Clip description
Gordan Syron and Elaine Pelot-Kitchener are on a boat. Gordon is showing Elaine his homeland (or the land where his family is from, often referred to as country by Indigenous people). Gordon and Elaine talk about the man Gordon killed in order to protect his family’s country.
Curator’s notes
Gordon Syron takes care to make a distinction between the terms murdered and killed. While Syron accepts that he killed a man, he says that it was not murder. The reason Syron clarifies the terms can be better understood in the context of what many refer to as the undocumented warfare between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in this country. The Australian historical narrative claims that Australia was peacefully settled. Indigenous people however, have long documented the (ongoing) warfare between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples in the fight for land.