Noongar artist Denzel Coyne on how learning to carve wood helped him heal

Australia Broadcast Center

01-06-2025

Denzel Coyne shows his young daughter how to throw a kylie, or boomerang, he made from jarrah wood.
A descendent of a Stolen Generation survivor, the Noongar man with connections to Menang and Goreng Country started learning to make traditional Indigenous artefacts for the first time as an adult.
Once he had begun, there was no looking back.
On Menang Country in Albany, Western Australia, Coyne spends his days carving, sanding and polishing everything from shields to spears.
"It helps me escape my past traumas, it helps me heal."
It's a sense of healing, through reclaiming culture, he wants to offer other descendants of Stolen Generation survivors, as well as people who have experienced similar struggles.
For Coyne, those struggles began with deeply painful early years.
"At a very young age, I lost my mother, tragically. Someone murdered her when I was seven years old," he said.
"I struggled without having my mother there to nurture and show me love.
"From there, my dad basically raised the four of us by himself; me and my siblings.
"Dad was part of a Stolen Generation and unintendedly, a lot of the Stolen Generations traumatic events and life's challenges and stuff like that was sort of passed down in a lot of ways."
His dad later went to prison, Coyne said, and he was moved to a house where he was abused.
As an adult, he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, doing several stints in jail.
But when he became a father, his outlook began to change.
"I think I needed a daughter to change my direction in life, really help me look at life in a whole new light."
He was still in the grips of addiction, when Denzel said he was given an ultimatum.
"Go to rehab, or I wouldn't be able to take my daughter home," he said.
"That day was one of the hardest days of my life. I knew what I had to do."
It was during the rehab program that an Aboriginal instructor began teaching Coyne, and the rest of the men's group, how to carve artefacts.
"He wanted us to do some tactile learning, something that we can take away from that program, and to help uplift us when we're in a sad time," Coyne said.
"Maybe if we didn't have that, I might not have stuck around, I just feel it was so important."
On the other side of rehab, Coyne has started his own business, Born Wirn, and is carving out commissions for traditional artefacts.
"It means tree spirit," he said.
"I bring out the beauty and the grain of the wood and the grain represents the years of the wood, his spirit."
Coyne is continuing to refine his skills, borrowing artefacts to study, and calling friends to share what knowledge they can.
He strongly believes he is being guided by his ancestors as he learns.
Coyne has also encouraged his partner, Noongar woman Penelope Williams, to take up the women's side of the business.
For the most part, she was teaching herself.
"He couldn't show me because it was woman side of things, but I think he trusted that I would be able to do it, so I got out there and then I started making them," Williams said.
"I was in juvenile detention and that's where I learnt woodwork and wood burning, that has really helped me starting this.
"When I first made my first one, I was so proud, I couldn't believe that I did it.
"And the connection that I feel to my culture while making them, it's hard to describe, but I know making this stuff has helped heal my spirit."
The process has prompted the couple to teach their hard-earned skills, holding workshops and talks with school groups and even at a hospital.
"I think we could help lots of people, you know, just heal," Williams said.
"We're giving them knowledge and culture that was taken."
For Coyne, the work keeps him concentrated and connected.
"I feel connected, spiritually, mentally," he said.
"The whole process, it just gives me so much."