THE AUTHOR

My relationship with Queenie extended back to the early 1990's when I met her in her role as cultural leader of the Warmun Community, while I was working to establish a commercial art gallery for all of the women of the community who were not represented by the  art market which seemed to prefer the artwork of the men at the time. The Ochre Gallery became a type of resource center based on a community based agency model, to promote the  cultural performances as well as the art, the old men such as Rover Thomas also became involved.

The gallery was established in the township of Kununurra to be accessible to the tourism market. How this relationship began was that I had travelled in the Kimberley for some time and returned for my second visit when I was invited to attend an aboriginal arts conference in the Kimberley. My background was as a community development worker, and when I attended the art conference I was shocked at the lack of representation or support of women artists. On that day I attended the conference I made the decision to relocate to the Kimberley to establish an art gallery and resource centre for the local women, although it did not take long for the men to join us also, or for the focus of the Gallery to be on the artwork of women of Warmun Community. As the cultural leader of the community Queenie was my mentor, she was the one I would always seek advice from when establishing the gallery, and when cultural celebrations were going to be held in the gallery her permission was sought. Sadly illness forced me to close the gallery several years later, and that prompted the establishment of an art gallery at the community which has been an excellent outcome for the Gija women I have developed lasting relationships with, and will continue to support in other ways. I was absent from the Kimberley for sometime while I recovered and took time to decide if I would return to the remote Kimberley and if so what was it I would want to do. During that time I sustained my connection with the Gija women, and our relationship has re-invented itself several times during the many years that I have known them.

Today I credit my work to those same women, and men, especially Queenie, who have taught me so much and seeded within me the inspiration that I have drawn on to develop my Cultural Mapping business. During the research and development of Queenie's book, between 2002 and 2008, two things happened that clarified for me what it was I now wanted to do. Firstly I undertook my first official cultural mapping project, when one of the Texas Downs elders Patrick Mung and I climbed into a helicopter to fly across the vast cattle station that Queenie had known as her home to identify the many cultural and historical sites that were to be included in the book. Patrick and I did this exercise together so that Patrick (as an elder with authority) could give his permission as to which sites we actually photographed or used in the story. At one stage we approached a very dangerous site, and Patrick was visibly concerned, this was known as a power place, a very dangerous place, and Patrick was not at all keen on getting so close even though we were very high up in the sky flying over it.

However before we got into the helicopter I had a most tragic realization as I met with the ‘Texas Mob' so we could discuss who might be best to go out with me in the helicopter. Patrick, as I learnt, was the only remaining elder of his community who could physically go out into his traditional lands and know where to locate the sacred sites! Finding this out sent a shock wave through me, and brought home to me in a very real way what this country was about to lose and that is why when the next important situation occurrence I was ready to know its significance. Many elders had talked about their concern about the loss of their knowledge, as they were finding it harder to engage their youth in listening to their stories, as they had to compete with the impact of westernization, such as play stations and tv.

The second significant thing that happened was that I had gathered a large amount of research about Queenie for the book, some had to be repatriated out of archives or from researchers as it had been gathered years before. Then once I had that large body of multi media research I needed a way to effectively manage it and this is how I came to develop the cultural mapping software program - almost by accident. Now my work is focused around cultural mapping and developing tools for indigenous communities to easily manage their cultural data and to engage their young people in the process. I feel that the old people such as Queenie had been preparing me all along for this work, and it was the book that finally helped me to see what I was meant to do. (thank you Queenie)

JENNIFER JOI FIELD Founder: Cultural Mapping http://www.culturalmapping.com