Ten Canoes
Written by Rolf de Heer and the people of Ramingining
Co-directed by Peter Djigirr and Rolf de Heer
Screening nationally at selected cinemas
REVIEW BY LACHLAN MALLOCH
"We come from this land. People, Balanda [white people], always come, miners and that, and we always say no to them, no mining, because we don't want to lose our culture. White man's ways will just destroy us. We have our law from long time ago; [now] that law just dropping away ... but you film mob come here to lift up this law for us, to show how they sit a long time ago, them laws. So white men can see, we can see, anyone can see, we got that law" — co-director of Ten Canoes Peter Djigirr.
Cultural continuity and lifting Yolngu (Arnhem Land Aborigines) pride are strong themes of the extraordinary new film Ten Canoes, in which director Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby, The Tracker) collaborated by invitation with the people of Ramingining (population 800, 16 clans, eight language groups) to create his most ambitious work to date.
Ramingining is on the edge of the teeming, lush Arafura Swamp, which extends to 130,000 hectares in the wet season. It's the home of screen legend David Gulpilil, whose work with Rolf de Heer on The Tracker (2002) led to the creation of this cultural landmark, the first major feature film acted entirely in an indigenous Aboriginal language, Ganalbingu.
Apart from Gulpilil, who plays The Storyteller (the English-language narrator), all of Ten Canoes' actors are first-timers, although many of them boast significant careers in other aspects of Aboriginal art.
That the film lifts Yolngu pride and was "made with profound respect for the culture" (Sydney Morning Herald) resonates in one of Gulpilil's opening lines: "It's not your story, it's my story" — speaking for Ramingining and all Aboriginal generations.
The story was constructed to bridge the cultural divide between Balanda and Yolngu traditions. The basic framework — of a traditional annual bark canoeing expedition through the swamp to hunt magpie geese and collect their eggs — had its genesis in the 4000 still photographs produced by Dr Donald Thomson, an anthropologist who lived among the people of Arnhem Land in the 1930s.
Ten Canoes reconstructs one of those arduous expeditions in black and white scenes set 1000 years ago. Old Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) tells a tale from ancient, mythical times in colour flashbacks over the course of the expedition. This is his Yolngu way of revealing truth and tribal law to young Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil), who desires to win over the youngest of Minygululu's three wives.
Ancient Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurrdal) is in a similar predicament to Minygululu, with young Yeeralparil (Jamie Gulpilil again), taking a fancy to his youngest wife. However, another of his wives goes missing and Ridjimiraril takes hasty revenge for the assumed abduction, killing the Wrong Stranger, a tribal neighbour.
Ridjimiraril admits his crime to the Wrong Stranger's tribe. Justice according to their shared tribal law involves the Wrong Stranger's brother spearing Ridjimiraril and his appointed "justice partner".
Contrast the granite strength of that Black morality to the sniveling mendacity of our white political masters today, who stoop ever lower in defending their indefensible acts of barbarism.
It's in this way — of remembering and reviving traditional morality tales — that Ten Canoes represents a sort of cinematic "survival day" for Yolngu culture. The film itself seems to have already passed into the oral traditions (collective "memory") of the Yolngu people involved.
The ways in which the whole process of creating the film impacted on the people of Ramingining is a fascinating saga (visit <http://www.tencanoes.com.au> to learn more) and at least equally as important as the potential impact of the film on Australian audiences generally.
Michael Dawu, who plays one of the canoeists and The Stranger, describes the phenomenon thus: "I asked that woman, spirit, 'Bring me my energy!' Ten Canoes done that, bring me my memory back and my energy. You wake me up.
"Rolf, you bring us memory. We got culture because we got memory ... what a story, brother ..."
From Green Left Weekly, July 19, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.