ABC Australia celebrates NAIDOC week

ABC Australia celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC Week which runs from 4 – 11 July is celebrated by all Australians and is a great opportunity to learn more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. 

In My Blood It Runs

This heart-warming observational documentary is about history, learning, love and resistance. Told through the eyes of charismatic 10-year-old Arrernte/Garrwa boy Dujuan and his family, the film charts the challenges Dujuan faces both in his school and on the streets of Alice Springs.

In his community Dujuan is recognised as a child-healer and a hunter. He speaks three languages, yet despite his depth of wisdom and intelligence, Dujuan is failing in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police.  As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrente education alongside his western education.  We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future.

In My Blood It Runs reveals the complexities First Nations communities face negotiating colonisation whilst maintaining their cultural identities and practices through self-determination, the revitalisation of languages and connection to Country. It is a deeply moving insight into a side of Australia rarely depicted on screen.

4 July at 16:00 SIN / 18:00 PNG

Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky

Presenter, co-writer and slam poet Steven Oliver takes the audience on an incredible and scenic journey across Australia from the cliffs of Kurnell to the Torres Strait. As he travels the land interrogating Cook’s legacy, he poses the question, does Australia have a blurred history of Captain Cook?

11 July at 17:30 SIN / 19:30 PNG

Maralinga Tjarutja

WHEN THE DUST SETTLES, CULTURE REMAINS

Surviving aggressive colonisation, including dispossession to enable atomic testing, and through their tenacious spirit and cultural strength, the Maralinga people fight to retain their country.

These lands have been home to the Maralinga people for over sixty thousand years. This deep relationship with their country was challenged by the arrival of a colonising force that lead to the institutionalisation of the Maralinga people in the Ooldea Mission in the 1920s.

This attempt to dispossess was intensified as Maralinga land was used for the British Nuclear Test Program between 1953 and 1963. The Maralinga people never relinquished their connection to and responsibility for their country. They fought for the clean-up of the radioactive and other contamination, for compensation and for the handback in 2009 of the Maralinga Village and Test Sites.

What has been achieved is a rebuilding of traditional communities into vibrant, creative cultural communities that will ensure Maralinga custodianship of their lands for the next sixty thousand years.

11 July at 18:30 SIN / 20:30 PNG