• Source: Ellen Trevorrow

Ellen Trevorrow is an internationally known Australian Ngarrindjeri weaver and authority on Ngarrindjeri culture. She is the head of the Camp Coorong Centre for Cultural Education and Race Relations and also serves on the board of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority.




Early life and education


Born in 1955 in Point McLeay, now Raukkan, South Australia, Ellen Trevorrow was raised outside Tailem Bend by her grandmother, Ellen Brown, and attended primary school there. When she was 11 she moved to Bonney Reserve near Meningie and completed high school there. At the age of 14 she met her future husband, Tom Trevorrow, and they were married in 1976. They had seven children. Her husband, who had become the chairman of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority in 2011, died in 2013.
In 1982 she attended a workshop on Ngarrindjeri weaving led by Aunty Dorrie Kartinyeri, an elder from Point McLeay (now Raukkan). There was a long tradition of Ngarrindjeri weaving by women, originally for their own use, later for sale, but the practice had almost been lost. Trevorrow and another workshop attendee, Yvonne Koolmatrie, have devoted their lives to reviving the tradition to preserve Ngarrindjeri culture.




Work


Trevorrow is especially known for her "Sister" baskets, a type of basket that she revived after viewing an example in the Camp Coorong museum made by her husband's great-grandmother. In recent years she has undertaken a number of large weaving projects for museums, such as Pondi, the giant cod that created the Murray River in Ngarrindjeri legend, done for the South Australian Maritime Museum in 2022.
Her works are held by many museums, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Trevorrow was a contributor to Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (ed. John Allen Grim, 2001).
She was profiled in an episode of the 2016 television series about Ngarrindjeri culture, Everything is Connected, and appeared in the 2013 documentary Ringbalin: Breaking the Drought, about a pilgrimage by Aboriginal elders to summon rain.




References

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