Talking Aboriginal design activism — liberation organizations & their emblems (Part 3: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance)
By Callum Clayton-Dixon: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) remains one of the most active and unapologetically staunch of our movement’s organizations in recent years. This post takes a look at WAR’s emblems and their origins. #ResistReviveDecolonize
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) formed around a fire on the 26th of April 2014, and was officially launched at the Brisbane G20 protests in November of that year— “a collective of young Aboriginal people committed to the cause of decolonization and the philosophy of Aboriginal nationalism, resistance and revival”. Those involved in the establishment and early development of WAR include Boe Spearim (Kooma, Murrawarri & Gamilaraay), Pekeri Ruska (Goenpul), Jade Taylor (Gumbaynggirr), Meriki Onus (Gunnai & Gunditjmara), and myself (Ambēyang). Chapters were set up in Brisbane and Melbourne.
“Without resistance the white man succeeds in taking our land and country so our purpose is not to attack but defend and protect. We want to revive the warrior spirit in our people by facilitating a culture of resistance…We want to inform our people and inspire them, particularly our youth, to take action in the anti-colonial struggle, because that’s the only way. Decolonization encompasses all aspects of life. It’s the food you eat, it’s the things you buy. Food and health are high on our agenda, but we’re also helping our own communities to learn their languages, their dances, the traditions. We want people to study and be informed of their true history.” — Meriki Onus, January 2015 (excerpts from interview with VICE)
Some of us had cut our organizing teeth with the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy (BASE) in Musgrave Park, and another major influence in WAR’s development was our journey across Turtle Island (so-called Canada) in August-September 2014, visiting Native communities, pipeline blockades, and protest camps, talking with and learning from activists and land defenders from one side of the continent to the other. Our Turtle Island trip was also when we took up and began using the Aboriginal Passport, an assertion of Aboriginal nationhood and sovereignty first employed in the late 1980s by Aboriginal delegations to Gaddafi’s Libya. As we certainly stand on the shoulders of giants, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge and pay respect to those who’ve taught and helped guide us; Wayne ‘Coco’ Wharton, Marjorie Thorpe, Michael Mansell, Professor Gary Foley, and Dale Ruska are several of the veteran Aboriginal activists we’ve been privileged to be mentored and encouraged by along the way. And there are of course the countless heroes of the Aboriginal struggle no longer with us, and those of liberation movements internationally as well, whose stories, ideas, and actions have and continue to inspire a new generation of freedom fighters here in so-called Australia.
When Boe Spearim and I interviewed Gary Foley in late 2013, he said the following to us:
“The key to what happened back in the 60s and 70s was that the younger generation thought for themselves, analyzed what was going on around them, and took action that was suitable to the times and was effective…the younger generation has to find a new way…go and set up your own outfit, create your own bodies, create your own sort of structures, create your own way of thinking.”
At the G20 protests and in subsequent years, a whole host of other young Aboriginal people joined WAR’s ranks. There are too many to name all of them, but among those comrades I’ve seen take on the WAR mantle and truly leave their mark are the formidable and inspiring Ruby Wharton and Tarneen Onus-Williams. I’m only qualified to talk from a first-hand perspective about WAR’s early days, as my involvement as one of its organizers more or less came to an end after I moved from Brisbane in 2015 to live in Armidale NSW (Anēwan country), on the country of my language community. But I’ve continued to watch from afar as WAR has grown into a strong vanguard of the Aboriginal movement, one of the most active and unapologetically staunch of our organizations in recent years. It has been instrumental in the mobilization of tens of thousands of people at Invasion Day actions and various other protest campaigns over the past half a decade, such as those against the forced closure of Aboriginal communities (2015) and the abuse of Aboriginal children at the Don Dale juvenile detention centre (2016), and those to demand justice for the killing of Aboriginal teen Elijah Doughty (2017) and the fatal police shooting of Kumanjayi Walker (2019). WAR members were front and centre at the 2018 Gold Coast Stolenwealth Games demonstrations as well. And the organization’s part in public discourse hasn’t been limited to street marches; WAR’s members have also been vocal in their opposition to the government and corporate sponsored push for ‘recognition’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia’s Constitution, in all of its forms, including the latest iteration of this wild goose chase — a Constitutionally entrenched advisory ‘voice’ to Parliament.
This is only really a cursory glance at the group’s origins and activities. And telling the story of WAR isn’t the primary purpose of this blog post. But it’s a little difficult not to get carried away in the yarn when much of it is a trip down memory lane. So, onto WAR’s now widely recognizable emblem.
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance’s symbol essentially consists of two core elements: 1) a traditional shield in front of two crossed barbed spears; and 2) the faces of two Aboriginal warriors, a man and woman, on either side. We took the shield and spears design from the emblem of WAR’s very short-lived predecessor, the Brisbane Treaty Collective (BTC). The BTC was just me and Boe, and all we did under this banner was put out a couple of press releases on issues like Constitutional recognition, and organize a small forum on Aboriginal nationalism, following which WAR was formed.
I have next to no artistic ability, especially when it comes to illustration, so the shield and spears were originally photographs of traditional weapons, heavily stylized and arranged using Adobe Photoshop. You will notice that for the WAR emblem, we opted for a simpler black and white colour scheme. Jade Taylor, who unlike me is actually quite a skilled artist, illustrated the two warriors’ faces. These elements were then combined with the organization’s name, which was laid out in such a way as to highlight the meaning-laden ‘WAR’ acronym. In terms of what the emblem was originally intended to communicate, I’d say it would be a combination of invoking our ancestors’ legacy of fierce resistance, paying homage to tradition and by extension highlighting the importance of its revival, and emphasizing the vital role of Aboriginal women and men alike in the struggle.
Along with t-shirts, patches, and protest banners, the WAR emblem (part of it at least) has been printed on stickers as well. Walking up the hill to the top of the University of New England’s Armidale campus last June, I came across a sticker on one of the lampposts with the words “RESISTING TERRORISM SINCE 1788” emblazoned across the spears and shield. I have no idea how it got there, and no, it really wasn’t me! This was five years on since the original emblem was designed, and hundreds of kilometers away from the big cities in a country town. This was a surprise to me, and a good one at that — more evidence of how designs can take on a life of their own.
Another design which came out of WAR and our publication Black Nations Rising magazine (later renamed The Black Rising) is the Resist Revive Decolonize symbol, which was originally created as the magazine’s logo and has featured on the masthead of each issue. It came about through collaboration between myself and Luke Peacock (Meriam); I came up with the concept and Luke brought it to life. The “Resist Revive Decolonize” slogan was conceived as WAR’s mantra, and those who were there would remember these words first being chanted at the Brisbane G20 protests. Its other main elements are: 1) the black power fist with roots, a statement of how so much of our strength as peoples lies in connection to country; and 2) the Aboriginal flag, also born of the movement, and synonymous with our fight for rights and justice. From memory, I drew inspiration from the emblems of other groups such as the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy and Turtle Island’s Indigenous Nationhood Movement.
There you have it — a little background on Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance and some insight into the origins and meanings of its symbols. And that brings us to the end of the ‘liberation organizations & their emblems’ blog series. In the process of researching for and writing these posts, I learnt much about the history of the first two organizations covered, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association and our own branch of the Black Panther Party. And there was definitely a lot of thought and reflection that went into this final one (and a bit of reminiscing with my WAR comrades Boe and Pekeri).
I’m finishing up writing this post as WAR organizers in Brisbane and Melbourne are preparing for mass protest actions in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis USA; joining global calls for justice for yet another Black life taken by White racism, as well as drawing attention to the glaring absence of justice for the deaths of hundreds of our own people at the hands of Australia’s racist police and jail systems. It’s been six years now since we formed WAR, and that fire has kept on burning.
Resist. Revive. Decolonize.
Uyidiga lanabura (let’s speak soon)
