Abstract
In early 2004 the author, Elizabeth Willis, curated an exhibition at Museum Victoria that displayed two Victorian Aboriginal bark etchings and a ceremonial piece made in 1854. It described interactions between the Kulin people and the squatter, John Hunter Kerr, who commissioned the etchings and displayed them at exhibitions in Bendigo, Melbourne and Paris. At the end of the exhibition the Dja Dja Warrung people imposed an injunction against the objects’ return to the London museums which had lent them for display. This paper discusses the use of ‘history’ during the exhibition and its aftermath, and considers the political uses of ‘history’ in response to different perspectives on the past. This article has been peer-reviewed.
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