Connecting First Peoples communities with objects from their past

Something extraordinary is going on inside Melbourne Museum. A dozen or more kids are deep in its back rooms, getting up close and personal with boomerangs, possum-skin cloaks and other ancestral belongings. 

“Welcome, everybody,” says Kimberley Moulton, senior curator of the South Eastern Aboriginal Collection. “We’re going to have a look at the collections from your region and your mobs. The doors are always open for your mob to come in and see different things.” 

It’s 2019, and these Melbourne Indigenous Transition School (MITS) students are taking part in First Stories, a visionary collaboration between artist Hayley Millar-Baker, the Monash University Museum of Art, and Museums Victoria. Through it, Millar-Baker has helped the high-schoolers research their family stories of being at home and on country, and, at Melbourne Museum, they’ve learnt about their totem animals and photographed objects to be part of artworks.

Judging by their smiles, the experience was a great success. For Moulton, a Yorta Yorta woman, the act of bringing First Peoples communities like these into the museum is deeply important. “In the past, Aboriginal people haven’t felt welcome in these places; they haven’t really felt represented correctly. They’ve often been historified through a non-Indigenous, anthropological perspective,” she says.

“They are so important in terms of our cultural strength and our identities, and in honouring our ancestors. All of these things make us strong as a community, which means our futures will be strong.

Although this has been slowly changing, it’s critical that communities connect with objects from their past, she says. “They are so important in terms of our cultural strength and our identities, and in honouring our ancestors. All of these things make us strong as a community, which means our futures will be strong. I really think museums and cultural collections and contemporary art play a crucial role in all of that.”

Moulton was born and raised in Shepparton, Victoria. Racism was a part of life growing up, and Moulton witnessed it first-hand at school and at local football matches (her family is a big supporter of Rumbalara Football Club). But there was immense strength and pride in the community, she says, which ultimately encouraged her ambition to leave ‘Shepp’ for university.  

Proud and loud

Moulton’s awakening truly began, she says, while studying a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University in 2004. She learned how to think critically, was introduced to artwork by strong Aboriginal women (such as Destiny Deacon and Tracey Moffatt), and realised the family stories she had heard as a child (her great-uncle was activist William Cooper and her family came from Cummeragunja Mission) had a much deeper political context.

“My lecturers were fantastic,” recalls Moulton, adding that often in Indigenous studies she was learning about her own family from family, such as her father’s cousin, Dr Wayne Atkinson. “I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve really got to step up. I’ve got to be stronger and prouder and louder’,” she says with a laugh. “If my great-grandfather and grandmothers and aunties are in this lecture to all these white kids, I’ve got a responsibility here, to carry this.” 

Moulton completed her triple major (visual art, journalism and Indigenous studies) in 2007 and soon found her feet in an outreach job at Melbourne Museum, taking objects out into the community. It led to an eight-year stint working at the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre (photographs and her grandmother’s ball gown are on display in its First Peoples exhibition), and then on to her current senior role at Melbourne Museum.

 “As an Aboriginal woman working in the museum, it’s not just work for me, it’s really personal. And that’s also why I love it so much, and that’s also why I feel it so much; there is still a struggle in these institutions for our people to this day.”

Moulton, now 35, is passionate about writing and collaborating with First Nations artists and intellectuals in Australia and internationally. “I want to continue to critically engage with these colonial institutions that have our collections and our histories within them, and work towards further agency and representation led by Aboriginal people and community,” she says. “It’s important that we share our culture with the world.” 

“I always welcome the opportunity to have a role where I can learn something new and make a contribution. In this space, as a woman from a different background with a lived experience in the workforce, I have plenty to learn, and plenty to give as well. I feel very privileged, and I also feel a great deal of responsibility.”
 

(Pictured top: Kimberley Moulton in Museums Victoria’s collection with a walking stick, c1890s, Coranderrk mission.)