By GEOFF VIVIAN

Two women have produced a photographic exhibition of Menang Elders at Albany in WA’s Great Southern, showing as part of the town’s bi-centenary celebrations.

“The project tells the story of how much First Nations people put into building this state and it’s not recognised in the history books,” Menang Elder Carol Pettersen said.

She said a lot of people were seeing the thought-provoking exhibition.

“So many people are giving us feedback that they did not know this story,” she said. “It seems as if Aboriginal people have only been invented since the 1967 referendum. Suddenly they were visible. Prior to that, they were invisible.”

The exhibition is of 30 Menang people, mostly Elders, photographed by Denmark-based Nic Duncan, with their stories transcribed as part of the exhibition.

“We tried to find subjects that went through the stolen wages era,” Ms Pettersen said. “We allowed the subjects to take total control, so they chose where they wanted to have the photo taken. And usually it was in a spot that was precious to their childhood memories.

“And those people then told their own story of what happened to them, their life story. And it was a story of struggles, resistance, and survival and achievements.”

Ms Duncan said the idea came to the two women while they were camping together in 2024, in the same week they learned of the planned bicentenary celebrations for 2026.

“That framing of it as a celebration had really felt wrong,” she said. “So while we were sitting around the campfire one night I asked Aunty Carol how she felt about it, and she said it wasn’t good for all the Elders.”

“And so I said ‘well what can we do? What can we use my portraits for?’ So, we came up with this project, and, straight away Carol named it Binlalup Manang: First Light First People.”

Ms Duncan said the key pieces all came together that night around the campfire.

“The intention was, right from the word ‘go’, to shine a positive light on the Menang community and the Menang Elders,” she said.

“And to make the point that there were people here before 200 years ago.”

“But the real point that Aunty Carol wanted to make was not just the contemporary contributions of the Menang people to the wider community, but the historical contributions.”

Ms Pettersen said the history books talked about pioneers, and they may mention the native camp down the road which was usually built near the rubbish dump, but with scant attention paid to the huge contribution Aboriginal people made to early colonial settlement.

“Our people worked this land,” she said. “They kept the sheep safe, they carried the sheep, they built fences, they built dams, they picked mallee roots, all with hands, no PPEs. But for no wages.

“In a way it was kind of a spiritual blessing because we were still connected to the land. So there was sort of some sanity about it and some salvation that we still had our hands on the land.”

Ms Duncan said they were negotiating to have the exhibition shown in Perth for the 2029 State bicentenary observance and planning to produce a book of the photographs and stories.