In 2016, the Tasmanian government scrapped the three-pronged criteria used to determine Aboriginality. Where people had previously needed to provide documentary evidence of Aboriginal ancestry, the new rules only require self-identification and communal recognition.
The new system was ostensibly more inclusive: While the three-point system was simple enough for many Aboriginal people to navigate, for others — for example, members of the Stolen Generations — documentary evidence was often far trickier.
In the wake of the policy change, there was an increase in people identifying as palawa/pakana (Tasmanian Aboriginal).
But the change had vehement detractors, too — most prominently, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
Watching the fallout, playwright Nathan Maynard became convinced that there was no more important topic for him to write about: "Out of all the stories I could tell at the time, I felt this one needed to be told the most," he told ABC RN's Awaye!.
For Maynard, a trawlwoolway and pakana man from larapuna country (north-east Tasmania), the debate was close to home — but it has had broader repercussions, he says.
"I think [the Tasmanian legislation change] had an effect on a lot Aboriginal communities around Australia. And for whatever reasons, I don't think [these issues] are being spoken about openly. And I felt we do need to speak about them openly, so we can begin to fix these problems."
The resulting play, At What Cost?, finally landed on stages in 2022 after COVID lockdown-related delays — and returned there this month, kicking off a national tour with a return season at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre.
With a single story about four characters living in lutruwita/Tasmania, Maynard's play demonstrates the high stakes involved in determining who decides who can call themselves Aboriginal, and the potential ramifications.
"I don't think at the moment there's anything more relevant in Aboriginal Tasmania and probably Aboriginal Australia than this issue … everything comes back to this issue," he says.
Having a 'dirty yarn' in a safe space
At What Cost? takes place in putalina/Oyster Cove, where pakana man Boyd (Luke Carroll) is camped out in his ancestor's hut with his pregnant partner Nala (Sandy Greenwood), as they literally stake a claim to Country on behalf of the local Land Council.
Their presence is a safeguard against a rival claim by Hidden Aboriginals of Tasmania, or HAT: an organisation representing the growing number of people identifying as palawa/pakana — or as Boyd calls them, "claimers" and "tick a boxers".
As the play opens, Boyd receives news that the remains of pakana ancestor William Lanne, which have been held in a British museum for 150 years, will be returned to putalina the following week. As a respected member of the community, Boyd has been asked by the Land Council to lead the cremation ceremony — a huge honour, and an equally massive responsibility.
So he's particularly on edge about the tent that has recently popped up at the property's fence, and its occupant, Gracie (Alex Malone), who claims to be researching William Crowther — the British surgeon who notoriously mutilated Lanne's body.
As Gracie gets close to Boyd's cousin Daniel (Ari Maza Long), Boyd's suspicions about her rise — and his extreme reaction to her presence puts him on a collision course with Nala and Daniel.
Maynard knows questioning who can call themselves Aboriginal is an incredibly contentious issue.
"Sometimes it's going to be a dirty yarn, but we need to have it. We need to give community the power to have this yarn."
And the yarn that takes place on stage does get dirty.
Maynard is writing from a very specific viewpoint — one that he tries not to reveal until the last moments of the show.
That's not to say that he's intent on dictating to his audiences.
"When I first started to write this play, I felt like I was trying to solve the issue … And then I realised, no, it's not about that. It's just about raising the question," Maynard says.
This is why he worked hard to give some of his strongest arguments to the characters he agreed with the least.
The effect is four different takes on the subject, varying from the hardline stance taken by Boyd to the wilful ignorance of Gracie.
Maynard notes that while many Blackfellas will resonate with different characters and their experiences or beliefs, At What Cost? is still very much a work of fiction.
He says this fictionalisation allows debates to focus on the themes and questions raised within the show — rather than any one person's identity.
Maynard points to what he describes as the "Bruce Pascoe fiasco" as an example of the tone of debate he wanted to avoid.
In 2020, a media storm developed around a complaint lodged with the Australian Federal Police alleging that Bruce Pascoe, the award-winning author of Dark Emu, had benefited financially from incorrectly claiming to be an Aboriginal Australian.
Pascoe grew up unaware of his Aboriginal heritage, and did not identify as Aboriginal until he was 32. Since then, he has been accepted and acknowledged by his Yuin community, though his assertions of having Boonwurrung and Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry have been rejected by the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council and Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania respectively.
Ultimately the AFP rejected the request to open an investigation, saying that no Commonwealth offences had been identified. However the incident raised important questions within Aboriginal communities and families about what happens when government agencies and legislations are used to determine who does and does not belong.
"[The Bruce Pascoe situation] was a really hot, contentious issue … we could see on social media and conversations that we had around communities how hot it was and how emotional it was," Maynard says.
"And this here [the play] gives a safe space to have that same yarn [about identity] without the heat.
"It's given people confidence to speak about the issue more freely instead of in hushed tones, which is great. After all, it's our identity."
'I always write for Mob first'
Maynard says he always writes for Mob first, but understands that generally speaking his audiences won't be Blackfellas.
"I'm really conscious of the fact that I'm [working] in theatre [and] most of my audience are going to be whitefellas," Maynard says.
He says this is because theatre spaces haven't traditionally been safe spaces for Blackfellas; nevertheless, theatre is a medium he loves.
"It's just another branch, another evolution of our [First Nations] storytelling," he says.
And so rather than ignore the possibility of white audiences, Maynard recognises he has a chance to "edumacate" people who might not otherwise be privy to (or able to fully grasp) the ways government policies and white organisations are influencing the issue.
"And hopefully they'll go away and go, 'OK, I understand. Now I'm going to change my tack'," Maynard says"
He also recognises that his Black audiences will inevitably find themselves agreeing and disagreeing with different arguments brought forth on stage.
This recognition is one of the reasons At What Cost? is such a dynamic show.
"This is my first time seeing it with a [predominantly] Black audience and it's such a different show," he told the audience following Belvoir's community night performance.
In particular, a character's response to a question about who their Mob is, which had elicited a frustrated heckle on opening night in 2022, sparked laughter a year later, with a different audience.
"'Who's your Mob?' is a question that we've been asking for millennia," Maynard says.
However, Maynard has noticed that in recent years there's been a trend towards people mislabelling this question as "lateral violence" or "culturally unsafe".
"Most Blackfellas are really proud to answer that question … It's not an aggressive question. It's a question of pride, and it's how we link our bloodlines, our storylines," he says.
"That's a question that should be asked and should be allowed to be asked … Things have changed in the last few years, and that saddens me."
A uniquely palawa story
Isaac Drandic is a Noongar theatre director from the south-west of Western Australia, and one of Maynard's longtime collaborators.
Having also directed three of Maynard's previous plays, including his 2017 debut The Season, Drandic sees Maynard as more than simply the playwright of At What Cost?
"Nathan's basically the associate director as well as the cultural authority," he says.
"It is a little bit of a different way of working, because in the Western system of making theatre, there's this hierarchy [by which] we basically inherit a script from the writer and then we don't see them again. But I feel my cultural obligation is to Nathan and to the art community."
When it came to translating Maynard's unique voice and play for a larger audience, Drandic says he looked to the broader themes.
"When he starts to talk about the bigger ideas in this work and the bigger dilemmas that these characters are having to navigate, that's our way in as people that aren't from Tassie or as people that aren't palawa," Drandic says
He notes that in many ways the specificity of Maynard's work isn't a hindrance to be navigated around.
"It's within that specificity that makes it so accessible to us," Drandic says.
"And that's something that I think is always present in the productions that Nathan and I make, and that's really important to both of us on a cultural level and on an artistic level as well."
One example of a specific reference serving as a broader theme is the repatriation of ancestral remains, which is the catalyst for the action in At What Cost?
Maynard says he wanted to highlight the injustice done to William Lanne.
Lanne, sometimes known as King Billy, was a whaler who lived in the putalina/Oyster Cove Aboriginal settlement, south of Hobart. He was the third husband of Truganini, and like Truganini, was considered the last 'full-blooded' Tasmanian Aboriginal man.
When Lanne died in 1869, a morbid battle over his remains took place between the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Society of Tasmania.
This argument led to Lanne's skull being stolen by William Crowther (at that time an honorary medical officer at the Hobart General Hospital, and later the Premier of Tasmania), who cut the skull from Lanne's head and replaced it with that of another man.
"When I began writing At What Cost?, there was still a statue in Hobart celebrating [Crowther] the man who dismembered Lanne's deceased body and sent it in parts to England," Maynard says.
In a sign of changing attitudes, in 2021 the Royal Society of Tasmania issued a long overdue apology for its role in the exhumation and mistreatment of ancestral remains.
Last August, Hobart City Council voted to remove the statue of Crowther from Franklin Square.
"Society now recognises how immoral it was for white people to steal the remains of First Nations people from their communities," Maynard says.
"They also recognise that they are continuing to steal them when they don't hand them back to their rightful custodians."
Doubling down on difficult subjects
Maynard is committed to using art to explore difficult subjects, with two recent projects touching on topics examined in At What Cost?.
His art installation Relic Act, which will premiere as part of the Hobart Current arts festival in November, seeks to highlight the abhorrent and unethical treatment of Tasmanian Aboriginal remains.
As part of the artwork, Maynard anonymously advertised in a Melbourne newspaper for "an Australian of British descent" willing to "donate their future deceased body to an art installation" that would "speak to sacrifice for past sins perpetrated against the palawa".
Pointedly, Maynard noted in his ad that the remains will be "treated with the utmost respect at all stages of the project".
Meanwhile, Maynard has further teased out the questions around who can call themselves Aboriginal in a short film made in collaboration with fellow pakana writer and filmmaker Adam Thompson, for their joint production company kutikina Productions.
Titled My Journey, the film was originally set to be screened as part of Tasmania's GRIT film festival in April — however it was pulled from the program over concerns about defamation and potential community harm.
Maynard described the festival's response as "censorship", saying it waded into "scary territory".
"It must have hit the right nerve for people to feel threatened to the point they tried to ban the film," he added.
If anything, it's galvanised his enthusiasm to see At What Cost? staged for a local audience when it arrives in Hobart in July.
Being able to bring At What Cost? back to his community so they can see themselves on stage "means the world", he says.
"This play couldn't come home quick enough."
At What Cost? runs until June 10 at Queensland Theatre in Brisbane; from June 16-July 1 at State Theatre Company South Australia in Adelaide; and from July 6-23 at the Theatre Royal in Hobart.
