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      Archie Moore, Australian Artist, Wins Top Prize at Venice Biennale

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      Moore, an Indigenous Australian artist, won the Golden Lion for “kith and kin,” which draws on what he says is 65,000 years of family history.Archie Moore, an Indigenous Australian artist who has created an installation including a monumental family tree, won the top prize at the Venice Biennale on Saturday.Moore, 54, took the Golden Lion, the prize for the best national participation at the Biennale, the world’s oldest and most high-profile international art exhibition. He beat out artists representing 85 other countries to become the first Australian winner.For his installation, “kith and kin,” Moore has drawn a family tree in chalk on the walls and ceiling of the Australia Pavilion. The web of names encompasses 3,484 people and Moore says it stretches back 65,000 years, although he has smudged some details so that they are hard to read. In the center of the room is a huge table covered with stacks of government documents relating to the deaths of Indigenous Australians in police custody.Julia Bryan-Wilson, the chair of this year’s Biennale jury and a professor of contemporary art at Columbia University, said during the prize announcement that Moore’s installation was “a mournful archive” that “stands out for its strong aesthetic, its lyricism and its invocation of shared loss for occluded pasts.”Before Saturday’s ceremony, which was streamed online, Moore’s pavilion had already been a critical hit. Julia Halperin, writing in The New York Times, said that the installation was one no Biennale visitor should miss. Moore’s hand-drawn family tree was so dense at points it was impossible to make out the names. “The implication is clear: expand the aperture wide enough and we are all related,” Halperin said. “It’s a concept that could feel trite if it weren’t rendered with such poetry, rigor and specificity.”A detail of Moore’s family tree in the pavilion.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Australia, a Validation of Sorts for Brittany Higgins

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      More than three years after Brittany Higgins went public with her claim of rape, her case reached a conclusion of sorts.When a young former government employee said on national television in 2021 that she had been sexually assaulted in Australia’s Parliament two years earlier, it shocked the nation and unleashed a wave of anger aimed at the country’s insular, male-dominated political establishment.The employee, Brittany Higgins accused her colleague Bruce Lehrmann of raping her when she was inebriated, and said that she felt pressure from the government at the time not to report the assault. She became a figurehead for a reckoning on women’s rights that ultimately contributed to the electoral ousting of Australia’s conservative national government. But for years, there was no legal conclusion to the case.On Monday, it was finally — somewhat — settled, in a roundabout way.Mr. Lehrmann lost a civil defamation suit that he had filed against the television station that first broadcast Ms. Higgins’ account, with the judge ruling that based on the available evidence, it was more likely than not that Mr. Lehrmann had raped her.The proceedings did not take place in a criminal court, and the offense did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, the standard of proof was a balance of probabilities — a legal term meaning whether something is more likely than not to have occurred.Still, for many, this was a long-awaited validation for Ms. Higgins.“Something resembling justice has been done,” said Sarah Maddison, a political science professor at the University of Melbourne.Justice Michael Lee of the Australian Federal Court in Sydney determined on Monday that it was more likely than not that Ms. Higgins had been inebriated, unaware of her surroundings, and lying still “like a log” while Mr. Lehrmann assaulted her. The judge found that Mr. Lehrmann had been “hellbent” on having sex with her, disregarding whether she had the capacity to consent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Witnesses to Sydney Mall Stabbing Describe Harrowing Scenes

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      Witnesses to the stabbings at a mall in a Sydney, Australia, on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.Some shoppers hid inside as alarms blared. Others ran out, screaming as they passed by bodies on the floor.When Gavin Lockhart, 37, saw people running as he sat inside a coffee shop at the mall, there was a moment of confusion. “Is it a celebrity?” he first thought. “Is it because of a gunman?”Then he fled when he heard, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!”He followed the coffee shop’s owner, Michael Dunkley, 57, who also brought his wife, who was cooking, and two baristas into a staffroom where they could lock the door. Mr. Dunkley said afterward that just one thought was in his mind when the screaming began: “I have to get my wife and staff to safety.”Mr. Dunkley left the room to try to chase down the attacker, whom he described as a thin man with a beard and short hair, wearing dark green pants and a green jersey.Then, Mr. Dunkley recounted, he saw a police officer attempt to stop the assailant. When the officer told the man to put his knife down, he lunged toward her with his weapon, the cafe owner said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mall Attack Was Australia’s Worst Mass Violence in Years

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      The stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping center that left at least six people dead on Saturday was Australia’s worst act of mass violence since 2017, when a driver killed six people by deliberately plowing his car into pedestrians in Melbourne.In a country where mass stabbings and shootings are rare — in part because of strict gun laws — the latest attack has horrified Australians.Here is how it compares to other acts of mass violence in the country in recent years:June 2019: A gunman killed four people in a shooting spree across the main business district of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.January 2017: A man with drug-induced psychosis drove his car into a busy shopping street in Melbourne’s central business district, killing six people and injuring more than 20 others.December 2014: A gunman held 18 people hostage in a cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The standoff with the police, which lasted 16 hours, ended with the deaths of two hostages and the gunman. The authorities later labeled it a terrorist attack.November 2011: Fourteen people died when a nurse set fire to a nursing home in Quakers Hill, near Sydney.April 1996: Australia’s worst mass shooting occurred at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a gunman killed 35 people. Just weeks later, the country’s leaders brought in strict gun laws. More

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      A Reporter With a Fear of Snakes Tags Along With a Snake Catcher

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      To write about the increase in snake encounters in Australia, a journalist had to get hands-on with the slithering reptiles.The carpet python in the car didn’t seem angry, but it was certainly curious.The snake, thankfully, was contained inside a navy blue canvas bag, its temporary enclosure until a snake catcher and I arrived at its release location. It lifted its body, exploring the space. I watched it push the fabric this way and that from inside the bag, as if performing a peculiar puppet show.It would have been funny, had I not felt slightly sick.When I pitched an article about snake catchers on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, where snake encounters are becoming increasingly common as the climate changes, I had somehow forgotten that reporting on snakes would require spending quite a bit of time with them.I spent part of my childhood in Singapore, where snakes were an infrequent, but still present, part of our lives. We once found a cobra snoozing behind a framed picture that was propped up against the wall. News of neighbors’ missing pets sometimes preceded sightings of suspiciously well-fed pythons. I still remember the anxiety that followed a sudden, stealthy swish of long grass. And then there’s a gruesome memory of an irate snake fighting one of our cats, Fudge. (Fudge made it out unscathed. I can’t say the same for the snake.)For a time, I steered clear of walking on grass and even dark-colored carpets.When I was about 12, my family relocated to New Zealand, which has no native land snakes. I mostly forgot about them. Recently, I was able to watch videos of snake catchers without flinching, and I wondered whether I had shaken my fear. But in February, while on vacation in Thailand, I came across a dead snake smeared across the asphalt. It felt like my heart had leaped into my mouth.A venomous red-bellied black snake being released in bush land on the Sunshine Coast.David Maurice Smith for The New York TimesI realized that if I were to avoid professional embarrassment to report my article, I needed the help of an expert. A few days before flying to the Sunshine Coast, a subtropical area in the Australian state of Queensland home to many snake species, I spoke to Shawn Goldberg, a psychologist in Melbourne who has worked with people who have phobias.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      News Outlet Blames Photoshop for Making Australian Lawmaker’s Photo More Revealing

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      9News apologized for the edited photo of the member of state Parliament, Georgie Purcell, which it said was a result of “automation by Photoshop.”A lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria sat down to watch the nightly news on Monday, expecting to see herself featured as a prominent opponent of duck hunting.But the member of Victoria’s Parliament, Georgie Purcell, noticed that in one photo used on 9News, the tattoos on her midriff were missing.“I saw the image come up on the screen and I thought, ‘That’s really odd,’ because my stomach is heavily tattooed,” Ms. Purcell said on Wednesday.She compared the image with the original photo, which was taken last year by a local newspaper and realized that not only had her tattoos been removed, but that her dress had been turned into a crop top and skirt. “They’ve given me chiseled abs and a boob job,” she said. “I felt really, really uncomfortable about it.”After Ms. Purcell pointed out the modifications on the social media site X, female lawmakers and journalists labeled the editing as sexist and objectifying.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Indigenous Australians Say ‘Reconciliation Is Dead’ After ‘Voice’

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      The rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is likely to lead to an irreversible shift in the nation’s relationship with its first peoples.The result of the referendum was decisive, and at the same time, divisive. It bruised Indigenous Australians who for decades had hoped that a conciliatory approach would help right the wrongs of the country’s colonial history. So, the nation’s leader made a plea.“This moment of disagreement does not define us. And it will not divide us,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, visibly emotional, said this month, after voters in every state and territory except one rejected the constitutional referendum. “This is not the end for reconciliation.”But that was a difficult proposition to accept for Indigenous leaders who saw the result as a vote for a tortured status quo in a country that is already far behind other colonized nations in reconciling with its first inhabitants.The rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament — a proposed advisory body — was widely anticipated. Nonetheless, it was a severe blow for Indigenous people, who largely voted for it. With many perceiving it as the denial of their past and their place in the nation, the defeat of the Voice not only threatens to derail any further reconciliation but could also unleash a much more confrontational approach to Indigenous rights and race relations in Australia.Supporters of the “Yes” campaign in Sydney this month.Jenny Evans/Getty Images“Reconciliation only works if you have two parties who are willing to make up after a fight and move on,” said Larissa Baldwin Roberts, an Aboriginal woman and the chief executive of GetUp, a progressive activist group that campaigned for the Voice. “But if one party doesn’t acknowledge that there is even a fight here that’s happened, how can you reconcile?”She added, “We need to move into a space that is maybe not as polite, maybe not as conciliatory and be unafraid to tell people the warts-and-all story around how dispossession and colonization continues in this country.”For Marcia Langton, one of the country’s most prominent Aboriginal leaders, the consequences were obvious. “It’s very clear that reconciliation is dead,” she said.For decades, Ms. Langton and others championed a moderate approach to Indigenous rights. They worked within Australia’s reconciliation movement, a broadly bipartisan government approach aimed at healing and strengthening the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.One visible sign of this effort is the flying of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags next to the Australian flag in most official settings. Many public events start with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land the event is held on.But activists have long said that these displays can be tokenistic, and the focus on unity can come at the expense of agitating for Indigenous rights. And the referendum has shown that wide schisms still persist in how Australia views its colonial past — as benign or harmful — and over whether the entrenched disadvantages of Indigenous communities result from colonization or people’s own actions, culture and ways of life.“We are very much behind other countries in their relationships with Indigenous people,” said Hannah McGlade, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, who is an Aboriginal woman and a supporter of the Voice.A rally against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Melbourne last month.James Ross/Australian Associated Press, via ReutersIn countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway, the Sami people have a legal right to be consulted on issues affecting their communities. Canada has recognized First Nations treaty rights in its Constitution, and New Zealand signed a treaty with the Maori in the late 1800s.British colonialists considered Australia uninhabited, and the country has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people, who are not mentioned in its Constitution, which was produced more than a century after Captain Cook first reached the continent.To rectify this, more than 250 Indigenous leaders came together in 2017 and devised a three-step plan for forgiveness and healing. The first was a Voice, enshrined in the Constitution. A treaty with the government would follow, and finally, a process of “truth-telling” to uncover Australia’s colonial history.But some Indigenous activists argued that forgiveness shouldn’t be on offer. And other Australians were rankled by the suggestion that there was something to forgive.“The English did nothing wrong. Neither did any of you,” one author wrote for a national newspaper earlier this year. Another columnist argued that any compensation paid to Aboriginal people now would be “by people today who didn’t do the harm, to people today who didn’t suffer it.”Some Aboriginal leaders opposed the Voice but by and large, polls showed, the Indigenous community was in favor of it.Aboriginal residents in Jimbalakudunj in a remote part of Western Australia.Tamati Smith for The New York TimesBut for many opponents, “this was cast as a referendum about race, division and racial privileges, special privileges — it really failed to grasp or respect Indigenous people’s rights and the shocking history of colonization, which has devastating impacts to this day,” Ms. McGlade said.For decades, the country has gone back and forth on how improve Indigenous outcomes. The community has a life expectancy that is eight years shorter than the national average, and suffers rates of suicide and incarceration many times higher than the general population.Although many Indigenous leaders and experts have said the repercussions of and trauma from colonization are the root cause of this disadvantage, governments — particularly conservative ones — have been resistant to this idea. The remedy, some former prime ministers have said, is to integrate remote Indigenous communities with mainstream society.During the debate about the Voice, this view was echoed by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Aboriginal senator who became a prominent opponent of the Voice, and who said that Indigenous people faced “no ongoing negative impacts of colonization.” Aboriginal communities experienced violence “not because of the effects of colonization, but because it’s expected that young girls are married off to older husbands in arranged marriages,” she added.Such arguments helped galvanize opposition to the Voice.“A significant chunk of the Australian public has been able to find legitimacy in that opposition to not to come to terms with that past,” said Paul Strangio, a professor of politics at Monash University.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, delivering statements on the referendum results in Canberra this month.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockIn April, the main opposition party, the conservative Liberal Party, said it would vote against the Voice, all but sealing its fate — constitutional change has never succeeded in Australia without bipartisan support. Its leaders argued that proposal was divisive, lacked detail, could give advice on everything from taxes to defense policy, and was a politically correct vanity project from Mr. Albanese, the prime minister, that distracted people from issues like the high cost of living.This stance, Mr. Strangio said, appealed to a sense of “economic and cultural insecurity” among many voters, particularly those outside big cities.The particulars of the Voice, Mr. Albanese and other supporters said, would have been hashed out by Parliament if it succeeded. But the lack of concrete details gave rise to misinformation and disinformation, the sheer volume of which shocked experts. In such a climate, any pursuit of more forceful politics by Indigenous activists may bring a more combative response. On Friday, Tony Abbott, a former conservative prime minister, said Australia should stop flying the Aboriginal flag next to the national flag, and acknowledging traditional place names.The defeat of the Voice, Mr. Strangio said, is likely to emboldened the conservative opposition to continue with “the politics of disenchantment, of cultural and economic insecurity, that taps into that grievance politics.”He added, “We are in for a polarized, divisive debate.” More

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      Australia Likely to Reject Indigenous ‘Voice’ Referendum

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      Sitting on the banks of the Fitzroy River in remote Western Australia, watching a plume of smoke swirling into the air from a distant wildfire, the Aboriginal elder lamented how his parents’ generation worked for sugar, flour and tea, not wages, and his community now relies heavily on welfare after employment programs were withdrawn by the government.But, “we’ve got something coming,” said Hector Angus Hobbs, 67, who is a member of the Walmajarri tribe. “We’re going to win.”His unwavering optimism will be tested on Saturday, when the nation votes on a referendum that would give Indigenous Australians a voice in Parliament in the form of an advisory body.The proposal, polls show, is broadly supported by the country’s Indigenous people, who make up less than 4 percent of the nation’s population. Many of them see it as a sign of Australia taking a step to do right by them after centuries of abuse and neglect. Mr. Hobbs and many of his neighbors in the town of Fitzroy Crossing believe it would help with everything from solving everyday issues like repairs for houses, to moving the needle on weighty aspirations like reparations.In reality, the measure, known as the Voice, is much more modest, making some of these expectations rather lofty.Joe Ross, a community leader in Fitzroy Crossing from the Bunuba tribe, untangling a fishing line from a crocodile in Danggu Geike Gorge, Australia. For him, the debate had “shown the real underbelly of this country.”The Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in Fitzroy Crossing, Australia, an Aboriginal-owned art center representing the five language groups of the Fitzroy Valley.At the same time, it has given rise to unrealistic fears — like of homeowners being forced to return their land to Indigenous people — that have galvanized opposition to the Voice. And with many Australians perceiving the referendum as racially divisive, polling suggests its defeat is likely.“We now know where we sit,” said Joe Ross, a community leader in Fitzroy Crossing from the Bunuba tribe, adding that the debate had “shown the real underbelly of this country.”The coming vote has surfaced uncomfortable, unsettled questions about Australia’s past, present and future. Does it recognize its colonial history as benign or harmful? How does it understand the disadvantages facing Indigenous people? Should the hundreds of Indigenous tribes that first inhabited the continent have the right to decide if and how to meld their traditions and cultures into modern society, or just be encouraged to assimilate?The Voice was first conceived by Indigenous leaders as a response to entrenched and growing Indigenous disadvantage. Life expectancy in the community is eight years below the general population, while rates of suicide and incarceration are far higher than the national average. The issues are most severe in remote communities, where some Aboriginal people live in order to maintain their connection to their traditional lands.Experts and Indigenous leaders say that by and large Australians are aware of this disadvantage but generally do not understand it. Many in the country, they said, see these problems as failures of Indigenous people and communities, rather than of the systems that govern them.In Fitzroy Crossing, a town surrounded by over 30 small Aboriginal settlements, the historical impact of colonization feels immediate, as Aboriginal people in the region were hunted and killed by settlers well into the 1900s.A horse standing on the veranda of a house to escape the hot sun in Jimbalakudunj.It is something that Australians feel a sense of collective but unexamined shame over, said Julianne Schultz, the author of “The Idea of Australia” and a professor at Griffith University.“The genesis for the shame is when people look at it and think ‘We’ve got some responsibility for why this has happened — but we can’t quite figure it out,’” she said. “And how do you hide that? Well, you blame the victim.”The Voice, which would include constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, also has been criticized as toothless because it would have no power to create or veto government decisions or policies. But this was by design, say Indigenous leaders involved in the creation of the measure, who had hoped that it would be a benign enough to be acceptable to the Australian public. One of those leaders, Marcia Langton, described it as an offer from Aboriginal people to the broader public, to heal the wounds of colonization and “end the postcolonial politics of blame and guilt.” But with Voice expected to fail, she wrote, “The nation has been poisoned. There is no fix for this terrible outcome.”Part of why people in Fitzroy Crossing had such high hopes for the Voice was because many remember how much better things were under a previous policy. From 1990 to 2005, an elected body, the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission, gave advice to the government and ran programs and services for Indigenous communities.Ree-alla Oscar looking after her niece in their camper van in the Wunaamin-Miliwundi Ranges, a temporary refuge after their house was destroyed during floods earlier this year.Wildfires across the Fitzroy River.“Aboriginal people had their own governments,” recalled Emily Carter, the chief executive of the local women’s resource center, who is from the Gooniyandi tribe. “They were able to look after their own finances. They made rules about what work people did in their communities.”That body was abolished by a prime minister who said that the future of Indigenous people “lies in being part of the mainstream of this country,” setting the tone for the next two decades of policy.Since then, residents say, that autonomy has been taken away, community-controlled employment programs have been replaced with what is effectively a welfare alternative, and services have been withdrawn. Indigenous leaders argue this system, under which policies are decided, enacted and withdrawn in their communities at what they see as whims of governments and ideologies, continues the disempowerment and trauma that Indigenous communities have experienced since colonization. That sense of powerlessness shows up in the form of social harms like suicide, domestic violence, and addiction to drugs and alcohol, they say.“What has led to our disadvantage has been our exclusion in the development of the nation state,” said June Oscar, who is the Australian Human Rights Commission’s head for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice program, and who lives near Fitzroy Crossing.Students in front of the Yiramalay Studio School, near Fitzroy Crossing. Students come from Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia to attend the boarding school, which seeks to improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal students.June Oscar, who heads the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice program, says that a history of powerlessness and exclusion lies behind Aboriginal disadvantage. Her home was damaged in a flood, and she is relying on canned food supplies until she has a proper kitchen again.In Fitzroy Crossing, a town surrounded by over 30 small Aboriginal settlements, the historical impact of colonization feels immediate. Aboriginal people in the region were hunted and killed by settlers well into the 1900s. For protection, many fled to stations, or ranches, where they were protected by the government, but also stripped of their culture.There, they worked, usually for little or no pay, and were often forbidden to speak their native languages.“Our people built stations, worked hard — only for flour, tea, sugar,” said Mr. Hobbs, the Walmajarri elder.In the 1960s, amid a push for Aboriginal workers to be paid the same as white ones, many were kicked off the stations by owners who didn’t want the extra cost. They settled in and around Fitzroy Crossing, creating the beginnings of the town that exists today.On a recent weekday, as the temperature rose to over 100 degrees, Eva Nargoodah, 65, sitting outside her home in the small community of Jimbalakudunj, about 60 miles from Fitzroy Crossing, explained how sometimes, the high level of chlorine in the water supply caused the residents to experience rashes, watery eyes and sore throats. Other times, it was filled with so much salt, it formed a thick layer on top.Ms. Nargoodah at home looking at family photos. She explained how sometimes, the amount of chlorine in the water supply in the area gave the residents sore throats, watery eyes and rashes.Tamati Smith for The New York TimesA leak from a solar heating system under the house of one of Ms. Nargoodah’s sons. Aboriginal residents of the area live in government-subsidized housing, where repairs have become frustratingly slow in recent years. She said she had been waiting for years for repairs to her home, including filling in holes through which snakes can crawl in. Such maintenance used to be handled by the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission, but now the process is much slower. And she spoke of her father, who had been part of what is known as the Stolen Generation: Indigenous people forcibly removed from their families and culture in an effort to assimilate them into Western society.“They need to give us something back,” she said. If the Voice referendum passed, she was optimistic that “we’ve got the power.”An Indigenous family fishing by the river in Danggu Geike Gorge. More