Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows Warren H Williams, an Arrernte man from Hermannsburg in central Australia, explaining his idea of culture and its connection to 'home’. Williams and John Williamson play 'Raining on the Rock’, one of Williamson’s songs, in the central Australian landscape that is a feature of the clip. Over footage of the landscape and of Williams playing music for children, Williams speaks in Arrernte (accompanied by subtitles in English) about the sources of culture for Indigenous Australians.

Educational value points

• Williams discusses the various meanings attached to the idea of culture and the particular significance of land for Australia’s Indigenous peoples. In this context, 'land’ refers to the portion of land defined as 'home’, which has had profound meanings for Indigenous people for millennia. Williams also presents his views about the ways in which culture might be communicated to future generations.

• Williams suggests that Australia’s Indigenous cultures are living and various, and that they are communicated through music, shared stories and experiences in the bush. Indigenous culture, he maintains, is about feeling and being at home on a certain tract of land ('your outstation’) – a community dwelling place where there is no town and where his antecedents have lived for longer than anyone can remember.

• The clip illustrates the possibility of shared cross-cultural understandings through the inclusion of Williamson and Williams together singing one of Williamson’s compositions, a song that is expressive of Aboriginal peoples’ deep connection with the land. In an interview, Williamson said of this experience, ‘[Aboriginal people are] not really conscious of looking at the country, they just know it, you know. It is them … they’re part of it’ (www.abc.net.au).

• The song 'Raining on the Rock’, which is heard in this clip, is an example of the expression and transmission of traditional cultural ideas through new media and especially through country music, which has been taken up as a popular vehicle of artistic expression by Indigenous peoples. Some of the better-known Indigenous artists in country music are Jimmy Little, Gus Williams (Warren Williams’s father), Lionel Rose, Troy Cassar-Daley and Archie Roach.

• Warren H Williams, Arrernte country music singer and songwriter, was born in Hermannsburg near Alice Springs in central Australia. He tours frequently with his band, particularly to the outback and to rural and Aboriginal communities of Australia.

• John Williamson (1945–) is a country music singer and songwriter raised in the Mallee region at Quambatook, Victoria. In 1992 Williamson was awarded an AM (Order of Australia) for services to Australian Country Music and conservation awareness. A duet with Indigenous Australian singer Jimmy Little, 'This Ancient Land’, was accepted as the official song for the Aboriginal Reconciliation event 'Corroboree 2000’.

• Williams and Williamson first performed 'Raining on the Rock’ as a duet in 1998, and that year it won Best Single at the Deadly Sounds Indigenous Awards at the ARIAs (Australian Record Industry Awards). Williams and Williamson teamed up again in 2003 for the True Blue Reunion tour around the USA. They have recorded two CDs together, 'Mates on the Road’ and 'Chandelier of Stars’.

Warren Williams and John Williamson are playing guitar together, near Uluru.
Warren Williams (Sings)

Pastel red to burgundy and spinifex to gold
Just come out of the Mulgas where the plains forever roll
And Albert Namatjira has painted all the scenes
And a shower has changed …

Images of Warren playing, native flowers and landscape and walking with young children on Arrernte land. The following is subtitled, in language.
Warren Williams G’day, I’m Warren Williams. I want to take you on a journey into Arrernte culture. It has many levels in 2000. I want to show you the old and new. Kids learn culture their own way. Just by looking around the bush. You have to realise that. People used to get together. They still do in modern culture. Young kids and music are a part of that.

Warren plays his guitar, then talks to the children. Warren is talking to camera, followed by images of Arrernte country and children running through it. Subtitled, in language.
Warren Williams Culture is stories about home and songs about home. Culture today, modern culture, might be big – it probably is big. If you want to see culture, it’s not only in corroborees. Go out home and see it. Just go home and see your culture. Go to your grandparents’ home and see your country – that’s culture. Some people say culture is only in history books. Some say other thing like you’ve got to go home to see culture. Culture, like I said, is not only songs or markings – culture is home. The home you feel inside when you go to your outstation.