Traditional dancing lessons maintain the link between young Tiwi and their ancestors
Twenty years ago, when Heide Smith began photographing the Tiwi islanders, some of the older folk would say, "Better not photograph me, I might die soon," she recalls. For the Tiwi, as for most other Australian Aborigines, uttering a newly dead person's name or looking at their image is forbidden.
When German-born Smith first visited the Tiwi's home islands of Bathurst and Melville, north of Darwin, most people were wary of outsiders and suspicious of the camera. But the photos she took on that brief stay in 1987 changed the Tiwi...
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