Australian homelands are forever
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
“Djambawa Marawili, Andrea and I travel from Baniyala to visit the artist and elder Dhukal Wirrpanda at Dhuruputjpi. As we travel on the road to Dhuruputjpi, Djambawa sings his country and its sacred places”.
Duration
11.22
Director
Andrea and Peter Hylands
Cinematography
Andrea Hylands
We have always understood that it is a crime to remove Indigenous peoples from their land and that any such removal represents the worst kind of colonialism and exploitation.
This story book article is historical and reports on circumstances at the time of writing. We can see here that history has a habit of repeating itself and the relevance of this in today’s context.
Dhukal takes us to his floodplains on Blue Mud Bay and as we drive he tells us about the importance of the homelands movement. Back to country once more.
Yolngu law is a constant in time and is set on solid and complex cultural foundations and is unlike the white man’s law that is ever changing. Here is a cultural difference of significance.
The history goes that people were rounded up, removed from country and put into missions or dumped at the edge of rural towns, dislocated from economy and country, and that is when dependence on a white system started.
When the mission system faded people began to return to country, to their homelands.
Since the return to homelands, there has always been an ebb and flow of people moving between homelands and larger centres.
At the time of our visit to see Dhukal in 2015, pronouncements from the Western Australian Government about the economic benefits of removing Australian Aboriginal people from their homelands, were placing Australia in a new paradigm of contemporary injustice and discrimination. Australia has been there before and does not need to go back to this place yet again.
This story book article is historical and reports on circumstances at the time of writing. We can see here that history has a habit of repeating itself and the relevance of this in today’s context.
Dhukal takes us to his floodplains on Blue Mud Bay and as we drive he tells us about the importance of the homelands movement. Back to country once more.
Yolngu law is a constant in time and is set on solid and complex cultural foundations and is unlike the white man’s law that is ever changing. Here is a cultural difference of significance.
The history goes that people were rounded up, removed from country and put into missions or dumped at the edge of rural towns, dislocated from economy and country, and that is when dependence on a white system started.
When the mission system faded people began to return to country, to their homelands.
Since the return to homelands, there has always been an ebb and flow of people moving between homelands and larger centres.
At the time of our visit to see Dhukal in 2015, pronouncements from the Western Australian Government about the economic benefits of removing Australian Aboriginal people from their homelands, were placing Australia in a new paradigm of contemporary injustice and discrimination. Australia has been there before and does not need to go back to this place yet again.
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