One day, in the central Australian desert, a body fell out of a tree. It was the body of a Warlpiri ancestor, who had been given a traditional tree burial at Pikilyi, near Yuendumu. After he fell, or was knocked down from that tree, he was scooped up by the “white pipeline” and taken away from his country to Adelaide.
That pipeline of white people – some well-meaning, some not, some unthinking – funnelled things belonging to First Nations people away from their country – to museums, to private homes, to researchers’ collections across Australia and around the world in a grand, stolen diaspora.
