Culture needs the right home

FOR Henrietta Marrie, the reasons for building and developing a cultural centre in Cairns are deeply personal.

It would speak to her heritage’s past and guide her people’s future.

An Yidinji elder, Ms Marrie’s great grandfather the King of Cairns Ye-inie’s ceremonial regalia does not rest proudly here in her homeland.

It sits in a display in a British museum, thousands of kilometres away.

The irony is that even if this priceless artefact was brought back to Australia, it couldn’t come home to Cairns. There’s nowhere for it to go.

Ms Marrie is not only a respected elder for her people, she is respected across all cultures in the Far North.

An Order of Australia Medal recipient and CQUniversity lecturer, Ms Marrie has her proud face depicted in a beautiful mural in a fitting tribute to a proud Yidinji woman set within her own country at the corner of Hartley and Lake streets. When she speaks, people listen. She believes the shock announcement in last week’s budget for funding for a Brisbane-based cultural centre should not be the end of this story.

“I think there’s definitely room for two centres,” she says. Ms Marrie is right. The Far North is home to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and they deserve a centre that tells their stories.

With an indigenous suicide rate four times the national average, Ms Marrie’s reasoning that a special place to learn, rejoice and identify with would be one of the most powerful things we could do for our youth.

There are some things in life that just make sense.

Having an indigenous cultural centre in Cairns is one of them. Jennifer Spilsbury Editor