Balit Liwurruk: Strong Girl

With Worawa Aboriginal College, St Martins presents a work that overturns assumptions about First Nations girls, made with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to speak-out about strong and smart girls. Often the girls are multilingual, with English not their first language. Aunty Lois Peeler, the school’s principal, Aboriginal Elder and sister of founder Hyllis Maris (Wurundjeri and Yorta Yorta woman), refers to the girls holding the ‘parallel realities’ of Aboriginal lore and Western culture - at the school they learn to ‘walk the two worlds’. With these coexisting realities as a departure point, the project asks what it takes to carry language and culture whilst being a girl today.

In a rite of passage from girl to woman, twelve girls turn the classic myth of Hercules inside out, repossessing its masculine notions of being strong into their very own 12 tests of strength. Balit: Liwurruk: Strong Girl is an invitation to contemplate the Herculean determination, depth and pride of girls emerging from Country across our vast Australian continent.