Clip description
Zita is sitting on a stool feeding a poddy calf. In voice-over Aggie Abbott says most children who were taken away never returned to their country. Zita on the other hand has sought her family and is committed to learning her culture. Zita sits on the ground with Aggie preparing kangaroo for the fire. Zita talks about the experience being ‘an ongoing learning process’.
Curator’s notes
In this incredibly moving heart of the film, a woman journeys back to her land and people, and to her cultural self. Zita Wallace is confronting the different cultural sensibility of Western and Indigenous society. The squeezing of grass from the kangaroo’s intestine, or 'poo’ as Zita later refers to it, represents the contrast between Western and Indigenous cultural practice. In Indigenous cosmology, the relationship between the land and the people, and the kinship system that exists between the human and non-human world, assigns all beings to one family. Zita, in participating in the preparation of kangaroo with her family, is re-connecting with an ancient ritual, religion and cosmological practice.