EYES OF THE LAND AND THE SEA | 2020

This project is a great example of how to incorporate Indigenous culture into public spaces and to retell history from the eyes of the First people. I learnt so much about our actual history working on this project, which is part of the redevelopment of the site where Captain Cook first clashed with Aboriginal Australians. The Eyes of the Land and the Sea is part of that memorial and I got to see Cook from a different perspective – he’s no longer the ‘bogeyman’ to me but rather a largely misunderstood figure. He did write this beautiful quote in his diary about the Indigenous people being the happiest people he ever witnessed.

This whole discussion about Country, you know, Cook actually kind of got it. This article in the Sydney Morning Herald, from August 2020, talks about the push to have Aboriginal knowledge and values incorporated into the construction of urban environments so that Indigenous people are not just consulted but act as co-designers in the process.

You can read about it here