Australian Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows playwright and musician Jimmy Chi and actor Stephen Albert talking about attending a mission school near Broome in Western Australia, and being separated from family to attend school in Perth. Chi also describes his semi-autobiographical musical Bran Nue Dae. Albert, who grew up with Chi and performed in the musical, narrates the clip which includes an excerpt from the stage production of Bran Nue Dae, photographs of Chi as a boy and archival footage showing Indigenous Australian children and a nun in a mission schoolyard, and Indigenous families at an airstrip.

Educational value points

• The clip provides an excerpt from the stage production of Bran Nue Dae, the first musical written and performed by Indigenous Australians. It premiered in 1990 at the Festival of Perth and toured nationally, setting record theatre attendances. It revolves around a young Indigenous boy who runs away from school in the city and journeys home to Lombadina near Broome. The music in the play is a hybrid mix of country and western, reggae, gospel, blues and Indigenous chants, including Indigenous Australian song cycles used on overland journeys.

• Chi is shown explaining what he hoped to achieve through the musical. Bran Nue Dae is a protest against the treatment of Indigenous Australians, highlighting the injustices of the mission system, the negative outcomes of assimilation and the loss of traditional country. For Chi, Indigenous culture is not something that belongs in the past, but something that is constantly evolving. While Chi intended that Bran Nue Dae confront non-Indigenous audiences, it also encourages Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to reach a common understanding, and to celebrate the resilience of Indigenous peoples.

• The clip refers to the Australian Government’s policy of assimilation at the time Chi and Albert were growing up. In the late 1930s the Government’s policies on protection and segregation of Indigenous Australians were replaced by a policy of assimilation that sought to absorb Indigenous Australians into 'white’ society. Education was seen as a key to assimilation and many Indigenous children were separated from their families to receive an education. While this attempt to absorb Indigenous Australians into mainstream society provided opportunities it also denied children access to their families and their culture.

• Footage of a mission school is included. Missions were initially set up in the 1810s, often by the clergy, to house and educate Indigenous Australians and convert them to Christianity. Children were taught at a mission school in English by nuns and priests using a curriculum derived from England. Many Indigenous Australians at these missions experienced forced confinement, the imposition of strict Christian observance, separation from and removal of their children, the breakdown of traditional values and the banning of their languages and cultural practices.

• Separation from family had severe effects on Indigenous children. The narrator in this clip, Stephen Albert, refers to the loneliness that he and Chi experienced while at school in Perth. In Indigenous Australian cultures an individual’s identity is based on family, kinship ties and a connection to the land where the person was born. Separation from family proved devastating for many children and had lasting emotional consequences. Chi, who is a diagnosed schizophrenic, attributes his condition to cultural dislocation. Albert says that, as the first of his people to go to university, Chi set an inspiring example.

• Like the boy in Bran Nue Dae, Chi grew up near Broome and was educated in a mission school before being sent to further his education in Perth. He studied engineering at university, but returned to Broome where he formed a band called Kuckles, which collaborated on the composition and production of Bran Nue Dae. Chi is also the author of the play Corrugation Road (1996), and in 1997 received the Australia Council’s prestigious Red Ochre Award.

• The clip illustrates the multicultural nature of Broome. Chi’s mother was of Scottish and Indigenous Australian descent, while his father was of Chinese and Japanese origin. Broome’s pearling industry attracted a workforce that included Indigenous Australians as well as Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Malaysian divers. Soon after the town was established, the Catholic Church set up missions at Beagle Bay and Lombadina that were mainly run by an order of Pallotine Fathers from Germany and the Sisters of St John from Ireland. Chi feels that Broome’s rich and diverse musical tradition, which he draws on in his musical, is a legacy of the crosscultural interaction in Broome.