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The Guardian
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Seven days, seven docos: Indigenous documentaries to watch this Naidoc Week – and most are free
There are many things to do during Naidoc Week, which runs across the country from 6 July. If you're not up for venturing outside, you can still celebrate the culture and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the comfort of your couch. Here are seven excellent documentaries available to stream. Available on: SBS on Demand David Gulpilil provided extensive narration for this film about his home community of Ramingining in the Northern Territory, making it feel more like an audio-video essay than a standard doco. With his trademark playfulness and pluck, the Yolŋu actor recounts the history of this 'strange town', which was built by white people in a remote, illogical place, with the patronising belief by various governments that they knew what was best for his people. Ramingining becomes a microcosm for broader Indigenous experience and a springboard into various fascinating insights. Read the full review Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Available on: SBS on Demand, rent/buy A dance movie; a celebration of Indigenous Australian art and culture; a history lesson written in light, smoke and spectacle. Wayne Blair and Nel Minchin's spiritually invigorating doco about the titular dance company, which was founded in 1989, touches on many subjects including intergenerational trauma, creative tensions between old and new, and brotherhood. The latter is reflected through the story of David, Russell and Stephen Page, who were crucial figures in the company's development. Read the full review Available on: DocPlay, rent/buy This pacy portrait of the last chapter in AFL star Adam Goodes' football career deploys the style synonymous with the film-maker Asif Kapadia, being entirely composed of archival footage and pre-existing material. It's a viscerally charged, shame-inducing account of Australian racism and an uncomfortable exposé of the media, weaving in queasy moments involving commentators including Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Sam Newman. They may not like how they're represented but it's their words and actions on display, no voiceover or talking heads needed. The film is electrically powerful. Read the full review Available on: DocPlay, rent/buy There are no words to explain the exquisite power of Gurrumul's music, which paradoxically feels both otherworldly and profoundly human: sourced from another cosmos but rising from somewhere deep inside ourselves. Paul Williams did justice to the late singer and guitarist (whose full name was Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu), a blind Gumatj man from Arnhem Land described by Rolling Stone as 'Australia's most important voice'. He gave his approval to the film just three days before he died, in July 2017, though it's far from a standard authorised doco, which are often fawning and unadventurous talking head fests. It's a must-see for fans and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Read the full review Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Available on: Netflix, ABC iview, rent/buy Brenda Matthews, a Wiradjuri woman and member of the Stolen Generations, co-directed this tenderly crafted adaptation of her memoir of the same name. Matthews' first memories were of growing up in a white family before they suddenly disappeared from her life; for a long time she assumed they abandoned her. Matthews sets out to discover the truth, triggering a personal kind of detective story, unpacking mysteries of her past and trying to find closure. Fragmentary introductory images have a dreamy residue and establish an ajar door as a key visual motif, symbolising a desire to see what lies beyond. Read the full review Available on: SBS on Demand, DocPlay Centred around the formation of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, Australia's greatest protest movie has a bright, burning fire in its belly, capturing the indefatigable spirit of resistance and justice synonymous with the protest and the ongoing fight for Aboriginal land rights and sovereignty. Some scenes carry a gooseflesh-raising visceral charge, such as footage of protesters encountering police brutality, which made its way around the globe and, in the words of a National Film and Sound Archive of Australia curator, Liz McNiven, 'fundamentally changed the way the world saw Australia'. Read the full review Available on: SBS on Demand, DocPlay, rent/buy Larissa Behrendt's film about the always compelling and often provocative artist Richard Bell bubbles with liveliness and exuberance, while also being pointed and polemical – suiting its subject to a tee. Bell is not a man who minces his words or pulls punches. 'You can say and do stuff in art and not get arrested,' he says at one point – a line that's inspiring in some senses and dreadfully sad in others. Broken up with short excerpts, performed by Bell, from his manifesto-like 2002 essay Bell's Theorem, the film does a great job feeding the qualities of the artist into the form and shape of the film. Read the full review
ABC News
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Tasma Walton explores a tragic family story in her new novel, I Am Nannertgarrook
Growing up, there was a story actor and author Tasma Walton often heard about one of her Boonwurrung ancestors. According to family legend, Walton's great-great-great grandmother, Nannertgarrook, fell in love with a merchant seaman and ran away with him. But Walton came to realise this story wasn't the full one. It was a "more palatable and romanticised version" of the truth, she tells ABC Radio National's The Book Show. The man wasn't a merchant seaman, and this wasn't a love story. From the late 18th century, seal and whale traders rode the wave of British colonisation, pillaging the oceans in pursuit of their lucrative prey. Operating in treacherous conditions far from home, they relied on First Nations' knowledge to survive. "In the 1830s, [Nannertgarrook] was abducted alongside some of her sister-cousins and their kids by sealers and then taken to the islands off the coast of Tasmania and sold into a sealer slave market," Walton says. Sadly, they weren't the only Aboriginal women subjected to this treatment. "There's a lot written about [the sealers] in the colonial records," Walton says. In I Am Nannertgarrook, Walton's second novel, she tells her ancestor's story, exposing a dark chapter of Australian history. Walton, a Boonwurrung woman born in Geraldton, is a well-known Australian figure, thanks to her roles in television series including Blue Heelers, Mystery Road and The Twelve. She says writing is not all that different to acting: both require world-building and crafting a character's "inner monologue". "It's an extension of the same approach to storytelling," she says. In researching her grandmother's life, Walton uncovered stories of atrocities long obscured by history. "It was very clearly something that we're not taught in schools. We're not shown the true complexity and depth of what was happening and, a lot of the time, we're seeing [history] from a very limited perspective," she says. The fate of Nannertgarrook disproves the widely held belief that slavery has played no part in Australian history. "She was kidnapped by a group of men, she was sold for money to other men and she was their captive to do what they chose with her, which included making her work so that they could earn money off her labour," Walton says. Walton found only a handful of references to her grandmother in colonial-era diaries and journals held in historical archives. To flesh out Nannertgarrook's story in the novel, she relied instead on family stories and contemporary firsthand accounts from other women taken by sealers. Walton wanted to tell the story as a first-person narrative to allow the reader to see the world through Nannertgarrook's eyes. "I don't know what she was thinking. I don't know what she was feeling. I wasn't there. But … I can imagine how it would have felt as a young woman, having to look after kids and try to keep yourself alive," she says. "What I wanted to do with the story was channel a perspective we don't ordinarily see, which is a young black woman … so that, as a reader, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, we can travel in those shoes [and] walk on that songline." As the novel opens, Nannertgarrook is living on Boonwurrung/Woiworung Country on what is now known as the Mornington Peninsula. "When we first meet her, she's happily married and going about women's business as well as her family responsibilities," Walton says. Nannertgarrook and the women and children of her clan are gathered on the shores of the bay, awaiting the seasonal arrival of whales and their calves to the sheltered waters. The whale —betayil in Boonwurrung — is her family's totem and they will celebrate the annual migration and honour Babayin Betayil, the sacred Mother Whale, with a ceremony known as ngargee: "an ebbing and flowing of song and story, dance and drumbeat". As Nannertgarrook lays down by the campfire one night to sleep, her two children close by, the world is as it should be. "All is peaceful. All is perfect," she reflects in the book. Nannertgarrook and the Boonwurrung women were highly skilled skin divers who collected abalone and crayfish from the giant kelp forests on the sea floor. "They were renowned for being able to hold their breath for huge amounts of time," Walton says. "[She's a] Saltwater woman through and through." Walton took great joy in describing the landscape as it would have appeared before colonisation. "Whenever I'm out on Country at different places where there's less city and urban noise, I always imagine what it would have been like," she says. "I really enjoyed writing the first part of the story because I could feel myself in that place, having walked that landscape so much in my lifetime. "Imagining it back in that time when it was fully itself was a lovely experience." Walton evokes a culture rich with ritual and myth that existed in harmony with the natural world. Nannertgarrook's chest is marked with initiation scars, marking her as a mother, and she teaches her children to respect the flora and fauna around their camp, or wilam. As she prepares for ceremony, she uses ochre to paint patterns on her body, signifying her story: "The tracks of koonwarra the swan, waving lines that speak of the sea, the shapes and stories of our Biik." Woven through this portrait of traditional life are the "threads of women's lore" shared with Walton over the years. "It's like a love letter to women's business, sisterhood and motherhood," she says. Tragically, Nannertgarrook, who was also known as Eliza, is taken far from her beloved Country, or Biik. Initially, the sealers take the group to their meeting place on an island off the coast of Tasmania. "In Nannertgarrook's case, she is then taken to Kangaroo Island off South Australia and then onto Bald Island off the coast of Western Australia … [which is] literally [just] a rock that's thrusting up out of the ocean," Walton says. Windswept and desolate, it's an alien world to Nannertgarrook. "She goes from … the Mornington Peninsula, with all of its incredible beaches and giant trees, to a rocky outcrop in a very isolated place on the southern Western Australian coastline." Walton offers few details about Nannertgarrook's abductor, who she never names in the book. She says excising the man from the narrative was a deliberate decision. "That was my way of mirroring the colonial records … [which contain] a lot about the sealers. We know all their names; we know all the terrible things they've done. "What we don't see are the women: their names, their true identities, anything they're experiencing in any depth or context." Walton says there was a "half-hearted attempt" to rescue the group by the colonial government of the day. "My ancestor and the women that are with her are mentioned by a travelling government surveyor to the Aboriginal protectorates at the time in Port Phillip. "And they ignore it. Nobody goes for her. They know they're there. They talk at length about them, but all we get in the colonial records is a cursory nod to them and the fact that they want to come home to Westernport." Nearly 200 years later, Walton wants to restore the women to the historical record. "This is about reclaiming [Nannertgarrook's] voice and identity and those of her sisters and their bubup, their children," she says. I Am Nannertgarrook is published by S&S Bundyi.
ABC News
18-06-2025
- General
- ABC News
Fears for Stolen Generations records as Broome heritage centre closes
Families in Western Australia's north fear they could lose access to the only known records of relatives as the Sisters of St John of God Heritage Centre Broome prepares to close. WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains information about people who have died. In May the Sisters of St John of God (SSJG) announced it would shut the centre's doors in October as the congregation in Australia also winds up. Since 1995, the sisters and volunteers have worked to transform its Broome convent into a museum and archive. While the building is heritage-listed, it remains unclear what will happen to its award-winning exhibition or the thousands of historical photos and documents. Nyikina woman Phillipa Cook said the lack of assurance concerned her and many others. She said the centre contained the history of "just about every Aboriginal family" across the Kimberley — connections the Stolen Generations had threatened to erase. "There's a lot of photographs there that we hadn't seen before." Ms Cook said her grandmother and grandmother's sister were taken from Derby to the Beagle Bay Mission during the Stolen Generations in the early 1900s. "They never saw their mothers again until they were in their 40s," she said. The heritage centre contained photos of her grandmother, and even photos of herself, which allowed them to re-draw a family tree that was intentionally severed. Ms Cook said whenever people who had been fostered visited Broome they also went to the centre. "We bring them up here and we take them there to see the connection between the family," Ms Cook said. Ms Cook said the state government should step in to help keep the centre open. Monash University Indigenous research fellow and Jaru, Kitja and Yawuru woman, Jacinta Walsh, said church archives were not protected under the Commonwealth Archives Act. She said because they were privately owned they could technically be destroyed. "The laws don't protect us and that's a real concern Australia-wide," she said. Ms Walsh said many Aboriginal families lived with the reality their stolen history was privately held. "Many of the places Aboriginal children were taken to were run by church organisations," she said. Ms Walsh studied her family history as part of her PhD research. She was adopted as a child and grew up separated from her community and culture in Melbourne. The Broome centre holds some of the only archival photos of her grandmother, who was taken to Beagle Bay Mission. The heritage centre is yet to respond to the ABC's questions about plans for the preservation and continued access of its photos and archives. A government spokesperson did not rule out whether the state would purchase the historical documents or advocate for them to be made public, but said "future leasing opportunities" were a matter for the building owner, the church. "The state would need additional time to investigate and understand the options relating to storage of historical records and archives," the spokesperson said. For Ms Walsh, the materials held at the centre provided validation to heal from "trauma that runs through families". "When you find a document, that textual record is evidence of what my family went through," she said.
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘Mind-blowing': inside the highest human-occupied ice age site found in Australia
When Erin Wilkins first stood inside the cavernous Dargan shelter, she was awestruck. 'You don't understand how big it is until you step inside and you're this tiny little thing inside this massive bowl,' she says. 'You just had to sit and take it in.' The Darug and Wiradjuri woman's instincts told her that this yawning cave, on a Darug songline in the upper reaches of the Blue Mountains, held ancient stories. She was right. New scientific evidence has revealed people lived in the shelter during the last ice age 20,000 years ago, when the high country was treeless, frozen and – until now – believed to be too hostile for human habitation. Archaeologists say the huge rock hollow was a camping spot 'kind of like the Hyatt of the mountains', occupied continuously until about 400 years ago. At an elevation of 1,073 metres, it is the highest human-occupied ice age site found in Australia. It also aligns the continent for the first time with global findings that icy climates did not prevent humans from travelling at high altitudes in ancient times. The groundbreaking study was a collaboration between archaeologists and Aboriginal custodians who have spent six years mapping rock shelters across the greater Blue Mountains area, spanning 1m hectares of mostly untouched wilderness west of Sydney. Some sites are known only to a handful of Aboriginal people or intrepid bushwalkers. Others have only just been rediscovered. Dargan shelter, a mysterious cave on private property near Lithgow, had long been a place of interest due to its location on a ridge line connecting east to west. In 2021 Wayne Brennan, a Gomeroi archaeologist, and Dr Amy Mosig Way, a research archaeologist at the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum, got a permit to excavate it. Working alongside six Aboriginal groups, they dug to a depth of 2.3 metres, sifting through the sandy layers to reveal the cave's secrets. They unearthed 693 artefacts. Among them was a 9,000-year-old anvil, probably used for cracking seeds and nuts. A little deeper they found a sandstone grinding slab from about 13,000 years ago, its grooves suggesting it was used to shape bone or wooden implements. Radiocarbon dating confirmed the oldest evidence of human habitation was about 20,000 years old. Way says the 'remarkable' findings show a continuous sequence of occupation from the ice age until about 400 years ago. 'It's just such a kind of mind-blowing experience when you unearth an artefact that was last touched by someone 20,000 years ago,' she says. 'It's almost like the passing of the object through time from one hand to the other.' For Brennan, the findings resonate on a deeper level. The rock art expert has spent decades poking around caves in the mountains but had never seen anything like Dargan shelter. 'I sit in there and feel like I'm shaking hands with the past,' he says. Brennan discusses the findings not in terms of specific dates but in reference to 'deep time'. 'Deep time is a term that I use, in a sense, to connect the archaeology and the Tjukurpa [the creation period that underpins Aboriginal lore],' he says. 'Because with the Tjukurpa, it's timeless.' This weaving of scientific and cultural knowledge was central to helping the researchers interpret the findings and understand how the cave would have been used in ancient times. Brennan says it was probably a 'guesthouse on the way to a ceremony place'. The study has upended long-held beliefs about the way humans moved through the mountains – showing that people not only traversed the high country but stayed there for long periods. The site is now 'the most significant archaeological landscape in Australia in terms of ice age occupation', according to Way. Local Aboriginal custodians hope the research will help secure more protection for their cultural places, many of which were damaged during the 2019 bushfires. The greater Blue Mountains area holds deep significance for the Darug, Wiradjuri, Gomeroi, Dharawal, Wonnarua and Ngunnawal peoples. It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 2000 for its flora and fauna but this did not extend to recognise cultural heritage. Wilkins, who is also a cultural educator with the Darug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation, would like to see that change. 'It's important to preserve [cultural heritage] – not only for Australian history or for archaeology but for our people for generations to come,' she says. As more sites are 'reawakened', Wilkins says, there is a profound effect on her people and her country. 'It strengthens who we are and it strengthens and heals country,' she says. 'We're back listening to her stories. We're back sitting with our ancestors of yesterday.'
ABC News
30-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Tasmanian Aboriginal resistance warriors battled against overwhelming power, but have no recognition
It evokes one of the most powerful scenes in Tasmanian history. On January 7, 1832, the last 16 Aboriginal warriors from the Oyster Bay-Big River resistance walked down Elizabeth Street in Hobart, spears in hand. WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of a person who has died. The warriors were on their way to meet governor George Arthur at Government House to finalise an armistice, bringing an end to the largest domestic military offensive in Australian history. The Black Line. The leader of the Aboriginal resistance to this show of force was Tongerlongeter, a man who paid the ultimate price for defending everything he ever knew against the overwhelming might of British colonial power. "He'd lost nearly everyone he'd ever loved, his first wife had been abducted, never to be seen again," Dr Clements said. "He'd lost his child. He'd lost his arm in battle. Tongerlongeter — like others defending their lands against the world's most powerful empire — is not recognised in statues, memorials or plaques. The scene could not have been more different than one from 60 years earlier, when European explorers first started landing in Van Diemen's Land. Dr Clements describes these explorers as curious and generally well-intentioned towards Aboriginal people — compared with what was to come. As colonial expansion rapidly increased by the 1820s, there was soon conflict. The kidnap of women and girls by sealers and some settlers, and the competition for scarce resources, like kangaroos, saw the start of more organised Aboriginal resistance taking in multiple bands, led by men like Tongerlongeter. "Tongerlongeter was defending his homeland, but there were more proximate causes. For example, the systematic abduction, rape, and murder of Aboriginal women and children," Dr Clements said. Aboriginal people would attack solitary huts during the day, while Europeans would attack at night, Dr Clement said. Then came the Black Line — the conscription of 2,200 soldiers, convicts and settlers to capture the remaining Aboriginal people. While the campaign itself was largely unsuccessful, the show of force proved overwhelming to Tongerlongeter. Historic records show he suffered a catastrophic injury to his arm, requiring amputation by his comrades without anaesthetic, the bone ground smooth with rock before the wound was cauterised. The group agreed to an armistice, or truce, but in their ultimate meeting in Hobart, Dr Clements notes that governor Arthur did not keep records of what was discussed. Tongerlongeter and the others were exiled to Flinders Island, losing his only child on the way. But he continued to be a leader while in exile, before dying of illness in 1837, aged 47. "We just need to get over this sense that this wasn't a legitimate war and that these people don't deserve the same sort of recognition as those who fought in our overseas conflicts," Dr Clements said. "It should be a conversation for all Tasmanians so that we can all feel a part of this because, after all, someone like Tongerlongeter, we can all admire a man like that. The idea of women and girls being kidnapped from their families to live with sealers on remote islands is something that Nala Mansell often reflects on. It was the reality faced by Walyer — a young north-west Tasmanian Aboriginal in the 1820s. "Her childhood would have included freedom, culture, being taught by her elders," Ms Mansell said. "I can only imagine the terror that she would have felt … being captured and kidnapped and taken to a foreign island with white men that she'd never seen before. Walyer was known for her determined attitude and cunning nature, likely driven by the trauma she had experienced. She observed the use of firearms by her captors, and was able to escape. Walyer engaged in forms of violent resistance; Ms Mansell said she led others in helping to cause terror among white settlers in Tasmania's north. She was again taken to remote islands, where her resistance continued to the end. "I just think she embodies the Palawa spirit," Ms Mansell said. Walyer — and the other women and girls kidnapped during the Tasmanian colonial period — are also not physically recognised in the state. The Tasmanian government this week announced it was no longer pursuing a treaty with the state's Aboriginal people and would instead establish a truth-telling and healing commission. There was previously a push, which included the RSL, to establish a memorial to the frontier conflict near the cenotaph in Hobart, but this ultimately did not go ahead. Tasmania is also the only state that does not have an Aboriginal-run cultural centre, originally proposed for Macquarie Point, but now also cancelled. Instead, plaques and monuments — such as one that celebrates Abel Tasmania for his "discovery" of Tasmania — have prominent positions, remaining a source of frustration for the Aboriginal community. That plaque sits on the public-facing side of a government building in Launceston, used as offices for the Tasmanian premier. Ms Mansell said stories of Aboriginal resistance are vital for Tasmanians to be aware of and to reflect on. "It's up to the state government or the local councils who have the ability and the funds to be able to install some type of acknowledgement, but to work without the Aboriginal community so that we can find ways to honour and celebrate Aboriginal people," she said. In a statement earlier this week, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jacquie Petrusma said the truth-telling and healing commissioners would promote respect and self-determination. "It is a critical and necessary step towards recognising past injustices, gaining a greater understanding of the contemporary challenges being faced by Tasmanian Aboriginal people, and making real progress in healing the wounds of the past," she said.
