People often assume I’m Aboriginal. I’m not.

I have some theories. I’m a loud and staunch ally. I make art about place and speak with conviction about landscape. I tan deeply in summer. My work includes shapes, patterns, and a kind of mark-making that some people interpret as cultural. I’m mindful of this, and I hope that, within context, I have respected Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. If I were to cross a line, I would expect my community to call me out. That accountability matters.

The reality of my ancestry is that I am an invader. My father is a white New Zealander. On my mother’s side, my grandfather descends from Tasmanian British settler-invaders. My second great-grandfather likely played a role in the dispossession of Aboriginal land.

As for the tan? No idea. AncestryDNA offers no clues. My maternal grandmother’s heritage is harder to trace, but all signs point to white. There’s a long-standing family myth that there might be “some Aboriginal blood” somewhere in her lineage, and that “the records were burnt,” a phrase often used to explain away a tan when documentation is missing. While I’d love to know the origin, I probably never will.

These fragments of family story, what’s known, what’s assumed, what’s quietly mythologised, sit uncomfortably alongside my deep connection to place.

At 21, during my undergraduate studies, I wrote: “My past is literally sited in place. Tam O’Shanter Bay is a beach positioned along the Bass Strait that sits beside the small community of Lulworth, my hometown. A long association with the area has meant that a strong sense of connectivity and attachment towards place has developed over time.”

I grew up on the northern coast of Tasmania, on land that was never ceded. The beaches, the wind-swept trees, the shrubland, grasses and rock formations feel like home. They shape my memory, my body, my art. But knowing that my ancestors likely participated in the violent dispossession of Lutruwita complicates what it means to belong here.

So I carry that tension into my work. I make art that responds to landscape, but I do so as a settler on Aboriginal land. I try, and often fail, to move gently and to listen more than I speak. I don’t claim ownership or authority. I’m trying to understand what it means to be in relationship with place when your very presence is part of its disruption.

This doesn’t resolve easily. It shouldn’t. We should be uncomfortable and keep talking.