The AFI award-winning film Ten Canoes was shown in Sydney to mark the significant anniversary of the referendum that legally recognised the original inhabitants of Australia. It is the first feature film to be shot almost entirely in an Aboriginal language (predominantly Ganalbingu).
Ten Canoes uses the medium of film to tell some of the collective stories of the Yolngu people from a remote area of the Northern Territory. The film was developed using an approach based on the common experience of the group.
Firstly, the narrative and approach of the movie were developed by the community with the director, Rolf de Heer. The community controlled its content down to deciding on the cast. They used the film to bring to life some of the 4000 black and white glass plate photographs taken by Dr Donald Thomson, an anthropologist who lived among the people of Arnhem Land in the 1930s.
These photographs held in Museum Victoria captured many aspects of Yolngu culture including the traditional annual bark canoeing expedition to hunt magpie geese and collect their eggs as depicted in the film. The modern Yolngu had not maintained the traditional skills including making the bark canoes and tools used for housing and hunting.
The film makes use of both black and white and colour. The tale of the Yolgnu ancestors from 1,000 years ago is presented in black and white. The main dramatic story — a cautionary tale about the magpie goose hunting expedition — is presented in colour.
This unusual movie became the nucleus for a number of additional canoe projects. Eleven Canoes introduced a video media course into the town of Ramingining to teach documentary making to the young people of the community. This contributed content to the interactive Twelve Canoes website where the people of Ramingining display the aspects of their environment, culture and people they wish to communicate to the outside world .
The digital media project 12 Canoes is a broadband website that presents, in an artistic, cultural and educational context, the stories, art and environment of the Yolngu people who live around the Arafura swamp in north-eastern Arnhem Land. The Yolngu people of the Arufura swamp are few in number, but their wealth of stories and artwork highlights who they are, and the importance of acknowledging and preserving their culture. In this context the website is an important reference and educational resource.
In 12 Canoes,