Later in the year at Geraldton’s Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival in October 2024 the story of the Greenough massacre continued to unfold.  A three-person panel convened at the Queens Park Theatre: Theona Councillor, Bruce Denny and George Criddle presented to the community the outline of a project aimed at retelling the story of the 1854 massacre at Pelican Spring, in song and movement. Theona, as singer/songwriter has undertaken to create Murla-na Bula Wula Bulangu, a Naaguja-style opera that will be part of the drive to revive Naaguja cultural song, dance and story while offering an invitation to the broader community to learn about the history of colonisation from the perspective of the Naaguja people.

During the informal discussion, it became clear that at the heart of this project is the friendship forged between George and Theona. In the years leading up to this event, George, a Melbourne-based artist had made many visits to Yamaji Country to research and document their ancestor’s involvement in frontier violence during the 1850’s. These experiences became both an exhibition and a text-based work self-published as George’s PhD in book form: Summaries of a Settler Artist’s Journal.  This document is both an academic and deeply personal investigation of the role that family memory plays in reckoning with the past. William Criddle, George’s sixth great-grandfather was part of the armed settler group who rode to Pelican Springs looking to destroy Aboriginal resistance to their taking of the land. It is estimated that on this and subsequent days over 300 Aboriginal people were murdered.  George’s work demonstrates new possibilities for a creative approach to the subject of colonial silence, and a potential pathway to decolonisation for descendants of the settlers.

As they got to know people within the Geraldton-Greenough area, George reached out to Theona, a descendant of the Councillors, one of the Indigenous families deeply affected by this massacre. Theona was raised on the Greenough Flats, close the site of the massacre keen to develop her Naagaji-language skills and reclaim…..etc Theona’s story of involvement. 

George and Theona found they had much in common and began to plan how to find the players and the finance to bring their project into being. The idea took hold and to date they have raised from locals keen to see the opera staged locally…… ?

During the panel chat, Theona brought to light the inspiration that had brought George on their journey of familial investigation into attitudes to the colonial past and its impact on the present. Gary Foley, a well-known Melbourne-based Aboriginal (?) activist had addressed a (mainly white) crowd on how to support Indigenous people in their fight for self-determination. The best way settler-folk could support Indigenous rights, he reckoned, was by taking some questions home: ‘Go and see what sort of attitudes live in your own home’, he said.  ‘If you are looking for racists, you probably won’t have to go far’… ‘Start there and see how you go about changing minds….’ 

George took this advice to heart.  This learning combined with Theona’s determination to tell her own story in her own way became the creative juice for an ambitious project.

Bruce Denny, a Perth based Noongar man and the third member of the panel, was brought to the project for his experience in community theatre as both actor and director. Bruce talked about his role as dramaturge, explaining how he always has loyalty to the audience in mind: for a production to succeed, they must be brought along for the ride, to be fully engaged by the story and the way it is told.

George, in their role as interviewer, showed a short video made from footage taken on the day of the ceremony held at the massacre site in June. Discussion points were raised, and questions taken from the audience around issues to do with the massacre and Settler/Yamaji relations. Of the 40 odd souls in the audience, there were about a dozen, some long-time residents of the area, who had never heard of the massacre. There was a general discussion about how settler folk have trouble taking on board the difficult facts of colonisation. Words like ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ were raised as reasons for ongoing community silence and ignorance about the horrors of early settlement that continue to reverberate through contemporary life.

There was an understanding that efforts aimed at healing and reconciliation need to be led by First Nation’s people. In this instance it was acknowledged that Theona’s courage within her own community, and her open-hearted invitation to settler people to be part of the project has allowed a portal for new understanding to emerge.