
Archie Roach, in conversation with Daniel Browning for the Indigenous ABC Radio National program AWAYE!, talks about Louis St John Johnson.
Louis was a young Aboriginal man who was brutally murdered at age 19 by some white youths, who admitted that their only motivation for the murder was 'because he was black'.
He is the subject of Archie's song 'Louis St John' from the 1997 album Looking for Butter Boy and the inspiration for the journey documentary Liyarn Dgarn (2007) featuring Archie, Pat Dodson and Pete Postlethwaite.
What shines through in this interview is not Archie's anger about the tragic event but his genuine disbelief that people can behave in this way. Daniel Browning rightfully gives him the space in which to form his thoughts. As a consequence his words have a greater immediacy and we feel he is talking directly to us.
Notes by Beth Taylor and Adam Blackshaw
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.