Australian Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows canoeists returning to camp after hunting for goose eggs. The narrator (David Gulpilil) resumes the parallel story of Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurddal), a Dreaming story set in the ancient present. Ridjimiraril and Yeeralparil (James Gulpilil) face payback from a neighbouring tribe and are shown dancing to avoid a volley of spears until Ridjimiraril is wounded. The clip cuts to the canoeists paddling downstream to return home. The ‘present’ is in black and white and the past is in colour. The canoeists speak in their Indigenous language and the clip is subtitled.

Educational value points

• Ten Canoes is the first feature-length film made in Australian Indigenous languages. There are about 40 language groups in north-east Arnhem Land, and most Indigenous people in the region are multilingual. Most of the canoeists in the film are Ganalbingu speakers but Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) speaks Mandalpuyngu. A version of Ten Canoes was produced with a narration in the Mandalpuyngu language.

• In a reversal of film convention, director Rolf de Heer depicts the past in colour, while the ‘present’, a time just prior to European contact, is in black and white. This black-and-white depiction was influenced by photographs taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson during a 1936–37 expedition to eastern Arnhem Land, while the colour sections suggest the importance of the past for Yolngu people. This device also helps to differentiate the two stories.

• The spearing of Ridjimiraril is an example of a ritual known as 'makarrata’, which is a way to restore harmony between groups or individuals in dispute. The narrator acknowledges this when he says the other tribe were satisfied once the spearing had taken place. The form the makarrata takes is decided following careful negotiations between the Elders of the affected groups or tribes. The person facing makarrata can select a partner to join him in the ritual.

• Traditional law requires that punishments are public and follow specific guidelines. Different weapons are used for different violations, and particular rituals are associated with each. For example, if a spear is used the person must approach from the front and inflict a wound in the leg or torso. However, one of the most severe punishments is banishment. In these and other ways Indigenous communities maintain social control and compliance with the law.

• In Indigenous communities Elders use Dreaming stories to pass on to younger generations knowledge about the law that guides the community. Thus Minygululu tells his younger brother Dayindi a Dreaming story to warn him of the dangers of inappropriate love. In using a narrator, Elder David Gulpilil, to recount Minygululu’s telling of the story, the film replicates this form of instruction, becoming another medium through which to convey this knowledge.

• In Ten Canoes the seamless interweaving of the various narrative strands is accomplished with the aid of the narrator, but also by the parallels between the two stories. These are stressed by having James Gulpilil play Yeeralparil and Dayindi, who both covet the third wife of their respective brothers. In using the same actors to play their corresponding characters in both time periods the film reinforces a sense of connection between the past and the present.

• The Yolngu Elders saw Ten Canoes as a way of preserving and passing on their languages. At the time of European colonisation more than 700 different Indigenous languages and dialects were spoken in Australia, however, until the 1960s Indigenous people on missions were often discouraged or forbidden from speaking their own languages. A census in 1996 showed that 13 per cent of the Indigenous population spoke an Indigenous language or creole at home.

• Yolngu Elder David Gulpilil, who narrates Ten Canoes, collaborated with director Rolf de Heer in developing the film. Gulpilil, who received an Australian Film Institute (AFI) award for Best Actor for his role in de Heer’s The Tracker (2002), was 15 years old when cast in Walkabout (1971), the film that launched his career. His other films include Storm Boy (1976), The Last Wave (1977), Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002).

• Rolf de Heer, a director with a reputation for tackling ambitious and experimental film projects, was approached by David Gulpilil to make a film about his people while the two were working on The Tracker (2002). Ten Canoes, which de Heer co-directed with Peter Djigirr, scooped the 2006 AFI Awards, including those for best direction, best original screenplay and best cinematography. It has won numerous other awards both in Australia and overseas.