The Sky We Were Born Under
A proud Meriam woman of the Piadram clan in the Torres Strait Islands region, Gail Mabo is an artist and activist whose works Tagai, Lamar Koskir (Ghost Wives) and Emu Dreaming feature in the Sydney Observatory.
My name is Gail Mabo. I'm a Meriam woman from Torres Strait. But I also recognise the lands and Country where my mother comes from, which is Nywaigi, which is the Ingham area, and Mumbra, which is the Palm Island group, and also her South Sea Island side that comes from Tanna Island and a place called White Sands.
The 25th anniversary of Mabo was coming up, and the people in Cairns at the Cairns Indigenous Art fair said to me, "We would like you to honour your father this year. We would give you a wall." And I said, "How do you put it? How do you put my father on the wall?" And so, I sort of sat back and I looked, and I remember the story of Tagai that he told me.
And I went, hang on, that's a story about stars. How do you chart stars? And I love jigsaw puzzles. So, I was like, okay, I put the stars on the ground. And I thought, okay, I put up a shell.
These shells that I put on it came from Tasmania because I'd gone gathering with Aunty Lola Greeno. And so, we sat on the beach, and we were collecting all these, and I was collecting the black crow shells. And so, I'm sort of sitting there and getting all these different sizes. And she says, "How many you got there?" And I just showed her my little bucket full. And she goes, "Oh, just take them home. Use them on something." And so, I remembered that, and I remember them sitting in my kitchen on a particular shelf.
So, I went and got them, and I went, I'll use this. So, I placed them down where I was, and I went, okay, I'm going to solve it like a jigsaw puzzle.
So, I put the pieces on, and I put the pieces across to make it all, make them all sit to make sure each star that was represented by a shell was supported by something – and that's how I started doing my star maps.
My kids are from New South Wales, and this is the sky that they were born under. So, let's acknowledge that system and where that system is, the Emu Dreaming. And so for me, just acknowledging their birth place and their Sky Country, because we don't really see the emu because we only see part of it because it's so big, and for us just to have our little part, which is Tagai in this massive system is wonderful because it's that whole thing of still acknowledging Country, still acknowledging that is our connection, but also me acknowledging my children's connection.
Lamar Koskir (Ghost Wives), that is a story from our island that is so old that it's interpreted as a couple of different ways, and it's also now interpreted through dance. My interpretation is that this old man, he had many wives, and he mistreated his wives. As he mistreated the wives, the wives would leave. As they left, they said, "We're going to go, but we're still going to watch." So, they became the stars that sat in the sky to watch what the old man is doing, to make sure that he didn't mistreat the next wife. When he did mistreat her, they called her to go to them. And so, with each wife leaving left that old man by himself to ponder that moment of going, "I should have treated them better."
About
Gail Mabo (b.1965) is a proud Meriam woman of the Piadram clan in the Torres Strait Islands region. Gail’s artistic practices range from performance to visual art and are based on her Indigenous cultural practices and knowledges. Gail began her artistic career in 1979 as a dancer and has since cemented her cultural works throughout numerous mediums of art practice. Gail is the daughter of the esteemed Eddie Koiki Mabo who is the inspiration behind her work Tagai.
