Seeing red

Gunggandji artist Simone Arnol’s deeply personal and evocative series of photographs exemplifies the power of contemporary portraiture to retell and regenerate histories that were deliberately minimised, disregarded and suppressed. Commissioned by the Cairns Art Gallery, seeRED is a heart-wrenching visual and aural testimony to the complex history of Yarrabah and Arnol’s great-grandmother Tottie Joinbee, affectionately known as Granny Tottie, connecting the past with the present and the future.

Located on the lands of the Gunggandji people in coastal Far North Queensland, Yarrabah is a vibrant, cultural place, widely acknowledged as the largest Aboriginal community in Australia. Yet, like much of colonised Australia, Yarrabah holds a complex and tumultuous history of violent displacement and cultural suppression due to missionisation. Operated by the Anglican Church, Yarrabah Mission was established in 1892 under the authority of Ernest Gribble. The history of the mission, which operated until 1960, has often been recounted from a non-Aboriginal perspective, with limited literature that offers true insight into the deeply personal legacies and stories of the early First Nations residents.

In her photographic series, Arnol actively readdresses the colonial narrative. Photography has played a significant role in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people since its arrival in the 19th century. Its use in documenting, surveilling and controlling First Nations people, while simultaneously reinforcing harmful social ideologies underpinned by scientific racism, resulted in the adoption of widespread national polices of assimilation. The systematic removal of children from their families is a deeply painful and tragic legacy that still permeates modern Australia, where survivors and their descendants seek to reveal the truth and horror in these histories. By reclaiming the photograph, Arnol recentres the Aboriginal experience and honours the lives of those stolen.

Born in around 1899, Tottie was removed to Yarrabah Mission in 1914 under the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act 1865 after falling pregnant. She was 14. Having lived to the age of 110, she remains a deeply respected woman who held onto her cultural identity and knowledge despite the efforts of colonisation. Following in her great-grandmother’s footsteps, Arnol’s strong connection to family, Country and culture is the foundation for all her art. In her photography practice, she uses powerful narratives to convey the true messages of her history and her people.

In seeRED, Arnol draws on her great-grandmother’s oral history accounts and Kathleen Denigan’s 2008 book, Reflections in Yarrabah, to recreate memories and significant events in Tottie’s life. Portrayed by Sara Fagan, whose great-grandmother was part of the Stolen Generations and was removed to Yarrabah Mission, Tahleise Willet, Gunggandji woman and Traditional Owner of Yarrabah, and Arnol’s niece (and Tottie’s great-great-granddaughter), Zehruiah Teale, each portrait is layered with meaning, perspectives and history.

Separated into three distinct themes – Stolen, Mission and Exemption – seeRED is a visual record of Granny Tottie’s life. Throughout the series, the dramatic and symbolic colour red tethers the black and white photographs together, emphasising the layered interchanging levels of trauma and memory. The works are titled with Tottie’s personal recollections or rules from the 1899 Yarrabah: Church of England Aboriginal Mission: Rules and Regulations handbook, which featured pages of detailed daily tasks, codes of conduct and timetables. Arnol has referenced the handbook in previous works, particularly in relation to the ongoing impact of missionisation on First Nations language and culture: ‘Language not only self identifies, it carries the ethical values of ancestors – the knowledge systems that make them one with the land, that are crucial to survival and that create the foundations for our youth. Heavy regulations such as no. 41 of the Yarrabah Rules and Regulations booklet – which stated that “It is rude to speak in a language which is not understood by all present” – were a major turning point in the decline of traditional language.’ In seeRED, Arnol’s historical revisionism situates the treatment of the Yarrabah residents and acknowledges their legacies.

Poignantly beginning with Stolen, Arnol speaks to Tottie’s early childhood. At a young age she was removed from her family and placed into servitude. Conditions for Aboriginal maids were controlling, cruel and rooted in racial superiority. The harsh lives of servants often caused the young girls to run away, but all too often they were captured and simply moved to serve somewhere else. Tottie recalled that she attempted to escape but, bleeding from welts across her body, she was picked up by someone on horseback and taken to Ingham Police Station. As if inside a memory, Arnol’s emotive use of cinematic photography offers a visual glimpse into Tottie’s experience. ‘I was only small and the lady of the house – I think that was his wife – put me in a big bath and washed me down.’ Confronted by a tiny Aboriginal body sitting hunched, curled and bleeding red from the welts marked across her back, we are hurled into a moment of complete vulnerability. With her back towards us, we gaze upon open wounds seeped in Arnol’s selective use of the colour red. Evoking pain and danger, we bear witness to the violence that was inflicted across Tottie’s body.

Tracing her great-grandmother’s life, the series shifts to Mission and begins to reference life in Yarrabah. At the mission every aspect of life was controlled, with the practice of language and culture prohibited. Life was entirely dictated by the Yarrabah Rules and Regulations handbook, which outlined mission ideologies that highlight the entrenched neo-Darwinian views of social evolution whereby Christian indoctrination would civilise Aboriginal people. Ernest Gribble was a forceful authoritarian whose management and methodologies reflected ethnocentrism and lacked any genuine concern for the welfare of those living at Yarrabah.

As heard through Granny Tottie’s accounts, at Yarrabah the residents were treated as prisoners under disciplinary punishment tactics that resulted in slave labour, famine and disease.

In one of Arnol’s portraits, vibrant red sweet potatoes are held in the hands of a young Aboriginal girl. Food scarcity was a significant issue at Yarrabah with sweet potatoes being one of the only food sources available. Starvation and malnutrition were common. Granny Tottie said that hunger ‘drained the blood from their bodies’. Arnol has reimagined her grandmother’s experience, the girl is curled in fetal position; red spills across the floor. ‘You know, most of us went crazy, we boiled paw paw to keep ourselves alive. The staff didn’t care if we lived or died. That’s how it was. We went to church every morning but had nothing much to eat.’

The final theme, Exemption, draws on the segregation and lack of socialisation between the sexes at Yarrabah due to the dormitory system. Yet, despite this, relationships still formed. Gunggandji man Jack Joinabee exchanged secret love letters with Tottie. Capturing the secret blossoming relationship in her double portrait, a young Tottie is reflected in a handheld mirror from a distance. Here, the double portraits express a sense of intimacy while conveying the forced distance between the lovers. Eventually the couple married and bore 12 children together. The symbols of love, the cross and string, are woven throughout the series. ‘I had no wedding ring you know, they just put a little cotton around my finger.’

Under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 imposed by state governments throughout the 20th century, Aboriginal people could not leave the mission without approval. Exemptions allowed government administrators to grant selected freedoms from the protection legislations. At Yarrabah, if a man was married and could provide for his family he could apply for an exemption certificate which allowed them to move away from the mission. Tottie and Jack Joinabee were the first family to be granted exemption from Yarrabah Mission in 1944. According to Tottie, ‘We were told we had too many fair-skin children and we had to leave Yarrabah.’

The Joinabee family were forced to leave and were relocated to live in the neighbouring township of Cairns.

A politically motivated and emotionally driven series, Arnol’s photographic portraits actively reinstate the record, exposing the absences of these interconnected legacies and experiences of collective cultural trauma within contemporary society. By honouring storytelling, the works create a visual narrative of Aboriginal history that respectfully depicts the people of Yarrabah, while revealing the ongoing strength and commitment to cultural survival that has been generationally passed down. 

Based on original text commissioned by the Cairns Art Gallery for the exhibition Simone Arnol: seeRED, 24 June – 3 September 2023.