The arts
The following clips have teachers’ notes related to this topic:
Jesus’s belly button
The artists talk about the response to the paintings on the Santa Teresa church wall. We see an Aboriginal interpretation of biblical characters such as Jesus and Moses.
Singing history
Carmody is flipping through records. He stops to examine a book. He tells us about the images from the book, of kangaroos and landscape drawn from within white sensibility. He shows us many images of …
A marriage of cultures
A brush pushes dots against an all black canvas. Trevor Nickolls tells us about the influences that shape his work. Nickolls refers to the Western machinery and Indigenous cosmology known as the Dreaming.
Music
Kathy Mills talks about her children and the closeness of her family and the role music plays in it. Allyson Mills talks about how her father called their attention to different sounds and rhythms.
Saltwater Freshwater
This clip shows archival photographs of the family. Kathy Mills tells of meeting her husband David, and how music was an element that attracted her to her husband.
World class
This clip describes the constant disruptions to the boys’ preparation for an exhibition, and the discouragement of art as a vocation. Noel White’s daughter and excerpts from White’s diary describe the interference from …
Wandjina
Scotty Martin shows us rock paintings of Wandjina, the ancestor who – in Scotty’s culture – is the being who created the world, giving Aborigines culture and law. Or, as Scotty puts it, 'the boss’.
Dreaming of glass
The story of how a commission from Manningham City Council helped start Wathaurong Glass, with shots of the beautiful artwork hanging in buildings. A practitioner speaks of going to Milan to exhibit his artwork, where …
Starting to happen
Wayne Blair talks about his experience as an actor and the roles that are offered to him as an Aboriginal man.
Conversations
Wayne Blair talks about the experience of acting in the play Conversations with the Dead, and the television series Water Rats (2001), discussing the pitfalls of being an actor in work, and out of work.
Investing in the unknown
An art auction. A woman is purchasing two pieces of art – a Mimi statue and a painting of a barramundi fish.
Do you know any ‘real Aborigines’?
Thornton not only pokes fun at the ignorance of conservative white purchasers of Indigenous art, but also exploits the paradigm of 'authentic Aboriginality’. The same ignorance Catherine (Sophie Lee) displays in relation to the culture …
Aboriginal women in leadership
Laurel Winder talks about Gloria Brennan’s contribution to Aboriginal women’s rights. The women talk about the different treatment of Aboriginal men and Aboriginal women who take on roles of leadership to initiate change.
Stencil art
Grahame Walsh, an expert in stencil art, explores Carnarvon Gorge to find evidence of occupation by Aboriginal people 20,000 years ago.
Maps of the country
Aboriginal paintings feature maps of a specific area, mythology, personal history and storytelling.
Kiwirrkurra
Aboriginal artists Brandy Tjungurrayi and Charlie Wallabi paint their country.