Minjungbal Aboriginal Museum

Minjungbal Aboriginal Cultural Centre: Museum, shop and historic bora ring site.

In honour of Aunty Margaret Kay: a great leader, a visionary and our hidden treasure.

The Museum is located in South Tweed, Australia, on the far north coast of New South Wales. This area has been the traditional home to Aboriginal Peoples for thousands of years. The Museum, originally established by Aboriginal leader Margaret Kay in her home in the 1950's, now holds a collection of unique Aboriginal artifacts and cultural items. the Museum is adjacent to a sacred bora ring and beautiful boardwalk through the mangrove wetlands.

This page is maintained for the Museum by Andrew McIntosh (0448516151), a 'virtual' volunteer for the the Museum based in Melbourne. Andrew is an Australian of European descent who wrks closely with the traditional owners of the area.

This page has been set up in 2011 to honour the 50th Anniversary of the Tweed Heads Historic Site, which was preserved by efforts led by Aunty Margaret Kay, in 1961, at a time when preserving Aboriginal heritage and cultural items was rare.

After living a life of dignity and with incredible pride in community, Aunty Margaret lived just long enough to see her people recognised as citizens under the Commonwealth Constitution: On 27 May 1967 the most successful referendum in Australian history succeeded. Aunty Margaret let go on 5 November that year, after living less than six months as a citizen.

Thanks to her wisdom and foresight, in the face of enormous challenges, the local heritage of the world's oldest continuing cultures, her people, has be preserved for all time. She met the ever growing carpet of houses, concrete and cars head on. And today it is now an island of trees and sacred ground, where her people, and others who have lost their Country, together with all Australians, where you can see, breath and feel the dreaming of these ancient grounds.

Listen to the Country long enough and you will still hear, and feel, the thud of 10, 000 proud warriors who have pounded the earth solid - their impression on the earth, the pounding of their feet, 10, 000 ancient warriors since the beginning of time - has not, and will not, ever leave this Country.

Aunty Margaret left her people, all people, a lesson and legacy - you can read it in the Country she saved for her people. To survive as a people, to preserve culture and Country throughout the dreaming, the ways of her people must change and adapt to survive. But Aunty Margaret's story is not one of abandoning culture, of losing the wisdom of the Elders - its of working with that knowledge, doing what has to be done with new ways of thinking, blending the old and the new ways for the benefit of all.

Aunty Margaret saved the most sacred of place, for all time, by having the strength and courage to see when the old ways had to change, to step on forbidden ground. But that first step, a courageous and heart breaking step, was what saved the old ways.

This is Aunty Margaret's legacy: Blending the wisdom of the Elders with the courage of the young, the old and the new, to adapt and survive together. Aunty Margaret would never had saved the most sacred ground without knowing the old ways. But she could never saved her Country with adapting to new ways.

This is the challenge of our time as well. We have her example. . . . . .