Weaving Language Back to Country: When the Archive is Silent
By Boneta-Marie Mabo | 17 April 2026
During my residency at the State Library of Queensland, I began a project called Weaving
Language Back to Country. The idea was simple: bring weaving and Mulgu language together
as a way to reconnect Manbarra people living away from Country. I planned to draw on the
State Library’s Indigenous language collections, word lists, place names, and historical records
and embed those words into woven artworks and community storytelling.
But something unexpected happened.
When I started searching the archive for Mulgu and other Manbarra languages material, there
was almost nothing there.
That absence wasn’t a research inconvenience. It was the real story.
When a Language is missing from the archive
Manbarra languages are not heavily documented in institutional collections. The archive is
largely silent.
That silence is not accidental. It sits directly inside so-called Queensland’s colonial history.
Manbarra Country, one of the islands now known as Palm Island was turned into a government
reserve, mission, and effectively an open-air prison. Children were placed in dormitories where
culture, language, and family life were deliberately disrupted. Speaking language was often
forbidden.
Over time, this produced exactly what we see in the archive today: absence.
Not because the language didn’t exist. Because colonial systems tried to make sure it wouldn’t
continue.
Returning to Country
Instead of stopping the project, the residency shifted direction.
I returned to Palm Island and began conversations with my Elders about language revitalisation
and how documentation might begin again under community authority. Those discussions were
clear: language work must start with Elders, Country, and governance, not institutions.
Language is not just vocabulary. It carries law, memory, kinship, and responsibility to place.
Rebuilding it has to follow the same pathways.
Making Work at The Edge
While at The Edge at SLQ, I began producing experimental works responding to this discovery.
Using the embroidery machine and laser cutter then woodblock printing, I want to create visual pieces that embed the histories shaping this absence: dormitories, incarceration, and the economic systems that underpinned colonial control.
The work draws directly from the 1865 Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act, one of Queensland’s earliest laws targeting children deemed “neglected”, “uncontrollable” and “criminal”. In practice, it allowed Aboriginal children to be removed from families and placed into institutional systems that resemble prisons for simply being Aboriginal.
This discovery raises a larger question: what happens to Country when children are disconnected from language?
That question leads into the next part of the story.
Boneta-Marie's project, "Weaving back to Country" is a part of the Indigenous Languages creative arts residency program. To learn more about Boneta-Marie's project, and the other creative arts residents you can continuting reading here.
Boneta-Marie Mabo, 2025 recipient of the the Inidgenous languages Creative Artist Residency.
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