National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | National Indigenous Art Triennial 07

Dowling’s portrayal of Walyer, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman resistance fighter, is a rallying cry of opposition. Dowling’s protagonist, standing like an antipodean Bodicea, is a culture warrior, overturning the myth of passive submission. George Augustus Robinson, a former missionary, and Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the Port Phillip District (Victoria) from 1839 to 1849, referred to Walyer as ‘an Amazon’. Shortly after her capture in 1830, she died on 5 June 1831 from another insidious gift from the colonists: influenza. She had fought on behalf of her people with bravery and tenacity in a war for which no memorials exist. Walyer (aka Te Nor and Tarenorerer), a Plair-Leke-Liller-Plue woman from Tasmania, was abducted in her teens by men from another tribe and traded to sealers for flour and dogs. Such transactions occurred as Tasmanian Aboriginal people’s lives were disrupted by encroaching European settlement. Sealers took Aboriginal women for labour and as sexual commodities. During her time with th