Parrying Shield
The engraved designs that cover the surface of the shields were carved while the wood was still young and fresh. Makers used specialized tools fashioned from the teeth of marsupials, or sharpened mussel shells to carve and incise designs that include crosshatching, dynamic diamond and chevron patterns, and serial undulating lines. These designs identify the regional and clan affiliation of their bearer, representing deep histories of ancestry and law. In larger gatherings, they can communicate critical information across language groups and tribal nations. As such, each shield is deeply personal, a symbol of status and identity. Shields used for customary use in performance were often painted with natural ocher pigments and clay, traces of which remain on many examples.
Artwork Details
- Title: Parrying Shield
- Artist: Aboriginal artist
- Date: 19th century
- Geography: Australia, New South Wales or Victoria, Lower Murray River region
- Culture: Lower Murray River region
- Medium: Wood
- Dimensions: H. 31 1/8 in. × W. 2 in. × D. 4 1/4 in. (79.1 × 5.1 × 10.8 cm)
- Classification: Wood-Implements
- Credit Line: The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Klejman, 1965
- Object Number: 1978.412.866
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Audio
1781. Parrying shields, Aboriginal artists
Uncle Brendan Kennedy
UNCLE BRENDAN KENNEDY: We’ve had anthropologists and archaeologists and museums telling the story about us, in another language and from another spirit. When we are creating our culture and art, it’s coming from the very center of who we are and where we are and where we’re from and what we mean.
Brendan Kennedy, Dindi Thangi Wudungi. Kennedy’s my European name.
KATERINA TEAIWA (NARRATOR): Uncle Brendan Kennedy creates contemporary shields. He’s continuing the ancestral tradition embodied in these older shields.
UNCLE BRENDAN KENNEDY: They represent not only a weapon, but also a symbol of status not only for that person, but for that person’s clan, family, language groups, and tribal nations. So they’re quite a very strong, powerful symbolism.
KATERINA TEAIWA: Uncle Brendan knows firsthand just how much work goes into these etched designs.
UNCLE BRENDAN KENNEDY: It really takes a long time. Well, it’s long for us, because we live in the modern world where we’re running on a clock. But in the old times, they would work on it for whatever amount of time that they felt till it was ready.
The act of actually carving in the design is something quite different than any other part of our culture. It’s very, very special. Very meaningful. Very purposeful. It’s like today how people write, I think, so as we don’t forget it. You know? (Laughs)
I suppose my mantra is that colonizers continue to remove the evidence that our ancestors ever existed in the first place on this continent. Remove our past by removing the objects off country, which you have some over there. So my sort of campaign is to continue to create our culture.
To say, well, we’re still here, and we’re still strong, and how wonderful our race of people are, always have been, always will be, always was, always will be.
KATERINA TEAIWA: Which raises the question… do objects like these belong in a museum?
UNCLE BRENDAN KENNEDY: When they’re on our country, they're alive, and they’re living through all their dimensions, they’re ancestral, spiritual beings. So that’s quite different than living in a collection.
Hence, we want those back. Back into the landscape, back to the people.
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