INSPIRE: Shandell Cummings enables sharing Menang fishing practices for artistic residency
Shandell Cummings wears many hats as both an academic and a creative.
Born and raised in Albany, the Manypeaks Menang artist is the first Indigenous person to hold an academic position at UWA Albany where she has tutored part-time since completing her Bachelor of Arts in 2021.
Driven by a desire to research and record the stories and history of the local Menang community, Cummings has studied anthropology, sociology, Indigenous knowledge, heritage and history.
“I think I wanted to do anthropology because it was based on more about being in a position to help more, or help our people record their stories,” she said.
“It’s a well-known fact that when an anthropologist comes into an Aboriginal community it’s usually a non-Indigenous person, and they’re recording our stories.
“And we’re not seeing any benefit or outcome from that, which is really sad.
“I sort of wanted to put myself in a position where I could actually help people do research based on where their family comes from, what the country is about, but to also collect and help them record their knowledge or their stories about particular locations.”
Cummings will be able to do just that with her recently granted $18,500 residency at the Museum of the Great Southern, which she will use to run art workshops for the Indigenous community.
“The plan is to run a series of workshops where elders or people in the community can come and join in on the conversations, participate in some action or activities that are based on an art format so either basket weaving, painting on canvas, jewellery making — all those sorts of things,” she said.
“I wanted to be able to give people an opportunity to actually come sit and yarn, talk about culture, talk about knowledge, and share experiences to bring it back to that sense of community.”
Camera IconSignage in the Indigenous garden designed by Shandell Cummings. Credit: Laurie Benson
The workshops will start in October and run for three to four months at the Museum of the Great Southern.
Cummings hopes that the discussions will help her towards her goal of completing a postgraduate qualification with her PHD proposal for research into Indigenous fishing practices currently under way.
“We spend a huge amount of our time sharing cultural information or cultural education with other people, and never really have opportunities to actually do it ourselves,” Cummings said.
“I thought it would be a great opportunity to actually be able to engage community members who actually want to participate in an artistic form of interpreting what their thoughts or memories are of fish traps or cultural fishing practices.
“What I’ve always done has been to try and create opportunities where the community is involved in things, so this just sort of ticked all the boxes for me.”
If the university accepts her proposal, Cummings would be the first Indigenous Noongar PhD student at the Albany campus.
The residency will cap off an increasingly impressive career for the artist-scholar whose previous projects include the redesign of the Alison Hartman Gardens in 2019, a week-long exhibit at the Vancouver Arts Centre in 2022 and the Generations Exhibition at Albany Town Hall in 2023.
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