Essay

I'm doing my essay about how Aboriginals have been portrayed in film. I'm interested in this because nearly all films are made by non indiginous people. so the history of Aboriginals on film can be quite wrapped. And the way they have been depicted in film has changed with time along the same time line of how the general publics view on Aboriginals has changed.
Some books i have been reading at the moment are

Australia Cinema After Mabo - Felicity Collins

Aboriginal Film and Video Guide - Christine Koziel

Sites Of Difference - Karen Jennings

torres strait islander dance machine

Bamboo Hammerhead Shark Headdress

Island Dance is one of the major forms of creative expression on the Torres Strait Islands. Dance machines, head-dresses and masks used in Island Dance are unique to the Torres Strait Islands. Ken Thaiday from Erub (Darnley Island ) is the best known maker of dance machines.

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks on Q and A

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, when she was 17 stared in the 1955 film Jedda about an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family. Last night she was on the ABC panel show Q & A.

She was asked how living standards of Aboriginals have changed in the 50 years since Jedda was made. Her reply was “nothing has changed”, I’m sure if she said that to be dramatic or she really believes that. But I think it is a bit irresponsible to be so melodramatic on such an important. Surely you can make the point that Aboriginal people still have a low living standard than the rest of Australian society without being so dramatic.

SA Museum

Many artefacts in the SA museums like this bark painting had an inscription reading how it was collected. 

The bark painting read

Collected in 1960 during South Australian Museum expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

This got me thinking about the ethics behind collecting artefacts from native people around the world. The first question I think of is who owned these items before they were collected. Secondly how did the museum staff come about to owning these items. Were they simply taken, or bought, or found abandoned. If they were abandoned you could say fair enough no one really owned them. If the they were just taken how can that be ethical at all. If they were bought it starts to get into a grey area, was the communisation right and how can you judge what these items are really worth. 

But you could also make an argument that even if these items were collected in an  unethical way, does the fact that these items help preserve a history of a culture and educate the masses. Can that override the bad taste of how these items were collected?

Tindale Map

N B Tindale’s tribal map first published in 1940 and revised in 1974. Through a lifetime of fieldwork and consultation Tindale demonstrated that Aboriginal people held a strong territorial connection to the lands they occupied, this was radical in its fundamental implication that Australia was not terra nullius.

Yuendumu School Doors

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart

These works, painted in 1983, reference more than 200 significant ceremonial sites in Warlpiri and Anmatyerre territory and represent one of earliest examples of Aboriginal artists successfully transferring their ancient ground paintings to a large-scale modern medium.