This socially engaged, conceptual artwork first shown as an intervention on car parking spaces in Naarm proposes a pragmatic idea, one that is grounded in discourse on how contemporary public commemorative art can activate collective memory: what if settler colonial cities situated on stolen Indigenous land began to set aside reserved, free of charge, car parking for First Peoples? Not only does this proposition practically enable First Peoples to access parking—including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Traditional Owners and Elders invited to perform Welcome to Country ceremonies on their own lands—it also acts as a material land acknowledgement and reminder of First Peoples’ unceded sovereignty, while speculating on the forms that redress and reparation for colonial injustices might take.

As a practical intervention to the Australian settler city, it provides both visibility, acknowledgment of status and real benefits to Elders and First Peoples, while also appealing to the responsibility of settler communities and institutions to cede space and land in recognition of colonisation’s destructive impacts. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this work has been adapted for First Peoples priority seating in Kampung Attap public space and in the gallery. Placed in relation to Ange Jeffery’s Colonial Land Grab, it prompts conversations on who First Peoples are in both Australia and elsewhere, their material presences and whether it is a productive term in the Southeast Asian context.