Clip description
In this clip paintings and re-enactments are intercut with interview footage to show what happened to the Indigenous people (family members of the people telling the story). The family are walking through the country in which their old people were murdered.
Curator’s notes
The physicality of this clip, the family walking through their country – the same country where other family members died – is powerful and poignant. The paintings illustrate the story as it is being told in voice-over. The filmmaker (Fayleen Lauder) whose family is being spoken about provides the audience with visual symbols to add significance to the story being told. After the Coniston Massacre of 1928, no survivors were called to testify in a Board of Inquiry in 1929, or to challenge the testimonies of Constable William Murray and others who participated in the massacre. The Indigenous people themselves, the Inquiry found, were responsible for what happened to them. In this context, the technique employed by the filmmaker becomes significant, as all the visuals you see in the clip are based on oral histories, and represent the very voices of the people that the 1929 Board of Inquiry chose to overlook. The clip presents us with a style that is used throughout the film – a style used intentionally to bring the audience closer to the story being spoken about.