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Clip description
John Safran identifies a tendency among left-wing people in inner Melbourne to put signs on their houses acknowledging the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of the land. He gets a group of local Aboriginal people (Lou Bennet, Corleen Cooper, Dennis Fisher, Jermaine Hampton, Michael Penrith) to help him test the sincerity of this sentiment.
Curator’s notes
While this sketch is linked with the show’s topic of religion via the importance of land in Aboriginal beliefs, it also takes a dig at left-wing belief systems. They are a recurring target of Safran’s, in part because this means a direct swipe at his own audience, which he describes elsewhere in the show as consisting mainly of ‘left-wing pinkos’. This sharp bit of satire poses a question about the sincerity of symbolic gestures such as these ‘traditional land owners’ signs and whether they are a tokenistic substitute for real action.
