Multi award-winning feature documentary made with the YINDJIBARNDI, NGARLUMA, BANYJIMA and GURRAMA people of Roebourne, Western Australia

Awards: Best Documentary   (Australian Human Rights Award, 1994); Major Media Peace Award (United Nations Association of Australia with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 1993); Best Documentary  (Australian Film Institute,1993); Best Achievement in Sound in a Non Feature Film- (Australian Film Institute,1993); Voted 3rd Most Popular Documentary  (Sydney Film Festival); Best Documentary   (Louis St. John Johnson Media Awards WA,1994. ‘For excellence in the reporting of Aboriginal affairs in WA’)

The first complete account in Australian film history of the experiences of a community of Aboriginal people from pre-colonial times to the 1990s. This film makes the connection between Aboriginals in chains in the 19th century and Aboriginal people in prisons today, so providing a deeper understanding of how the violence and denials of the past inform the present. Ultimately, it gives conviction that with their extraordinary resilience, the Indigenous peoples of Australia will survive and flourish.

The documentary argues that the relentless removal of the Yindjibarndi/Ngarluma people into coastal ghettos has led to the community’s current problems. However, as the film moves us through the period of British colonisation, unearthing appalling facts about slavery and the violent rule of pearling and pastoral overlords, to the abuses of the 1960s mining boom and problems of alcohol, it never allows the viewer to forget the significance and influence of spiritual homelands, the bedrock upon which Yindjibarndi/Ngarluma tribal law is based. Above all, the film is a beautifully logical and persuasive argument for land rights.