Frontier
Three one-hour films
ABC TV, March 5, 12 & 19 at 8.30 pm
Review by Chris Martin
Frontier is the history that Howard wants us to forget, the bloody, murderous history of white Australia's unfinished land war against the Aboriginal nations of this continent.
This documentary is a powerful dismissal of efforts to whitewash the past, the most honest and ambitious examination of real history I have seen.
Using both Aboriginal and white accounts of invasion, massacre and attempted genocide gleaned from diaries, journals, newspapers and public records, the program presents the unassailable truth of the great injustices which inhabit Australia's past.
Frontier is the story of the first 150 years of invasion, the time it took for white colonisation to reach every corner of the country. The research for the series is attributed to Henry Reynolds, ground breaking author and historian, and Marcia Langton, one of Australia's most important Aboriginal academics.
The combination of Reynolds meticulous research and Langtons passionate and deep understanding is a powerful mix which gives the whole program an undeniable authority.
Their work has been beautifully translated to film, using new footage of landscape from around the country together with hundreds of Australian artworks and historic photographs.
The personal testimonies are brought to life by some of Australia's best actors, principally Bill Hunter, Barry Otto, Geoffrey Rush, Richard Roxburgh, Pamela Rabe, Hugo Weaving, Noah Taylor, Rachel Maza, Bradley Byquar, Tony Martin, Max Cullen, Ruth Cracknell, Chris Haywood and the unfortunately named John Howard.
Episode one, "They must always consider us enemies", covers the initial invasion, from 1770 to 1835. It draws on the diaries of participants such as Colonel David Collins and Watkin Tench, some of the first whites to recognise the scale of the war they faced. We get useful insights into the role and character of individuals like Phillip, caught between his principles and the prevailing fear and hostility of his company.
Episode two, "Worse than slavery itself", takes us from 1835 to 1860. We hear of the treacherous conclusion to the Tasmanian wars, where the evangelist negotiator George Robinson convinced an unbeaten alliance of Aboriginal people to accept a treaty which promised a return of their lands. The treaty was never honoured.
Walter George Arthur, a survivor of the Tasmanian Aborigines exile to Flinders Island, petitioned the King in 1845 to honour the treaty, saying: "We were not taken prisoners but freely gave up our country to Colonel Arthur after defending ourselves. Mr. Robinson made for us an agreement which we have not lost from our minds since. We have made our part of it good."
The role of the evangelists here and overseas through this time is examined. International sympathy for social reform and the abolition of slavery encouraged voices here to be raised against the scale of the attacks. One Lancelot Threlcott in 1835 remarked: "The indiscriminate slaughter which has blotted the colony with the foul stench of blood has been committed in open defiance of the laws of nations and of the higher authority, the law of God."
The final episode, "The government should shut its eyes", takes us from 1860 to 1938, through the ebb of the evangelists' brief ascendancy and into the wholesale and unrestrained slaughter of the white frontier's final push across the continent.
The title of this episode is taken from a letter to the editor of the North-Western Times, where the writer urged: "The government should shut its eyes for three months and let the settlers deal with the niggers. Once done it could be quickly forgotten."
The murderous advance of colonisation is detailed, with graphic evidence supplied of massacre after massacre. The push from dispossession to economic domination is described, which saw the Aborigines, newly landless, drafted as slaves for cattle and sheep stations throughout the north-west.
The documentary concludes with the rise of the missions; the evil, family destroying policies of "protection" and assimilation; and, throughout, Aboriginal people's courage and determination to survive.
The final word is left to the Aborigines of 1938 who came together in Sydney to hold a "Day of Mourning" protest in the teeth of white Australia's sesquicentenary celebrations. The series concludes with the words these leaders of a fledgling urban resistance, Jack Patten and Bill Ferguson, two of this century's most important leaders:
"You are the new Australians, but we are the old Australians. We have in our arteries the blood of the original Australians who have lived in this land for thousands of years. You came here only recently and you took our land by force. You have almost exterminated our people, but there are still enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim as white Australians to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation. By your cruelty and callousness towards Aborigines you stand condemned in the eyes of the civilised world. We do not ask for your charity. We do not ask you to study us as scientific freaks. Above all we do not ask for your 'protection'. We ask only for justice, decency and fair play. Is this too much to ask?"
Perhaps there will criticism of the series for the scarcity of Aboriginal testaments, but I think this reflects the void in recorded history where black voices are concerned, rather than any lack of will on the film makers' part.
If there is cause for criticism, it must be the criminal silence with which "Our ABC" has chosen to "promote" this, the most important program it has ever had the chance to screen. Perhaps they're worried about upsetting Howard's ability to feel comfortable and relaxed.