851.”

Why did Billibellary and other Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung clansmen and women parley with Batman on the banks of the Merri Creek in June 1835? And what befell the clans in the decade and a half that followed that fateful encounter with Britain’s Empire? Based primarily on the daily journal of Assistant Protector William Thomas, this work meticulously documents the lives, and deaths, of those who struggled to hold their Country. 

 

Fay Stewart-Muir is a First Nations’ community leader and Koori Court Elder. She is a Boon Wurrung and Wemba Wemba language specialist and works as a prison educator in First Nation languages and as a creative language revival consultant and collaborator.

Marguerita Stephens is best known for her work on the William Thomas Journals.

 

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