First Nations collaboration in community-engaged performance
A Kalkadoon case study
It’s one of our first visits to Mount Isa. We’ve just landed, the heat hitting us with a punch to the gut. It’s me, the producer and the Music Director for the project. We’re here for three days, and our main objective is to talk to people. What does Mount Isa want to talk about?
We take temporary refuge in the air-conditioned pub, eating lunches the size of small animals. All the things on the menu are from animals. Being vegetarian or vegan on these trips isn’t easy, and when I order a salad, the waitress looks at me like I’m from Neptune.
‘Do you want chips with that?’ She asks without irony.
I say yes because I want chips with my salad. This is why I love regional Queensland.
Our first meeting is with the town’s local historian. She was a contact that was easy to find: she writes a column in the local paper, and has self-published several books on Mount Isa’s history. She’s a boisterous, theatrical woman, thrilled to have interested guests. She spreads out newspaper clippings and photos on the table before us. We spend five minutes discussing Mount Isa’s history, but the conversation turns dark.
At some point, one of us asks about the Indigenous inhabitants…
The forty-five-minute racial tirade that ensues leaves me clutching my leftist millennial pearls. There are slurs, jokes in poor taste and a dismissive swipe against ‘all of them’. My skin prickles. This is the self-appointed town historian. The keeper of the official record of the narrative of the town.
By scheduling fate, our next meeting is with the Indigenous elders of Mount Isa, the Kalkadoon elders. Our conversation with them is very different. We ask about the same points of history and receive a completely different narrative.
From that moment, it’s hard to imagine the show being centred around anything other than how these two sides of Mount Isa talk to each other. The show ends up being about many things: Mount Isa’s economic past, isolation, and natural beauty. But importantly, it emphasises the Indigenous experience and tells a part of their history.
In every conversation I had with local people after those initial meetings, the topic of race and multiculturalism came up unprovoked. Simply spending time with people and having leisurely chats and cups of tea, it didn’t take long for unified themes to emerge. In these projects, it’s often a matter of hunting for themes just underneath the surface of the town's culture. What are people really talking about? What are the concerns they share behind closed doors? The script must reach that place; otherwise, the product becomes an advertisement that smacks of inauthenticity: a piece of propaganda provided by the local council to give the official party line. This place is terrific. Aren’t we all lucky? Nothing to see here, folks.
For Mount Isa, I needed to collaborate with the Kalkadoon elders. The problem? I was part of an artistic team that was entirely white, metropolitan-based, and from an organisation funded by the state. I was incredibly aware that my good intentions could be derailed by an inevitable streak of blind colonialism.
It wasn’t easy. And I don’t know how successful we were. But here’s what I can tell you.
On every visit to Mount Isa we made across eighteen months, we paid a visit to the Kalkadoon elders. About three-quarters of the time, those meetings were non-starters. We arranged for hip-hop workshops for kids, but the kids never showed up. Elders were away on sorry business. Initial contact was wary, and we didn’t blame them.
We thought we needed to prove our legitimacy to them by giving them something. But after about twelve months of that approach not bearing fruit, we simply listened. How about that?
Mount Isa is near a site of significant Australian history. The Kalkadoon people resisted colonial occupation for longer than many other pockets of regional Australia. They are proud of the story of Battle Mountain, where a climactic battle between the local people and the white invaders took place. It was bloody and horrific. Children and women were chased to the edge of cliffs, and eventually, the few Kalkadoon who survived fled the area entirely.
Battle Mountain isn’t taught in the local schools of Mount Isa. The few mentions of it in local history books are told from a white perspective, and carry whiffs of eighteenth-century allusions to murderous savages who somehow deserved to be subjects of mass slaughter.
Our Music Director composed an original piece of music to serve as underscore to a local elder telling the story of Battle Mountain on stage. That was the genius generosity of Steve Russell, who played the music from his laptop for the gathered elders. He was very nervous that day. We both were. But it met with the elders approval. And we began to build the moment proper.
There was one other moment that got us over the line. Our costume designer offered to make a dress for the matriarch of the Kalkadoon for her Welcome to Country. Their collaboration on that dress bought us an impossible amount of goodwill. Josh McIntosh’s design and enthusiasm softened her wariness—when the dress arrived, we all joined her in her joy for the glamour of it all. It felt remarkable. It felt like we were collaborators.
Every evening, I escorted that matriarch backstage so she could give her Welcome to Country. Holding her hand as she navigated the steps, I was suddenly emotional and very nervous. I wanted to do right by her and her community, and I was terrified of stuffing it up.
I’m not sure we got it right. Her Welcome to Country was remarkable, but the Battle Mountain moment felt uncertain and dangerous when it was put under lights. Under the gaze of a few thousand Mount Isa locals, our Indigenous performers were remarkably vulnerable. The tension in that moment was uncomfortable. Under lights on the opening night, the proud and strong Indigenous male elder charged with telling the story faltered, forgot his lines, and became emotional.
I was wracked with guilt. Had I put them into a space where they were unsafe? More guilt: I mustn’t make this moment about me. It’s about the community, interfacing with something real and complex in an artistic space. But the truth is, five years on, I’m not sure the facilitation of that moment was the right thing to do.
Less than a year after the show, the matriarch with the new dress passed away.
The Kalkadoon story is remarkable, and the State Library of Queensland currently has an exhibition showcasing some of their history and art.
Phew I was nervous reading this… Such a long road to travel.