Fake Aboriginal Art? - What Next, Fake Aboriginal Curators?
One of the nation’s most senior Indigenous curators, Margo Ngawa Neale, has dismissed a claim by federal Arts Minister Tony Burke that there is “nothing wrong” with white staff assisting Indigenous artists if they retained “creative control”.
Ms Neale said it was “never OK” for white studio staff to paint on the canvases of central desert artists and any intervention was a grave insult to the artist’s tjukurpa, their ancient and sacred stories of culture and law.
She said it was much more than just a matter of “creative control”. “It is simply not a normal practice in Indigenous art centres,” she said. “For white studio staffers to paint on Indigenous canvases in any circumstance is completely unacceptable.
- The Australian (28 April 2023) reporting on Adj. Professor Neale, the senior Indigenous curator and adviser at the National Museum of Australia and head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges
As reported above, Professor Neale, ‘one of the nation’s most senior Indigenous curators’, obviously takes a dim view of ‘white-people’ having a hand in ‘faking’ Aboriginal art.
But this creates a conundrum for us here at Dark Emu Exposed given that, over the past year or so, we have had a constant stream of Aboriginal informants mentioning to us that they are surprised that Margo Neale herself has claimed at various times to be from the,
“Mirning-language [Aboriginal] speakers of the Albany region, Western Australia” and/or is of,
“ Aboriginal and Irish descent, from Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections.”
She has also lately begun to claim that her, ‘Indigenous name is “Ngawa Gurrawa” … it means: “Talkative but knowledgeable.”
In several public interviews and talks, Adj Professor Margo Ngawa Neale quite openly claims that she believes she is of Aboriginal descent from several tribes and clans - the Kurnai/Gunai, the Kulin, the Gumbayngirr, the Northern River’s tribes and even the Wuradjuri - as illustrated in the following video compilation.
Our Aboriginal informants are surprised because their enquiries do not support these claims.
They instead found that it appeared that the only person in Google-history to use the words 'Ngawa Gurrawa’ is Margo Ngawa Neale herself - their research to date has not been able to locate these words in any Aboriginal dictionary.
Similarly, they rightly point out that ‘self-identification’ as an Aboriginal person is only one part of the universally accepted Commonwealth’s ‘3-part Rule’ for Aboriginality. The other required two parts are that one needs to be recognised as being Aboriginal by other Aboriginal people, plus one must also be of Aboriginal decent.
Our informants tell us that they haven’t located any registered Aboriginal group that has formally recognised Margo Ngawa Neale as a member of their clan, family or tribe.
Additionally, our genealogical work below provides evidence to suggest that Margo Ngawa Neale is mistaken in her belief that she is descended from the, ‘Mirning-language [Aboriginal] speakers of the Albany region, Western Australia’, or that she is of, ‘Aboriginal descent, from Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections’.
In fact, based on the publicly available genealogical records and other evidence, we have been able to construct an alleged family tree of Margo Neale which shows that none of her ancestors were Aboriginal (See Figure 1 and disclaimer*).
All the ancestors of Margo Ngawa Neale appear to be descendent from immigrants from Ireland, England or Wales.
Figure 1 - Alleged family Tree of Adj. Professor Margo Ngawa Neale. Download File.pdf here, or File.jpg here.
*Disclaimer- This genealogical work has been undertaken in good faith and is based on the publicly available records. However, it cannot account for events which may result in Aboriginal ancestry entering into the family line such as via a private or unrecorded adoption of an Aboriginal child into the family, or a relationship out of wedlock between a family member and an Aboriginal person that produced a child of Aboriginal descent who was then incorporated into the family without record, or with a record that did not disclose the Aboriginality of that child.
We emailed Professor Margot Ngawa Neale on 22 June 2023, inviting her to respond to our research suggesting that she may be mistaken to believe that she is of Aboriginal descent, but we have received no response to date.
We also tracked down the family trees of two closely-related family members of Professor Neale’s, who shared common ancestors with her. Neither of these two family members made any claims in their research that they believed that their family was of Aboriginal descent. (See Figures 2 & 3).
Figure 2 - Personal Family Tree posted online by a relation of Margo Ngawa Neale’s showing a common ancestor, Ivy Sarah Collins (Margo Ngawa Neale’s mother) and John Lewis Tiernan (Margo Ngawa Neale’s father). This family member [unidentified by us for privacy] makes no mention that they believe Ivy Sarah Collins, John Lewis Tiernan, or any other ancestor, was of Aboriginal descent. (Source Ancestry.com).
Figure 3 - Personal Family Tree posted online by a relation of Margo Ngawa Neale’s showing a common ancestor, Gwendoline Collins (nee Brock, Margo Ngawa Neale’s maternal grandmother). This family member [unidentified by us for privacy] makes no mention that they believe Gwendoline Collins (nee Brock), or any other ancestor, was of Aboriginal descent. (Source Ancestry.com).
Based on the above, we allege that Margot Neale is not of Aboriginal descent.
Instead, our research shows that her ancestors originally came from Ireland, England and Wales.
Our genealogical work was been undertaken in good faith and is based on the publicly available records. However, it cannot account for events which may result in Aboriginal ancestry entering into the family line such as via a private or unrecorded adoption of an Aboriginal child into the family, or a relationship out of wedlock between a family member and an Aboriginal person that produced a child of Aboriginal descent who was then incorporated into the family without record, or with a record that did not disclose the Aboriginality of that child.
Unless Professor Neale can produce evidence to the contrary, we allege that she is a ‘fake’ and we will include her in our collection of ‘Deep Fake Academics’ at its next update.
Further Reading
1. Full Research Notes on Margo Neale’s Ancestry can be downloaded here
