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Square Story
‘Square Story’ was created in response to the devastating affect the invasion of Western culture and politics has had on the Indigenous people in Australia. The compulsive way in which dominant societies demand compliance and assimilation with their systems has been destructive to so many Indigenous cultures and their land globally.
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| Video information | |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Jennifer Caldwell |
| Directed by | Jennifer Caldwell |
| Contact | write the producer |
| Produced | 2006/10/16 |
| Duration | 3 minutes 3 seconds |
Full description
Ignorance continues to be the most destructive element in this situation and there remains to be an extraordinary inability to look and understand beyond ones own cultural perspective. There seems to be an even larger capability to pay respect in these circumstances.
Prime Minister Paul Keating described the white’s treatment of Indigenous people in Australia in the following way;
It was we who did the dispossessing.
We took away the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practiced discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
With some noble exception, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.
We failed to ask: how would I feel if this were done to me?
As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us…
Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless…
Imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it…
Gradually we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to recognise the wisdom in their epic story.
‘Square Story’ relies upon symbolism, similar to that used in Pop and Op Art periods. The ‘squares’ represent the way Western society boxes everyone off from each other and the colourful freeform shapes represent the organic nature of humans in a scientific reality, as if they were under a microscope.
Charles Perkins spoke volumes about the attitudes we could all adopt to improve the situation in Australia for Indigenous people and their culture as well as all other Australians when he said:
My expectation of a good Australia is when white people would be proud to speak an Aboriginal language, when they realise that Aboriginal culture and all that goes with it, philosophy, art, language, morality and kinship, is all part of our heritage. And that’s the most unbelievable thing of all, that it’s all there waiting for us all. White people can inherit 40 000 or 60 000 years of culture, and all they have to do is reach our and ask for it.
‘Square Story’ is a digitally animated film. It runs for around 3 minutes and has been designed to be viewed as a looped/rotated film. It should be noted that I am a non-Indigenous Australian.
