As a child, Doris Stuart Kngwarreye was taught to respect the borders of diverse First Nations groups and avoid treading on sacred sites.
“We couldn’t just wander all over the place like they do now,” Ms Stuart told the ABC on her homeland, Mparntwe, also known as Alice Springs.
“We knew where we could go and where we couldn’t go because of the sacredness all around us.”
With the expansion of white settlement, Ms Stuart, 79, has witnessed the township of Alice Springs grow over Mparntwe — watching on as the cultural boundaries of her country were breached.
Through her father’s line, the Arrernte woman inherited an obligation to speak on behalf of her traditional land and was chosen at a young age to be an Apmereke-Artweye, or most senior custodian, for Mparntwe.
An Apmereke-Artweye bares the responsibility for decision-making — it’s an important role that is respected by younger family members and community.
“That’s where you get all your instincts from that tell you how you look after country and it [country] will always look after you,” Ms Stuart said.
Ms Stuart says the Northern Territory government is ignoring her cultural authority on what should be a cause for celebration in her community — a project being spruiked as a future tourist magnet that will celebrate 65,000 years of culture and stimulate central Australia’s economy: The $130 million National Aboriginal Art Gallery (NAAG).
The issue is not the project itself, but its planned location: the government wants to build it on the town’s football oval precinct, which, critically, overlaps a sacred women’s site.
Ms Stuart described the five-year consultation process for the project as a “complete joke” and said she would continue to fight to protect her cultural heritage.
“If you’re there and they’re consulting with you and you say ‘no, end of story’ consultation goes on without you there,” she said.
“The boxes have been ticked.”
Custodians oppose the gallery location
The number-one concern for Ms Stuart is that the gallery will layer other First Nations’ songlines and stories, expressed through the artworks proposed for the gallery, over an Mparntwe sacred women’s area.
“If you put a building up there with stories that don’t belong there, how do you think the ancestors will feel towards that?” she said.
“Where’s the respect? We have our boundaries here.”
Western Arrarnta elder and artist Mervyn Rubuntja has been painting his homeland in vibrant watercolour since he was a teenager. He said he felt uneasy about displaying his artwork on the potential site.
“It’s a woman’s site,” he said. “You need to talk to the ladies first if they say yes or no, because it’s important for every non-Indigenous person to listen.”
The gallery battle
The fight over the location goes all the way back to 2017 when a government-funded steering committee, led by Indigenous art experts, said in a report the gallery should be built out of town. It told the government to further consult with custodians.
Mparntwe custodians, including the Stuart family, in 2019 met with former Arts Minister Lauren Moss to protest the oval location in-person.
In a letter seen by the ABC, the minister acknowledged the group’s opposition of the site and said NT government would “consider whether there was any viable alternative locations”.
Yet it continued the push to forcibly acquire the football oval from the Alice Springs Town Council.
The Town Council fought the purchase, taking the matter to the NT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NTCAT) in 2021. It recommended the NT government give further consideration to the concerns of custodians before moving ahead with the project.
In 2020, Labor MP Chansey Paech took over the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio for the Northern Territory.
Earlier this month, he told the ABC the government had been issued with a “sacred sites clearance to continue to build on the site”
The clearance, issued by the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (AAPA) acknowledges sacred rocky outcrops, corkwood trees and vegetation at the Anzac Oval precinct as part of a sacred site and requires developers to protect these areas during construction or risk prosecution.
Mr Paech, an Arrernte man, said Ms Stuart and her family had been invited into the consultations “at every stage”.
Despite a 1,200-person petition being handed to the territory government opposing the project — and the continued concerns of traditional owners — the government is pushing ahead with its plans.
It is now in the process of forcibly acquiring the Anzac Oval precinct from the Alice Springs Town Council, after the Town Council dropped legal action to stop the acquisition.
‘Traditional Owner shopping’
Warramungu Luritja businessman Owen Cole supports Ms Stuart’s cultural authority and has campaigned against the CBD location.
He wants the art gallery built alongside a cultural centre within the Desert Knowledge Precinct just outside of town, which he said was more “culturally appropriate”.
“It’s neutral ground where a lot of tribal groups came and settled here before they were welcomed into Arrernte country by the elders,” he said.
The NT government has been accused of ignoring cultural hierarchy and protocols in the process by approaching other individual custodians and organisations that don’t hold authority over the Anzac Oval land.
Mr Cole said the project had divided the community.
“The Northern Territory government has been intent on [Traditional Owner] shopping, so looking round trying to convince various [Traditional Owners] and custodians to change their mind and support [its] choice of ANZAC Oval,” he said.
“Instead of unifying families it’s torn custodian families apart,” he said.
Mr Paech rejected the claims.
“I think that there’s been a huge range of consultation that has been undertaken by my former arts ministers in the Northern Territory, [and] that consultation has continued and does continue,” he said.
A community divided
A 2019 report by Ernst & Young suggested the NAAG could attract an additional 53,000 visitors per year to Alice Springs and the project is supported by the Tourism Central Australia and other business organisations.
For Craig Jervis, chief operating officer at Lasseters, which overseas the casino and several pubs and hotels in Alice Springs, it is an exciting project that will give “a boost” to the town.
“We’ve got businesses boarded up [with] roller shutters down our main street of the mall,” he said.
If NAAG goes ahead at the Anzac Oval precinct, Mr Jervis’s company will invest $150 million in tourism infrastructure to cater for 150 more visitors per day.
“I think Alice Springs can have its iconic thing [with the NAAG],” he said.
The NT government is consulting with the community over the designs of the building and that consultation process is expected to be wrap by late 2023, but there is no clear time line for when the building will commence.
In the meantime, it has employed West Arrernte woman Marisa Maher to advise it on First Nations art collections and Arrente woman Sera Bray as Senior Director First Nations.
Doris Stuart Kngwarreye simply wants the the site to remain a football oval used by the community — a move the local club is vocally backing.
Ms Stuart is disappointed the government is pushing ahead with the project but said she’d continue to speak up for country no matter the outcome.
“All I want is respect for all this land,” she said.
“Not for me, for the land that I speak for, on my father’s country.”