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Merrepen (2005)

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clip The dyeing begins education content clip 1, 2

This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

The women – Kitty, Mother Molly, sister Dorothy, Grandmother Mercia and Marrfurra – sit in the grass stripping the palm leaves. The preparation of dyes begins with the grinding of roots which are first washed, scraped and then pounded with a rock. Everything is put into a billycan and placed on a fire. The women explain that they must be careful when putting the fibre into the billycan so that the fire does not burn it. The fibres are boiled in the billycans and coloured by the dye.

Curator’s notes

by Romaine Moreton

The preparation of cultural artefacts – in this instance, dilly bags – is a time consuming practice that has been performed for thousands of years. The making of the dilly bags from the Merrepen palm requires not only knowledge of the process, but of the plants and the landscape in which they grow. All Aboriginal artefacts are symbolic forms of complex social structures and relationship to place.

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