Paul Bong

Paul Bong (aka Bindur Bullin), is a descendant of the Yidinji tribe who occupied the fertile rainforest lands from Cairns in the north to Babinda in the south and west into the Atherton Tablelands as far as Kairi. His ancestral history is rooted in this region.  Bong's great-grandparents were both tribal elders, when all the lands were Yidinji.  His father, George, also knew the traditional ways of living. He spoke the Yidinji language (Yidiny), though he wasn’t allowed to speak it when he went to school.  George was forced to reject the traditional ways and to assimilate into white society.  This broke the continuity of Bong's culture, language and heritage from being passed down through the generations.

Bong grew up around the Yattee area near Wright Creek in Far North Queensland. He is driven to regain the stories and culture that was lost to European settlement and to share what was lost through his work. His grandmother, who spoke Yidiny, taught Bong stories and legends about the rainforest – its bush food, animals, young warriors and special places such as Babinda Boulders and the Gordonvale Pyramid.  These stories are the inspiration for many of his works. Bong incorporates traditional designs with modern techniques with each design having its own spiritual meaning.

Courtesy of the Artist

View Paul Bong's 2021 Error of Parallax exhibition list and video here

UNEARTHED PURLOIN AND STOLEN GENERATION
In this art piece I am unearthing a story that once took place up in the Cape York area. The shield in this picture depicts Australia. The shield is old, meaning it once held all the old stories. If you look, it’s like it has been laying beneath the earth for many, many years. On this shield is a hidden story. Looking into this shield is like the dirt being removed, it is slowly coming up out of the ground, revealing a lost story. The story goes like this. The boat at the top of the shield is the boat that had the men who were new to Australia and were in pursuit of things they could take back with them to England. They did find a camp close by, a family lived there, so they decided to sneak up and go in and take out whoever was in sight. After this, they started to take what was not theirs and grabbed a young girl and some of the tribe’s implements. Right down the bottom of the art piece you will see a face just poking through. It is one of the old men from the tribe. The little black grub-like things are the traditional Yidinji designs. They are in a swirling-like formation. This represents the water - all the implements went out on the water, across the ocean.

THE GATHERING & IMPLEMENTS
The gathering shield is in the background. The rings in the shield are the calling together of all the tribes throughout North Queensland. There were fires and smoke signals to let the tribes know there is to be a gathering and all are welcome. In these times they would bring story or dance, exchanging gifts, marriages, and ceremonies. This would go on for at least a month or more until everyone was satisfied. Then everyone would move back to their homes where they came from. This would be refreshing, a renewal in life. These gatherings were stopped during colonisation. This is why the shield is blue, it meant the government moved in, killing and scattering all throughout the regions. The red is the blood, and the dispersed fragments are the scattered tribes.

MULGRAVE RIVER & YIDINJI IMPLEMENTS
The Mulgrave River was one of our main food sources here in North Queensland. We used to go down to that river as much as we could. When I was a little boy my dad and uncles used to go spearing for fish, they would get plenty too. I had to stay with mum, grandmother and the sisters because I was too little. But that was ok, I got to be with my grandmother. She would always sing out, "boy you go down dere and get granma dem leaves unda da water an tro dem up on dis bank here." I looked to where she wanted me to go, so I went down and grabbed as much as I could grab and threw them up onto the bank for her and, to my surprise, there was small and large water prawn. Grandma picked them all up and threw them into a pot of water that had been boiling for some time. She was excited, "go boy, go again!" After this grandma had a good feed. She also shared them out to the family. In my grandmother’s time, her dad had a bone through his nose showing that he was a king from the Yidinji area. He used to use the implements that are shown in this picture. Every implement used was very well looked after. There is the fire sticks, the spear, the tomahawk, the axe, the bowl, all had purposes where the rainforest ancestors lived. The designs that are swirling around in the picture are the traditional designs of the Yidinji People.

TORN CULTURE AND HALF-STORIES
Look into the picture you will see a biconical basket. It is unthreaded, it is broken. At the top right hand corner you will see a flag and a rifle extended from it with bullet holes and skeleton heads with figures. Further down the picture you will see a broken shield, half-people, half-implements and a green shield. The green shield tells the story of how our people once lived in harmony. They were hunting and gathering throughout the rainforest, working with Mother Earth. Until one day the British flag came. The owners of this flag said they had the rights to kill whatever they saw and they did. The white figures represent our ancestors, those who lost to the gunfire. The broken bag represents the bag of knowledge we once had - it is all gone. The half-people and implements you see are the half stories we are left with and the full implements are all we have left from the very little that remains. The red is the massacre that took place.

THE WAY MY PEOPLE LIVED BEFORE THEY WERE DISPERSED
My people lived off the land here in North Queensland. Sometimes we did not have to fish, we would just have to go to a tree and grab the leaves and crush them and place them over where the fish were. The fish would float to the top of the water because the leaves would take the oxygen out of the water. The ladies would leach the wild fruits, like the black beans, for at least a week and knew when to take them out of the water to give to the children. We would place a large basket down underneath the water’s edge with meat at the bottom of it so when the eel would smell it, it would work its way up the side of the basket then enter the basket. It would then go to the bottom to where the meat lies but the eel cannot reverse. We also had a 'Y' boomerang. We would throw this into a small tree area and the 'Y' would catch a hold of the tree and wind its way around while the straight length of the 'Y' would hit the small animals and knock them in the heads. Our people would rush in and pick them up. My people would take all of the animals that have been caught and put them near the fire, ready for the night meals. We had a lot of enjoyable times throughout this vast shopping centre. Until it all came to a close. The blue in this is representation of the government. It dispersed and shot and massacred. The red in the picture is the blood but placed into the picture as a fragment of a culture that once existed and small parts are all that remains.

THE GATHERING AND THE DISPERSED FRAGMENTS
The gathering shield is in the background. The rings in the shield are the calling together of all the tribes throughout North Queensland. There were fires and smoke signals to let the tribes know there is to be a gathering and all are welcome. In these times they would bring story or dance, exchanging gifts, marriages and ceremonies. This would go on for at least a month or more until everyone was satisfied. Then everyone would move back to their homes where they came from. This would be refreshing, a renewal in life for all the tribes. The dispersed fragments are the tribes throughout Australia. They have been dispositioned and taken from their loved ones that they will never see again. They were torn and ripped away. This is why I put the fragments into this picture and all around. There is no original place where they came from, it is all by itself, torn and cracked, just how we been and we can't get back to our original state again.

THE GATHERING AND THE DISPERSED FRAGMENTS 2
The gathering shield is in the background. The rings in the shield are the calling together of all the tribes throughout North Queensland. There were fires and smoke signals to let the tribes know there is to be a gathering and all are welcome. In these times they would bring story or dance, exchanging gifts, marriages and ceremonies. This would go on for at least a month or more until everyone was satisfied. Then everyone would move back to their homes where they came from. This would be refreshing, a renewal in life for all the tribes. The dispersed fragments are the tribes throughout Australia. They have been dispositioned and taken from their loved ones that they will never see again. They were torn and ripped away. This is why I put the fragments into this picture and all around. There is no original place where they came from, it is all by itself, torn and cracked, just how we been and we can't get back to our original state again.

MY FLAG & SHOPPING BASKET
The shopping baskets are still true today. Some families go out and keep the tradition going. We do have a vast shopping centre in North Queensland to help us. I place one art piece on top of the other. I want the viewer to look deep into it, to see what they can see. They will see happy figures in the shape of the men hunting and the ladies with their bags gathering. I put this onto the shield to give it the full depth of what had happened before it got dispersed. The British have a flag and present it with honour of how many people it killed here in Australia. I thought I will do my own flag in a shield formation to let this generation know what happened when the British held their flag up and marched forward in victory. My flag is held up to a people who got no victory and were unprepared, had no guns, had no real strong power to defend themselves. The blue shield is representing the government and all of the fragments around are the tribes that had been busted up and broken and thrown all around the country.

DISPERSED FRAGMENTS OF OBLIVION
All shields represented in the art are depicting the tribes of Australia before the British came. The look I gave them is old, like they have been under the earth for a long time, eaten away, unrecognised but kept some shape about it. In this picture you will see Captain Cook on a shield. Beneath him are skulls, the shield shape is before 1777, when Captain Cook started staking a claim here in Australia. The skulls are those of the ancestors who lay beneath us now and who were the first to receive the full scale of the Frontier Wars (now the Forgotten Wars). I like to help people recognise what had taken place before 1777, using the old shield as an example of age-old ways, before when they were all in their right shape. After we became British subjects, all had been dispersed and fragmented. It disintegrated a strong people, a language and an ancestral knowledge, that is all gone - all is lost.

OBLIVION OF THE YIDINJI PEOPLE
When I was a young lad growing up around Wright's Creek we used to live off the land. I used to watch my grandmother. She was a darling old lady and there were some things that seemed strange to me. I couldn't understand why some of the elderly family tried to speak language and she would hurry up and get angry and say, "No more! No, don’t do that. You must stop, please." It seemed strange to me as the next generation used to always hear them talk language and now it has to stop. If I spoke, she would say, "no boy, we go new way now. No more." But then I found out why she did this. She must of seen the horrific sights that had happened to her family, here in Gordonvale and Edmonton. At Skeleton Creek in Edmonton, all of our tribes in that area were massacred and their heads were put on sticks way back as far as the ocean. All the shields, spears, nulla nullas and whatever was left on the ground were picked up by a man in an old wagon and all taken back to England. I say this with confidence as I know of elders that were invited by the Crown to view the artifacts. These artifacts were way down in a dungeon, and most of them came out of Wright's Creek area. One of the well known elders of Cairns rang and told me, and when I was told, I felt sorry that they were over there. I know what had taken place here to our Yidinji people became an oblivion to all of us.

THE FLAG CAME IN HERE
Rainforest people kept the land by foraging up and down the coast, following seasonal food sources. The creeks, rivers, coast and sea yielded barramundi, bream, jewfish, grunter, catfish, cod, eels, turtles, prawns, crayfish, oysters and periwinkles. The women concentrated on gathering, foraging, preparing food and caring for their children. Our lives were at peace and harmony with Mother Earth. There was nothing that our ancestors knew of that would stop all of this across the vast land of Australia. Until the flag came into this country and Captain James Cook planted the flag in 1770. It showed Britain staked a claim unknowingly to us. In this picture is Queen Victoria. In 1778, she wrote to Captain James Cook to “endeavour by every means of his power to conciliate the goodwill of Aboriginal people and if settlers should wantingly destroy them to cause such offenders to be brought to punishment.” Under her ruling, it sounded good and her written dialog ceased to exist through those who took it into their own hands. It made them angry because we became the British subjects. That means we were protected and they hated that we were not like them. All decisions were being made without any treaty to the owners of this country. Queen Victoria, the Crown, is seen with the British flag in the shape of our shield. It is protruding over our King, my great-great-grandad. His ownership of the shields were slowly being shadowed over. In this picture is a shield I call my flag. It represents one time long ago when all the shield was together (meaning tribes). You will see figures that represent the men hunting and teaching the children and the ladies with their baskets. At the top of this shield are the children playing until one day there came a shot that broke all sound barriers and busted up a people. It divided and split culture, history, songlines, stories, and dancing. It scattered them, never to be put back together ever. People ask me where did this happen? I say, "See the bullet holes in the shield, if you look hard, they are in the shape of the Southern Cross right here in Australia." All the implements are scattered in this picture. To the onlooker, it looks confusing. That is how it was for my people who had been scattered and displaced when the new law came into effect.

SKELETON CREEK CONSPIRACY
The shield looks old and worn out to me. I liken it to being unearthed. I put crosswords on this shield to bring it up to date. I know our people never did crosswords, but it makes it a little more interesting to the viewer. People wonder what these squares are. When they look closer it has words in them. The words I have used are those from what had taken place at Skeleton Creek in Edmonton, the massacre. I also applied the texture of making this shield look like a skeleton. People today do not know what had taken place back there then, but we need to keep history going so all generations can understand the frontier wars and move forward.

JANUARY 26TH 1788
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. This day has been called Australia Day. We call it “Invasion Day”. My artwork shows a purple haze colour throughout. This is where the British colours, blue and red, on the flag really did take effect in our country, and purple to me means royal. We became the royal subject to the Queen, through which flooded Australia.

RAINFOREST TRADITIONAL ART 2016
From the time of W.E Roth findings in 1897 to 2016 it has been 119 years of acknowledging our Rainforest Art Culture and it's history, my great grandmother had always spoke of her traditional ways. I was only little at the time and couldn't quite understand her silent memories on what she spoke of. People from all walks of life want to know about those silent memories of who could of lived here who were the tribes, what are their totems, etc. In 2016, those very same silent memories are now being unearthed through my art. Her silent love is now my expressed love and passion for my place, my land, my ancestral history. I hope you will love it too and enjoy the art and it's history.

BREAST PLATES
The Breast plates in Bong's work represent the time of colonisation by European settlers and the mistreatment of Indigenous people during this time. They also symbolise the survival and resistance of the Indigenous people, a reminder of the complex history and stories that are part of Australia. The Breast plates represent different regions in the North Queensland area including Gordonvale, Deeral, Atherton, Yattee and Buna-Binda. The designs illustrate the culture of the Yidinji people and are intrically created using intaglio etching and vinyl techniques.

EELS & LADDERS (Shield series)
The Eels & Ladders design references the game"Snakes and Ladders". The work represents the traditional culture of Indigenous people being disrupted and cast over by the political games for power of the European settlers.

SKELETON CREEK (Shield series)
The Skeleton Creek shield depicts the Skeleton Creek massacre of Indigenous people that occurred in the late 19th Century. Out of those killed, 16 heads were placed on their own spears as a sign of defeat. Skeleton Creek was one of many massacres that occurred over Queensland, with tens of thousands of Indigenous people killed on the Queensland frontier alone. The shield has a skull formation with a crossword puzzle that connects to the violent history of Skeleton Creek.

CROSSROADS (Shield series)
Crossroads represents the cultural invasion that occurred due to European settlement and the killing of generations of Bong's people. The shield shows bullet holes that are in the shape of the Southern Cross because this all happened under the Southern Cross. The cross-like breaks in the shield represent the breaks in his culture that were a result of Christianity.

JAMBUN BIGUN
The Jambun Bigun design shows a grub that will eat away until it is content and then goes on it’s way. This shield is also called First Contact and is based on the detrimental affects of European Settlement on the Yidinji people's cul;ture. The Yidiniji people lived off the rivers and land in harmony. Fathers huntererd and our mothers gathered, they new the land when it was at peace and harmony.

SPIDER WEB (Shield series)
Spider Web shield is a representation of Bong unearthing cultural ancestral kowledge and history. In his mind, the artist went looking and found a portion to the history and unearthed it, it came up in a shield shape and on it was dust and cracks that were indicative of the shield surviving many battles. The spider in the middle part of the shield is partially hidden, but is slightly creaping out from beneath, representing a culture that was once lost and  is now being revealed and unearthed.

MY FLAG (Shield series)
My Flag represents 50,000 years of living in peace and harmony. The figures on the left are women helping young girls learn the way of gathering for womens business. On the right hand side there is an image of a man with a spear and he is teaching young men ways of hunting and story telling for mens business. The scattered bullet holes create the Southern Cross formation and are the cause of the shield breaking, representing the splitting and destruction of a culture.

SCORPIAN (Shield series)
The Scorpian shield is the North Queensland traditional tribal design. The round shape in the centre shows the scorpians stomach, the two sharp points going up are his two front legs and two sharp points going down are his two bottom legs. The triangles inside the scorpian design must be used by Indigenous North Queensland artists within the themes in their work. The Scorpian symbolises courage, strength, wisdom, honour and independence. DJumbun (scorpian) is a central totem for the Yidinji people.
 

WALL OF SHAME
Wall of Shame is a collaboration between Bong and his son, George, and is combination of graffiti and cave painting styles. The Wall represent the people that massacred his family and the drawings of the cave people with hands over their faces show they were connected to that wall of unexplainable hurt. They ask themselves, “why, what did we do, we were only to care for the land and our families and it ‘s all gone why!" Now the building blocks of families and cultural history and ancestral knowledge are all gone.

TEARS HAVE FALLEN
The tears on the side of the breast plate is where I chose my theme for this history (story).
The cave paintings in the background are our people living here in the Yidinji country - we lived in harmony. Our families also lived off the creeks around the North Queensland area, eating all sorts of wild foods - it was once like this.

The graffiti in the story says chains of sorrow, depicting what the Europeans did when they came to Australia, and then came under the British Law.

The crown inside the circle (ball) represents Queen Victoria, who passed a law to the ball-and-chain Europeans stating, do not hurt or touch the natives. They didn't listen; they took it into their own hands, and massacred all of the tribes across Australias.

The breast plate, meaning European invasion, on top of the picture, also represents Skeleton Creek, where they came along and cut heads off and placed the heads on posts. All skeleton heads could be seen as far out to the beaches leading down to the sea.

Edmonton, Cairns, is where Skeleton Creek is. This is its history.

Courtesy of the Artist