Palimpsests of Resistance
In Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s 2020 video work Mother Tongue, we watch from above as a small rowing boat circumnavigates the submerged wooden skeleton of a larger vessel. The wreck rests in water so shallow that fragments protrude from the ocean’s wind-blown surface, articulating the darkened form around which two figures row. Gulls cry overhead, oars groan their resistance, the constant tidal pulse pushes a crash of waves onto the shore, and above it all a lone woman’s voice sings: a blessing, a lament, an incantation.
In the small vessel, Jasmine Togo-Brisby rows, while her mother sings. From the shore her daughter watches on. The camera rises higher. Our field of vision expands to show a curved stretch of road. Cars drive past, oblivious to the weight of history that sits within reach, resting in the shallow fringe of ocean that hugs this stretch of Kōpūtai Port Chalmers coast. The barely-submerged ship was once the , and within the depths of its hold a people were born. As Togo-Brisby explains: ‘Like many other creation stories, ours started in darkness, but it’s different when your genesis is at the bottom of a ship . . Blackbirding is the name that has euphemistically been used to describe a process by which indigenous people from across the Pacific were lured from their homes and onto ships, and trafficked as cheap labour to European colonies and plantations, including those in Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Hawai‘i, Peru and Mexico. Utilising both coercion and force, blackbirding resulted in the displacement of at least 62,000 people to Australia alone, between 1847 and 1904. This number does not take into account those people who were not officially documented. Upon arrival in Australia the majority were put to work labouring in backbreaking conditions to establish Queensland’s sugar plantations, forming the backbone of an industry that would go on to generate enormous wealth. It was not until 1994 that the Commonwealth Government formally recognised Australian South Sea Islanders as a distinct cultural group.
