They represent a “beautiful friendship” that defies preconceptions, spanning 9,000 miles with a complicated, 70-year history.
The 12 dadikwakwa-kwa shell dolls, traditionally used to teach kinship, literacy, numeracy and about women’s health – have been given by the Indigenous Australian Anindilyakwa community to a UK museum on one condition – that children play with them once a year.
Manchester Museum cemented a bond with the Anindilyakwa community, the traditional owners of the land and seas of the Groote archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia, by returning 174 objects in 2023.
The returned items had been bought or traded in the 1950s by a social scientist, Peter Worsley, but the community had not understood the deals as permanent, said Noeleen Lalara, a senior elder.
The dolls form part of a permanent exhibition, Anindilyakwa Arts: Stories from our Country (Alawudawarra yirri-langwa-langwa angalya), created in close collaboration with the community, breaking with historical conventions of telling Indigenous stories through colonial perspectives.
