Photography / Our Story: Aboriginal-Chinese People in Australia, exhibition curator and photographer Zhou Xiaoping. At the National Museum of Australia until January 27. Reviewed by CON BOEKEL.

The main aim of this exhibition is to shed light on historical relations between Aboriginals and Chinese migrants.

It seeks to achieve this by way of family storytelling, by artworks and by way of historical photographs. Items include videos, installations, glass sculpture, paintings, photographs and texts.

There are references in the family stories which embed them within larger historical processes. Several families featured in the exhibition had members involved in the gold rushes. Others had family members removed in the Stolen Generations. Some were directly impacted by the operation of the White Australia Policy.

Here, the exhibition avoids some challenging issues. For example, some 16,000 Chinese men mined gold in the Palmer River goldfields. These goldfields were the location for a particularly bloody period of massacre and of dispossession. Arguably, if the Stolen Generations and the White Australia Policy are germane to the formation of identity, then so too must be the role of Chinese migrants in the Invasion.

In this context, the exhibition catalogue delivers a high degree of complementarity. Particularly germane is Henry Reynold’s text in which he explains that before the mass expulsion of Chinese people from Australia there were thriving multicultural communities in cities such as Darwin and Cairns. In a sense the exhibition is a revival of what once was.

Several individuals featured in the exhibition reported feeling as if they were earlier forced earlier to make a decision about being either Aboriginal or Chinese. This was in a context of considerable racial prejudice against both. After opting for Aboriginal identity, some are now embracing adding Chinese elements and Chinese family members to their identity. The exhibition thus has an open, friendly and inclusive feel to it.

Several artworks fuse indigenous, western and Chinese motifs and styles. The photographs include historic portraits of Chinese and Aboriginal family members. These tend to be formal, studio portraits. Analogue imperfections add a powerful sense of authenticity to these images. The other set of photographs are of contemporary Aboriginal-Chinese individuals participated in the project. My view is that these portraits serve well to project the sensitivities and dignity of the sitters.

One of the features of the exhibition is the way in which many 19th century Chinese migrants changed their economic focus from being gold miners to being market gardeners – often in remote townships or on cattle stations. The result was that people then may have had access to cheaper and fresher vegetables than are available today in remote communities.

What emerges is an evolving sense that it is a matter of pride to be able to adopt Chinese as well as Aboriginal identity – and vice versa.

The exhibition thus achieves its major objective: to shed light on a hitherto little-known element of our history.

The exhibition is admirable in intent and successful in execution. It contributes to a sense that multiculturalism is not just a theory but an evolving reality for Aboriginal Chinese in particular, and hence for all of us.

More than one way to interpret history, says Zhou