Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Message Stick – Tent Boxers (2001)

play May contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
Violence – low
clip
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The travelling show

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

A boxing troupe sets up the tent for their travelling show. Former tent boxers talk about the limited opportunities available to young Indigenous men in Moree in the early 1960s and why they took up the tent-boxing life. Interviews are accompanied by historical footage of a boxing match inside a tent.

Curator’s notes

by Liz McNiven

The individual testimonies in this clip, shot simply and informally, permit us to connect with the stories and convey a real sense of the lack of opportunities experienced by these Indigenous men growing up in small-town Australia in the 1950s and ’60s.