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First Australians – Episode 1, They Have Come to Stay (2008)

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clip Life before contact

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Narrator Rachel Perkins re-tells stories from the Dreamtime and historian Professor Marcia Langton of the Yiman-Bidjara Nation, historian Professor Janet McCalman and writer Bruce Pascoe of Boonwurrung Heritage weigh in on the unique prehistory experience of Australian Indigenous peoples.

Curator’s notes

by Sophia Sambono

The images of the Australian landscape are breathtaking as Perkins recounts the Dreamtime stories. She states that ‘in everything they (the giant beings of the Dreaming) touched they left their essence’, and you can almost feel it as each story is accompanied by art and images of the land or 'country’ they originate from.

Without the luxury of images of life before contact, this period of history is presented through shots of the aforementioned landscape, maps of Aboriginal Nations, and archival photographs of ‘traditional’ life which were taken over 100 years after contact. Despite such limited resources the filmmakers have made an impressive introduction to the series.

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