My Survival as an Aboriginal: Go away

The juxtaposition of Indigenous knowledge and Western knowledge represents the two spheres of cultural understanding Indigenous children must negotiate in everyday life.

My Survival as an Aboriginal synopsis

A documentary about Indigenous woman Essie Coffey and her life in the township of Brewarrina, or Dodge City, as it is also known.

My Survival as an Aboriginal curator's notes

Essie Coffey (1941-1998) was a Muruwari woman born near Goodooga, NSW. She was the co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service and an inaugural member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Essie Coffey’s passion for her culture and her stoic dedication to her people is tangible in this film. As a charismatic, dedicated woman, she invites the audience into her community. And while she brings to the fore the hardships endured by her community, she is continually focused on the power and richness of traditional knowledge and skills, and the power of her cultural connection to land. In this, Coffey not only raises issues of the impact of colonisation on Indigenous peoples, but also offers a solution by way of continuing cultural practice.

Essie Coffey gives a personal account of what happened to her people in Brewarrina and her personal opinions on why her people are caught in a struggle. The opening sequence of My Survival as an Aboriginal is challenging as it delivers a litany of atrocities and hardships committed against Aboriginal people. The producer of My Survival as an Aboriginal, Martha Ansara, has said that the film was 'a passionate outcry … a voice of repressed truth’, and the film is still current within the contemporary Australian society. The ongoing issues of colonialism and dispossession raised by Coffey continue to affect Indigenous peoples today. My Survival as an Aboriginal, though a call to justice, is also tempered with beauty, and the audience is allowed to glimpse the private world of Essie Coffey and the people of Brewarrina. Coffey is very strong in her fight for justice, and equally committed to ensuring that the next generation are taught cultural knowledge as a means of ensuring an identity invested in the ongoing relationship to land.

My Survival as an Aboriginal was directed by Essie Coffey and is a collaboration with non-Indigenous filmmaker Martha Ansara. It was one of the first Australian films where an Indigenous Australian was directly involved in deciding how she and her community would be represented, and is also the first documentary directed by an Indigenous woman.

Essie Coffey also appeared in My Life as I Live It (1993) and gave a copy of My Survival as an Aboriginal to Queen Elizabeth II at the opening of Australia’s new Parliament House in 1988. Essie Coffey is a voice that reaches across time, and she continues to be a larger than life contributor in the ongoing fight for the rights for Indigenous peoples. See also Big Girls Don’t Cry.

This program has also screened on NITV, National Indigenous Television.

Notes by Romaine Moreton

Education notes

This clip shows Indigenous Australian activist Essie Coffey in the bush near Brewarrina in western New South Wales passing on cultural knowledge to Indigenous children. She says that the white education they receive at school often leads to them forgetting their Indigenous heritage, and stresses how important it is that they 'stand tall’ and 'remember what you are’. The clip then shows the children at school where a white teacher tells the class of mainly Indigenous students about Captain Cook’s 'discovery’ of Australia.

Educational value points

• The juxtaposition of Essie Coffey’s statement that Indigenous children are losing their culture as a result of white education with the sequence in the classroom has been constructed to support Coffey’s point and raise questions about whose history is being taught. It suggests that the study and interpretation of the past is not objective, but is coloured by who writes the history. This has sometimes resulted in marginalised groups, such as Indigenous Australians, being excluded or misrepresented by historians.
• Coffey (1941–98) was a Muruwari woman born near Goodooga, NSW. After marrying in the 1950s she settled on the Aboriginal reserve at Brewarrina in western NSW, where she became a tireless worker and campaigner for Indigenous Australians. She was co-founder of the Brewarrina Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Museum and the Western Aboriginal Legal Service as well as serving on government bodies such as the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. She was awarded an Order of Australia medal in 1998 for services to the Aboriginal community.
• When Coffey was a child she and her family moved to isolated bushland to avoid being placed on an Aboriginal reserve, and this experience gave Coffey 'her love of the land and her strong and proud sense of identity’.
• Reserves were set up in the mistaken belief that Indigenous Australians were a dying race and that their welfare was best served by relocation from traditional lands to a reserve, where they were placed under the guardianship of an Aboriginal Protection Board. This dispossession and loss of autonomy, the legacy of which is still felt within Indigenous Australian communities, strengthened Coffey’s resolve to pass on her heritage to young Indigenous Australians.
• In Indigenous Australian communities it is the responsibility of Elders such as Coffey to pass on knowledge about the land to the younger generation. This knowledge does not just involve teaching children how to find food, but encompasses the relationship of Indigenous Australians with the land and their country.
• For Indigenous Australians a deep affinity with and connection to the land is central to forming a conception of self, identity and belonging. Coffey’s lessons to the children are a way of maintaining that connection, and of not only preserving Indigenous culture but also giving the children a strong and positive sense of their identity as Indigenous Australians. She tells the children it is important 'that you stand tall’ and 'remember what you are on your own land’.
• In 2003 about 38 per cent of Indigenous children completed year 12 compared to 76 per cent of students from all other backgrounds. The failure of schools to be culturally inclusive has been identified as contributing to this lower retention rate. To redress the imbalance the federal and state governments have made Indigenous Studies part of the school curriculum to give Indigenous Australian children an appreciation of their histories, cultures and identities, and to provide all Australian students with an understanding of Indigenous Australian cultures.
• My Survival as an Aboriginal, which Coffey made in collaboration with non-Indigenous filmmaker Martha Ansara, was the first documentary directed by an Indigenous woman. It was also one of the first Australian films in which an Indigenous Australian was directly involved in deciding how she and her community would be represented. While Coffey’s film tackles the subjects of dispossession and alienation, it also celebrates both herself and her culture.
• My Survival as an Aboriginal is a documentary that mixes observational shooting with interviews and voice-over as well as songs that carry important viewpoints and information. The observational passages contain no voice-over commentary, intertitles or interviews, but rather present an unobtrusive observation of the everyday life of the subjects. The filmmaker leaves it to the viewer to determine the significance of what is said and done, but it can be argued that the filmmaker manipulates the story through dextrous editing and choice of camera angles and shots.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia