Ms Cheetham is a national leader in the promulgation of how the Indigenous art forms play an integral part in Australian nation’s understanding of its culture. In an interview in 2013, Ms Deborah Cheetham simply explained the artistic characteristics of Australia’s Indigenous culture, and connects the historic facts with the modern day success stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people completing university degrees in the Arts.
Aboriginal people have been singing their stories for tens of thousands of years, … for Aboriginal people, the arts have never been a luxury, an indulgence, an elective that you take in year 7 and drop in year 10, while you get on with more important studies, the Arts were a way of knowing the world that you live in and giving meaning to everything in it. For the longest continuing culture in the world the visual and performing Arts were the way, the means by which the knowledge was transferred from generation to generation for more than a 1000 generations. I think that the sung story, the danced story, all of the elements that combine to make great opera are exactly the elements that combine to sustain culture down the generations for Aboriginal people. I think it’s a way of knowing that Aboriginal people have embedded within them, I think perhaps, a way of knowing that everyone has embedded within them, but for Aboriginal people it’s so much closer to the surface because we have been living and knowing this way for so long.489
[We are currently witnessing ] a quiet revolution where Aboriginal people reconnect with the visual and performing arts as a way of knowing, and that this brings an industry into the community…. Giving the Aboriginal people in small communities a choice, an opportunity to do something their ancestors have done for 1000s of generations.
……..empowered through a knowledge system that’s proven for say 70,000 years or more, what a fabulous way of releasing people from the cycle of welfare, and the systematic depression of Aboriginal people.490
……the Arts are the way that we define ourselves, the Arts are the way that we pass on all knowledge, so this devaluing of the Arts is just another way that Aboriginal people are disadvantaged, , …491
In her welcoming speech at the OUR MUSIC ‘14, Ms Cheetham spoke about her years as a student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She remarked that she would not have had a career as a soloist, composer and director if she hadn’t studied at the tertiary level. She has composed an opera ‘Pecan Summer’ , she has had an international career as an opera soprano, and she directs her Opera company ‘Short Black Opera’. Ms Cheetham was directing her remarks to the Indigenous participants of OUR MUSIC, saying ‘do it! Go for the highest level of education in music.’ Ms Cheetham also spoke of the innate artistic knowing an Indigenous person has inherited, and suggested that the tertiary education in the Arts will assist the unlocking of that cultural knowing. Ms Cheetham made a tremendous contribution of Indigenous cultural and musical education at OUR MUSIC ‘14. She encouraged me to create a mission statement for the event, which is illustrated below. Since 2014, the Sydney Consevatorium has posted a more general mission statement stating OUR MUSIC is an annual event. Ms Cheetham’s involvement with OUR MUSIC has facilitated its inclusion in the Conservatorium’s annual event calendar.
489 Deborah Cheetham speaks on LNL ABC 24th February 2014. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-life-of-deborah-cheetham2c-indigenous-soprano/4663034
490 2Cheetham speaks on LNL ABC
491 Yorta Yorta soprano Deborah Cheetham, interview AWAYE, ABC , RN 17th August 2013.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/heard-it-on-the-radio3a-deborah-cheetham/4851296
