The Tjunta Trail: cross-cultural dramaturgy in Australian place-making

The design of an Indigenous cultural interpretation trail in Western Australia was an opportunity to translate Noongar senses of place into the language of landscape design. The story of “Tjunta, the Spirit Woman” was a catalyst for new conversations between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities––artists, planners, and families––that located metaphorical meanings at the heart of the interpretative strategy. The interdependence of storytelling and mark-making was critical both to the interpretation of story and to the organization of the story in space (the Trail). As a result of the “behind-the-scenes” negotiations, a fourfold sense of place emerged, referred to as a “spiritual dramaturgy,” in which inner spaces of mourning, performative milieux of everyday life, ancestral myths of environmental formation, and heavenly patternings of earthly events were integrated. Revived in this graphic storytelling in landscape is a primary experience of encounter and respect for environmental agency.