15. Tangentyere Design: Architectural Practice and Cultural Agency in Central Australia

The Australian Heritage Festival is an annual, community-driven festival, supported by the National Trust of Australia held in various towns and cities across Australia to provide opportunities for communities, individuals, local governments and organisations to recognise and celebrate the places and events that have shaped Australian heritage.

The area is known as Mparntwe to the Traditional Owners, the Arrernte peoples (alt. sp. Aranda, Arrarnta, Arunta). Three major groups: the Western, Eastern and Central Arrernte people have lived in the Central Australian desert in and around what is now Alice Springs and the MacDonnell Ranges for at least 30 000 years. There are five dialects of the Arrernte language: South-eastern, Central, Northern, Eastern and North-eastern (Broad with Eastern and Central Arrernte speakers 2008; AIATSIS u.d.).

The Alice Springs Telegraph Station was established in 1872 to relay messages between Darwin and Adelaide; it marks the first site of the European settlement in Alice Springs and was one of 12 stations along the Overland Telegraph Line. Its establishment marks the commencement of Aboriginal land dispossession in Central Australia as pastoralists took possession of the land around permanent water supplies.

The Bungalow has a complex history (see Australian Government (u.d.)); for example in 1928, Alice Springs became a prohibited area for Aboriginal people and the Bungalow was moved to Jay Creek (Tangentyere Council 2008).

For descriptions and discussions of Government policies regarding Aboriginal peoples in the North Territory, see, for example Australian Department of Territories (1958), Baker (1977), Austin (1997), Armitage (1995), Sutton (2009).

The term the ‘Stolen Generation’ was first used by historian Peter Read. He published an article on the topic with this title and later expanded the material into a book titled The Stolen Generations (1981). The term refers to children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of Parliament.

In 2013, at the Mbantua Festival in Alice Springs, former residents and their descendants poignantly told the stories of the Stolen Generation in a performance of ‘The Bungalow Song’, a multimedia live performance, co-commissioned by Opera Australia and directed by Nigel Jamieson.

For historical accounts of Alice Springs, see, for example Purvis (1952), Donovan (1988), Traynor (2016).

When I speak of Tangentyere Design, it may appear as if I speak for all those architects who have come before me, describing events that I did not witness. It may seem that my words are those of the practice’s Aboriginal owners as well. I cannot claim to speak on behalf of others, but I have been witness to the last decade of Tangentyere Design’s work, the variable politics that influence this place and its people, and the challenges, the successes and the failures of working in Central Australia. I offer this chapter with humility knowing that my word is neither the only word nor the last.

See Bramston (2013) for discussions of the Australian Labor Government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (1972–1975).

For more information on the Aboriginal Housing Panel, see, for example Heppell and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel (1977), Heppell and Wigley (1977), Heppell (1979), Memmott (1988), Long (2000), Read (2000), Memmott (2004), Habibis et al. (2013).

For further information on the Western Desert Art Movement and Aboriginal peoples’ architectural responses, see Grant and Greenop (2018).

The so-called deficit models of social analysis are often negative and use a ‘blame the victim’ paradigm. Alternative ways of working with under-served communities look to more positive images of people (see, for example Empowered Communities 2015). Recently, the Australian Prime Minister proudly noted that the ‘empowered communities’ model is now being used in eight regions across Australia (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2017: 5).

The Prime Minister’s Closing the Gap Report is an annual Federal Government ‘report card’ on how “…as a nation, [we] are meeting our responsibilities in improving outcomes for our First Australians” (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2017: 6).

In her landmark essay, Deborah Bird Rose states

Country in Aboriginal English is not only a common noun but also a proper noun. People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. …Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourishment for body, mind, and spirit; heart’s ease (1996: 7).

For more on this, see Supply Nation’s website: http://​www.​supplynation.​org.​au.

The 2014 Venice Biennale included the work of Alice Springs-based architect Susan Dugdale and Associates, a former senior architect at Tangentyere Design. The 2016 Architecture Biennale displayed pool deck chairs designed by Alice Springs designer Elliat Rich and constructed at the Aboriginal training and development workshop at the Centre for Appropriate Technology.

To see the values, directions and policy priorities of the Coalition Government laid out by the then Prime Minister, John Howard refer to Howard (1996).

The Northern Territory Emergency Response or ‘The Intervention’ was an extensive and contentious series of actions by the Australian Commonwealth Government into the lives of Aboriginal peoples living remote communities in the Northern Territory. Roffee suggests that there were three features in the argumentation: “the duality in the Prime Minister’s and Minister’s use of the Northern Territory Government’s Little Children are Sacred Report; the failure to sufficiently detail the linkages between the Intervention and the measures combatting child sexual abuse; and the omission of recognition of Aboriginal agency and consultation” (2016: 131).

Rex Wild (co-author with Patricia Anderson) said in the Sydney Morning Herald:

It always seemed significant to us that the Commonwealth interventionists seized on the first sentence of our first recommendation and ignored what followed immediately, which gave it its context (Wild 2008).

The Northern Territory Emergency Response was announced in response to the first recommendation of the Little Children are Sacred Report. This asked that: Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory governments.

In Wild’s view, this:

…perpetuates the mischievous and misleading manner in which the Commonwealth Government(s) has always presented the findings of the report. It ignores, as successive silent bureaucrats have continued to ignore, the necessity to grapple with the underlying significant cultural, social and legal issues confronting Indigenous Australians (Wild 2008).

The road was named for the non-Aboriginal Central Desert explorer and runs between the Stuart Highway and Luritja Road south of Alice Springs.

Anangu means ‘person’ or ‘human being’ in the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages, however, it is now used as a noun for Aboriginal person (especially an Aboriginal person originating from Central Australia).

Pitjantjatjara speakers have adapted some words to describe new concepts. One term for tourists is minga, the word for ant, but often used for the tourists as they appear like tiny scurrying specks as they climb the massive flank of Uluru (Ayers Rock) (see Findley 2005: 83). It must be noted that Anangu ask as visitors to their land that people respect their wishes, culture and law and not to climb Uluru.