Join us to hear from internationally regarded researcher and Yidinji Elder, the Honorary Professor Henrietta Marrie (UQ), as she shares the story of Lani Mulgrave Blair (1883-1900). Lani’s story traverses major themes in our shared history: stolen children, frontier wars, colonial displacement, and assimilation policies. He exists beyond his moment and reminds us of the crucial importance of historical enquiry and memory-making.

The lecture will be followed by the first public screening of Lani (2023), a film made by the international collective ‘Demons Land’.

Audience members are advised that the lecture and film address traumatic themes, including massacre. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander are advised that the film includes images of the deceased.

This event is presented by the School of Communications and Arts and the UQ Art Museum.

Stolen Songline: Lani’s Lament

In this lecture Honorary Professor Henrietta Marrie (UQ) tells the story of Lani Mulgrave Blair (1883-1900), a Yidinji child taken from his country in the Cairns region during the frontier violence of the 1880s. After the murder of his mother in the Skull Pocket Massacre, Lani was kidnapped and trafficked to Melbourne. There he was educated and raised by Dr. and Mrs. Blair, who saw Lani as an experiment in social Darwinism. They also paid to have Lani included in a large-scale painting ‘Derby Day’ with the Melbourne elite, a painting that is still on site at the Flemington racetrack today. Displaced from his land and his Yidinji people, who have lived in the area for more than 50,000 years, Lani’s story is a microcosm of one of the most fraught encounters in all of history, between the white colonists of Australia and the Aboriginal owners of the land. Lani haunts past and future stories of stolen children, frontier wars, colonial displacement, and assimilation policies: he exists beyond his moment and reminds us of the crucial importance of historical enquiry and memory-making on country.

Honorary Professor Henrietta Marrie AM is an Elder of the Gimuy Walubara clan of the Yidinji people and Traditional Owner of the land on which the City of Cairns and southern suburbs are now located. Her international research profile includes her work for the United Nations and government organisations in Canada, Japan, and the USA, and she has also held research and teaching positions at UQ, CQU, Griffith and James Cook Universities. Marrie has wide experience in Indigenous cultural and natural resource management and impact assessment, intellectual and cultural property law, heritage legislation and philanthropy, and has published over 80 papers in books and journals. She is also well known for her work on Indigenous arts and the repatriation of cultural property from museums and is a co-patron of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, a position she shares with the Governor of Queensland. Recognised by the QLD premier and cabinet as a Queensland Great, in 2018 Marrie was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the General Division with the following citation: “For significant service to the community as an advocate for Indigenous cultural heritage and intellectual property right, and to education.”

DEMONS LAND is a multimedia and multivoiced international collaboration that aims to bring to life the unfinished stories of remote Queensland. Henrietta Marrie has led the collective in the making of the Lani film, members include Simon Palfrey, Tom de Freston, Mark Jones, and Andrea Bubenik.

Image credit: film still from Lani (2023). Courtesy DEMONS LAND.