Blood Brothers
Four-part series on SBS Television
Screening weekly starting Tuesday, July 6, 8.30 p.m. (8.00 Adelaide)
Reviewed by Ignatius Kim
Over the last 15 years or so, we have seen the rise of a strong cultural activity by Aborigines that boldly challenges the distortions and ignorance of the establishment media.
Its origins go further back. For example, Wildcat Falling, a powerful novel about prison life and its aftermath, by Nyoongar writer Mudrooroo, was published in 1962.
The cultural establishment can now ignore this integral part of Australian culture only to its commercial detriment. While the marginalisation has not ended, the margin has been widened. From the plays of Jack Davis to the music of Kev Carmody, the voice of Aboriginal experience is much louder today.
The documentary series Blood Brothers focuses on the lives of four Aboriginal men from various cultural, generational and social backgrounds.
It was jointly produced by Rachel Perkins, head of the Aboriginal Unit at SBS Television, and independent film maker Ned Lander.
The thought-provoking first episode, "Broken English", is a docu-drama about the wrongful conviction of Rupert Max Stuart, an Arrernte man from central Australia, for the rape and murder of a young white girl in the early 1960s.
Making headlines around the country at the time, the full story was never told. Here, for the first time, Stuart is allowed to tell his side of the events that sent him to jail for 15 years.
This is a very skilful dramatisation of Stuart's brutal treatment at the hands of the racist police and judiciary.
Stuart (played by Lawrence Turner) was victimised by the standard "verbal". His case is complicated by the fact that English is his second language. Testifying in court in broken English, deprived of an interpreter, disallowed from having his real written testimony (recorded by his lawyer, played by AFI award winner Hugo Weaving) read by someone other than himself even though it is made clear that he is illiterate, he cannot put up an adequate defence and is sentenced to death.
Inter-cut with interviews of people involved in the case at the time, including Stuart himself, the story then moves to the many appeals and the sham royal commission that is appointed to investigate the trial. Finally, Stuart has his sentence converted to imprisonment.
It is a story that angered me more than it seems to anger Stuart. He is surprisingly free of any bitterness. Perhaps he has come to terms with it in all this time.
For the viewer, now, the episode is partly frustrating because there is no sense of the continuing injustice and the fight against it. If "Broken English" is an examination of the racist police and judiciary, why is there no mention of continuing problems, of names such as David Gundy, Eddie Murray, John Pat?
The second episode, "Freedom Ride", is about the campaign of civil disobedience to break segregation in rural NSW in the 1960s. Among its leaders was Charles Perkins (Rachel's father), who provides the biographical focus for this episode.
We retrace the campaign with interviews and stylised dramatisations. There is repeated condemnation of those "bad old days", and we learn a lot about the conditions for Aborigines at that time.
Once again, though, the episode would have benefited from a reminder of how much remains to be done, a reminder that de facto segregation exists today in many outback towns (let alone in many city pubs).
Aboriginal television has rarely received the kind of audience that Blood Brothers will get. The
history of indigenous oppression in this country, and the struggle against it, needs to be documented to the fullest, and this beginning will encourage others to follow.
I am especially looking forward to the third episode, which will focus on the life of Kev Carmody.