'We Don't Do Dots--Ours Is Lines'--Asserting a Barkindji Style (Report‪)‬

The Aboriginal artists from Wilcannia and Broken Hill with whom I work consider their 'art style' and 'art designs' in localised (if not always clearly specified) ways and terms encapsulated by the phrase 'ours is lines'. It is to the localised assertions of the particularity and importance of art style and content as an explicit and spoken sign of a unique identity that my work attends--a particularity embraced by many who identify as Barkindji (1) and who either live and/or were born in Wilcannia. This paper is based on intensive work with five key artist informants and to a lesser extent with 30 other Barkindji artists from Wilcannia and nearby Broken Hill. Less intensive associations with the wider communities of Wilcannia and Broken Hill were part of daily life during the sixteen months I lived in Wilcannia during 2002--2004. In recognising the difficulty of extrapolating key informants' views as being representative of the entire Barkindji peoples I emphasise that my work demonstrates, I believe, the influence that particular individuals have in communicating and co-ordinating a local commonality of ideas (Schwartz 1978; Morphy 2008). I demonstrate how making and discussing art shapes ideas of what Barkindji culture is seen and thought to be and, importantly, what it is not for Barkindji people who are from, and remain, strongly connected to Wilcannia. In the late 1980s some Aboriginal children from Wilcannia (2) in far western New South Wales were taken on a visit to the Australian Museum in Sydney. One of these children, Murray Butcher, a Barkindji Aboriginal man now in his early thirties recalls: