SPECIAL EDITION (Part 2) Ep 197, Juno Gemes on Photographing the Australian Civil Rights Movement

Our guest for this Special Edition interview is JUNO GEMES, one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers.

Born in Hungary, she moved to Australia as a child. In 1970, then a young artist, she spent six months living on Country with Aboriginal communities at Uluru. She went on to documents First Nations activism and the Civil Rights Movement in this country for five decades. Juno photographed many of the early protests and meetings led by Aboriginal activists in the ‘70s and ‘80s, forming lifelong friendships with key figures in the Movement. She photographed the Uluru Handback Ceremony in 1985; marches and activations around the Bicentennial in 1988, and she was one of ten photographers invited to document the National Apology in Canberra in 2008.

Wherever you are listening across the world, these stories are important to discover. It’s obviously not just Australia that grapples with a legacy of colonisation, and you care about sustainability, the questions linked to all this are fundamental ones: how do we want to live, in relation in one another? How can we heal and listen and unlearn to change systems that don’t work anymore?

Missed part 1? Do go back and listen. Or find it here. Can you help us share it?

These podcasts are in addition to our usual programming and form a 2-PART SPECIAL EDITION ON THE VOICE REFERENDUM IN AUSTRALIA.

They came about because Clare kept speaking to people who hadn’t yet read the ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART.

We wanted to help with that, and to be active on behalf of our deeply felt support for the YES23 campaign in this referendum.

Part 1 is a mini pod on the Uluru Statement and the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution - it’s under 10 mins, ideal to share!

As Juno says at the end of this interview, whatever happens with the Aussie referendum on October 14th, this is part of a long fight for social justice that continues. And there’s hope! “Don’t argue with people who don’t see it yet, because they will eventually … We can see this groundswell of good will, of kindness of wanting to know, to learn, of opening up to each other.”

RESOURCES:

ulurustatement.org

yes23.com.au

reconcilliation.org.au

The Australian Fashion Council supports Yes - more here.

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