
Aerial views of Minjerriba (Stradbroke Island), and Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) walking along the beach with children. Oodgeroo tells us the inspiration for her poetry, and its role in personal and political resistance to white oppression. Summary by Romaine Moreton.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal is an acclaimed Indigenous poet, and was greatly involved in the push for Aboriginal rights. This documentary is an important testimony to her work, and its influence on Indigenous literature.
An episodic documentary featuring distinguished Indigenous artists specialising in literary and visual art forms.
Dreamtime, Machinetime is a title borrowed from Trevor Nickolls’ artwork of the same name, and visits locations such as Yirrikala, Warndoolier (Perth), Minjerriba (Stradbroke Island), Narr’n (Melbourne), Balingup and Warrane (Sydney). A nicely paced documentary that showcases the work of writers Archie Welter and Oodgeroo Noonuccal and artists Banduk Marika and Trevor Nickolls. The documentary highlights the artists’ social conscience that gives substance and form to their work. The rhythm of this documentary allows the audience to participate in the work presented; entering the poetry of Kath Walker, or the prose of Archie Weller, their literature is given a visual component by the filmmakers.
In the culture of Banduk Marika, stories are inherited generation through generation, and are restricted. The word restricted means that each person can only re-tell a story that they have permission to. This inherited right to stories exists in all Indigenous cultures in Australia, and Banduk Marika tells us that she as an individual can only tell certain stories and paint certain symbols, like the barramundi for example. What this means is that not every artist is permitted to use the barramundi to tell their stories.
Nickolls’ visual art speaks about the marriage between Western culture and Indigenous culture, and how they represent two different ways of seeing the world. All of the artists in Dreamtime, Machinetime comment on the changes that are occurring for Indigenous peoples and Indigenous culture as a result of coming into contact with Western society, and it is this commentary that informs their artwork.
Notes by Romaine Moreton
This clip shows Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Indigenous activist, artist and poet, relating how her poetry emerged from the political activism she undertook on behalf of her people. A narrator introduces Noonuccal, filmed with children on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), followed by a black-and-white photograph of her as a younger woman. She reads her poem ‘The dispossessed’, accompanied by soft haunting music. The camera cuts to an Aboriginal artwork with the title of her poem superimposed on it. A series of archival black-and-white photographs illustrate the reading, followed by photographs showing her political activism in the 1960s.
Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia
This clip starts approximately 17 minutes into the documentary.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal walks along the beach with a group of children.
Narrator Kath Walker is widely known as a courageous fighter for Aboriginal rights. She became a poet to give a voice to the Aboriginal movement in the early ‘60s. Kath is settled up in Minjerriba, North Stradbroke Island, the traditional home of her people, the Noonuccal tribe. She has written five collections of poetry and prose and the power of her work has been acknowledged worldwide.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal recites her poem ‘The dispossessed’. There is an image of an Aboriginal painting and photos of Aboriginal people being mistreated and living in poverty. The reading is accompanied by soft haunting music.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Peace was yours, Australian man,
with tribal laws you made.
’Til white colonials stole your peace,
with rape and murder raid.
They shot and poisoned and enslaved,
until a scattered few.
Only a remnant now remain,
and the heart dies in you.
The white man claimed your hunting grounds,
and you could not remain.
They made you work as menial,
for greedy private gain.
Your tribes are broken vagrants now,
wherever whites survive.
And justice of the white man means,
justice to you denied.
They brought you bibles and disease,
the liquor and the gun.
With Christian culture such as these,
the white command was won.
A dying race,
you linger on, degraded and oppressed.
Outcasts in your own native land,
You are the dispossessed.
Archival photos of Oodgeroo Noonuccal taken during her years as a political activist are interspersed with footage of her being interviewed.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal I wrote ‘The dispossessed’ in the early ‘60s when we were trying to gather up people to form the civil rights movement and what inspired me to write ‘The dispossessed’ was there were those in the political world who were extreme left-wingers and there were extreme right-wingers. The Aboriginals were right in the middle. And they were all trying to get possession of the Aboriginal people and this has been going on for the last 200 years, you know they talk about the Aboriginals as ‘our blacks’. So I stood up and said, ‘Why don’t you just stop and ask the Aborigines what they want?’ And, of course, everything broke loose and I went out very disillusioned and very bitter and very angry and I went home that night and I put down, in draft form, a poem which finally became ‘The dispossessed’. The conditions for Aboriginals during that time was very bad. We had the highest rate of infant mortality in the world. We still have it – 17 of our children dies against one in the white world in this lucky country called Australia. We have the highest leprosy rate in the world in Western Australia in this so-called lucky country. Now, in the Australian years BC, and by that I mean Before Cook, we were a disease-free race of people. And all these diseases came in. I heard the voices of my people and every time I heard a story like that, I went home and I wrote a poem about it.
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.