Charmaine Green

SHORT VERSION – BOOKLET (45 – 50 WORDS):

A Wajarri, Badimaya and Wilunyu woman of the Yamaji Nation, Charmaine is an author, poet, artist, storyteller, and  social science researcher. She has written five books, won several awards including the prestigious Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, and her poetry is studied as part of school curricula.   

EXHIBITION STORYBOARDS & WEBSITE (75 – 108 WORDS):

Born in Eradu, Charmaine is a proud Wajarri, Badimaya and Wilunyu woman of the Yamaji Nation. A visual artist, author, poet, storyteller and social science researcher, she shares her cultural knowledge in many different spheres.  Charmaine has written five books, won several awards including the prestigious Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, and her poetry is studied as part of primary and school curriculum.    Involved with the Yamaji Art Centre in Geraldton for over 22 years, she is currently their Chairperson.  Charmaine was awarded  the 2022  Magabala Fellowship 2022 and 2023 Red Room Poetry Fellowship  and is a member of the national  First Nation Aboriginal Writers Network . 

LONG VERSION (250-500  WORDS):

Charmaine is a proud Wajarri, Badimaya and Wilunyu woman of the Yamaji Nation , Midwest Murchison  Western Australia.  She was born at Eradu railway siding alongside the Greenough River ,  located between Geraldton and Mullewa. She was raised  in Mullewa with her large family and many extended relatives .

A visual artist, author, poet, storyteller, social science researcher, and academic, she shares her cultural knowledge in many different spheres.  Charmaine has written five books, won several awards including the prestigious Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, and her poetry is studied as part of primary & school curriculum. Charmaine was awarded the 2022 Magabala Fellowship and 2023 Red Room Poetry Fellowship  with her project concept ‘Jugarnu Wangga Migamanmanha’ (Older woman making talk).  Charmaine explored the process of decolonising the western cento  poetry methodology by working through her poetry written in the past 36 years .  In this process Charmaine took lines from her own selected  poems to create a suite of 6 new poems  informed by  a Yamaji way of knowing and being . Decolonising this fellowship literature experience encompassed a Yamaji holistic approach of understanding that ‘everything is connected ‘ and reminding outsiders that ‘everything is connected’ in the process of poetry creation.  The decolonising aspects included privileging Yamaji cultural knowledge ( beliefs and values), taking a writing family member on the residency to Bundanon , requesting a ‘Welcome to Country ‘ upon arrival , applying the cento poetry method using her own poems and holding the poems together by weaving Yamaji ancestral language – Wajarri and Badimaya – into the new suite of poems.

Her research has been published in the field of Clinical Yarning , Aboriginal Housing, Aboriginal homelessness , Decolonising Australian community development to name a few . As a visual artist her  paintings and collages are displayed in exhibitions and museums, and she has contributed to significant Yamaji artistic instillations and creations.

In 2022 Charmaine  completed her PhD, titled Ngatha Wangga (I Talk). Little Yamaji Woman: Big Yamaji Narratives. Her research was a female Aboriginal emotive autoethnography and included art and poetry woven together by yarning and narrative with the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding of Aboriginal identity, relationships with family, Yamaji culture, and society in Midwest Western Australia .   Through this, Charmaine explored data sovereignty, culture traumatology, silences, evocative objects, examining colonised spaces including the Cultural Interface to challenge the ‘nullius’ concepts controlling and disrupting Aboriginal knowledges. 

Involved with the Yamaji Art Centre in Geraldton for over 22 years, she is currently their Chairperson and has had over 30  years’ experience in Art Administration on various art boards in Western Australia and nationally. A highlight was when Charmaine was a speaker  at the 2009 first Indigenous Astronomy Symposium in Canberra and has contributed to the conceptual design of exhibitions “Ilgarijiri: Things Belong To The Sky” and ‘Shared Sky”.

Charmaine is devoted to serving the community and does this creatively through an evidence-based lens, with honesty, humility, courage, and deep strength. Charmaine lives in Geraldton.