“When I started making art ten years ago, one of the people who gave me clarity was Toni Morrison. She said, ‘I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. I claimed it as. Things that had been real for generations and millennia. I thought, what would it look like if I return to the Indigenous centre and stay there? Don't teach it or explain it but let people come to me? To portray Indigenous spirituality as real is still a radical stance when we are dealing with the effects of colonisation. I make art that does not apologise for Indigenous spirituality or argue whether it's real. It just is. Those outside Indigenous cultures should learn about it because it teaches you to decentre yourself. My favourite effect of my book Freshwater was reminding people that psychology is a western construct. You need to account for someone's culture when trying to help them, accept that their reality is real.”
