Amanda Jane Reynolds is a Guringai Yuin woman. She’s an artist, storyteller, possum skin cloak maker, curator and a sharer of knowledge.
Amanda lives on Yuin Country at Burrill Lake on the New South Wales south coast. She regularly travels to Sydney to maintain her cultural connections to Country and community. Her role as a traditional cloak maker began in her late 20s.
‘I had met and was inspired by some women in Victoria who were tasked by the Old People with bringing possum-skin cloaks back into daily life in our communities.’ She worked for many years doing the support role; curating, storytelling, organising and helping support the vision of these women before she felt like she had earned her place to make them herself.
‘For years I’d helped and travelled all over the southeast, doing workshops, encouraging, showing, working with the kids, helping the senior cloak teachers doing the teaching. Then the Dreaming came through and encouragement of my teachers and Elders as well, and once that happened there was no stopping me.
‘I felt more confident that I’d learned and listened enough
