06/12/13 11:57 Filed in: Filmmaking | Culture
In the summer of 2008 I visited the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands of South Australia for the first time. APY is an area of traditional land whose title is in the hands of Aboriginal people. It is, I believe, the largest piece of country in Australia whose full body of traditional tjukurpa is still intact. I went there to record an historic meeting between representatives of the trade union movement and Australia’s first peoples.
It wasn’t my first visit to an Aboriginal community but it was like no other. While earlier visits were characterised by shock in discovering that Australia was not the place I always thought it was, this was the beginning of a different kind of education, a long way from my university studies in science, education and social ecology. This was the education that would go well beyond the intellect and primarily inform the senses and spirit. Through it I would come to consider what it really means to have freedom and what it means to strive to be a full human being. These were questions that men and women of the APY Lands had been considering for millennia.
It wasn’t my first visit to an Aboriginal community but it was like no other. While earlier visits were characterised by shock in discovering that Australia was not the place I always thought it was, this was the beginning of a different kind of education, a long way from my university studies in science, education and social ecology. This was the education that would go well beyond the intellect and primarily inform the senses and spirit. Through it I would come to consider what it really means to have freedom and what it means to strive to be a full human being. These were questions that men and women of the APY Lands had been considering for millennia.
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