Wind & Sky ProductionsCanoe Project Sheds Light on Hidden Aboriginal History
1 July 2015 (revised)
A new project about bark canoes reveals a forgotten history of encounters between Aboriginal Victorians and settlers in the 1800s.
On the rivers of remote colonial Victoria, 19th century European settlers depended on Aboriginal navigators and canoe builders to transport goods, mail and people.
A documentary and multimedia project, now live on Culture Victoria, explores this little known aspect of colonial history through a short documentary film, image gallery, audio interviews and three short educational essays.
The film was screened on the Big Screen at Fed Square every day from the 5-11 July 2015 as part of NAIDOC week 2015.
Associate Professor Fred Cahir. Photograph by Jary Nemo.
Uncle Bryon Powell. Photograph by Jary Nemo.
Jamie Lowe. Photograph by Jary Nemo.
Rick Nelson. Photograph by Jary Nemo.
Produced by the independent film production company Wind & Sky Productions, the project was inspired by the research of the historian Dr Fred Cahir, an Associate Professor at Federation University Australia. “What sparked my interest was looking through 19th century records and seeing how much involvement Aboriginal people had in ordinary Australian lifestyles” says Associate Professor Cahir. “How much they contributed was immense.”
The project features interviews with the historian Associate Professor Fred Cahir and Traditional Owners Uncle Bryon Powell, Jamie Lowe and Rick Nelson, and includes artwork, maps and photographs from the regional and metropolitan collections of the State Library of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Public Record Office Victoria, Museum Victoria and the Ballarat Gold Museum.
As part of his research, Associate Professor Cahir found examples of explorers, gold miners and settlers using Aboriginal ferrying services and boat building services on Victorian rivers from the Murray to the coast. “We have loads of accounts of white people’s dependence on Aboriginal canoes”, says Cahir. “It wasn’t like I was getting a little skinny little sentence; I was getting very, very complex accounts.” The stories shed light on the generosity and ingenuity of Indigenous people and of the relationships formed between Aboriginal people and European colonists, who were “totally dependent on Aboriginal technology in that period of time in that area of Australia,” says Cahir. “It’s a really interesting story.”
Cahir’s research has come as a surprise to many Indigenous communities. “We initially thought we would find stories within Indigenous families that had been handed down, about canoe trade in the 1800s,” says film producer Lucinda Horrocks. “But we found this was such a great period of change and crisis for Aboriginal people that the stories have been lost.”
“One of the things that happened in the 1850s-1860s was the movement to take Aboriginal people and put them onto missions,” explains Uncle Bryon Powell, Chair of Wathaurung Aboriginal Corporation. “Once they were on the missions, they weren’t allowed to speak the language, weren’t allowed to tell the stories, sing the songs, teach the dances.” As a consequence, says Uncle Powell, “a lot of the cultural knowledge has gone.”
Cahir’s research comes as a revelation to historians as well. Since Federation, the stories of Victoria’s indebtedness to Aboriginal skills and Aboriginal people have been left out of the history books. “We weren’t told the stories, certainly in my schooling,” says Cahir, and it’s “not in the history books, still.” Powell argues this is because earlier historians had a tendency to under value Aboriginal technology. “It was very scantly recognised,” says Powell. Cahir agrees. “We’ve placed this veil over this window of Aboriginal entrepreneurship, Aboriginal inventiveness,” says Cahir.
Reviving the story of canoes could have a huge impact today, says Rick Nelson, Castlemaine resident and descendant of the Jaara people of the Dja Dja Wurrung language country. “It helped to settle the country, particularly our country, Victoria, Central Victoria”, he says.” That could be a difference between some settlements being established, and some not perhaps. It’s a huge story. It shows that people just helped in lots of ways, not just with their canoes, there’s a whole list of ways that Indigenous people helped the early explorers and settlers.”
To Jamie Lowe, a Djab Wurrung man now based in Geelong, this project is important because it tells a positive story. “You need to have balanced conversations,” says Lowe. “There was this destruction, there was people being placed in mission stations, there was massacres, there was devastation to the Aboriginal community but there’s also this other side where Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people co-existed, as we do today.”
Ultimately, Cahir hopes this project and the research behind it will spark a new interest in the Aboriginal contribution to the Australian character and bush legend, placing Aboriginal people back in their rightful place in our shared history. “Hopefully this canoe project will help to knit a new story, that the Australian legend is not just a European-born legend, that the Australian legend has strands of Aboriginal basis in it as well.”
Project Information
Film Running Time: 10:27 minutes
Film Directed by: Jary Nemo
Film and Project Produced by: Lucinda Horrocks and Jary Nemo
Project materials written by: Fred Cahir and Lucinda Horrocks
Research: Fred Cahir
Featuring: Fred Cahir, Bryon Powell, Jamie Lowe and Rick Nelson
Content Contributors: Wind & Sky Productions, State Library of Victoria, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Public Record Office Victoria, Museum Victoria and Sovereign Hill Museums Association: Gold Museum.
Film Screenings
Federation Square, NAIDOC Week, 5-12 July 2015
Where: The Big Screen, Federation Square, Melbourne.
When: Sunday 5 July – Saturday 11 July 2015
Screening Times
Sunday 5 July 9:30am and 1pm.
Monday 6 July 1pm and 7:30pm.
Tuesday 7 July 9:30am and 1pm.
Wednesday 8 July 9:30am and 1pm.
Thursday 9 July 9:30am.
Friday 10 July 9:30am.
Saturday 11 July 9:30am.
More Information
Visit FedTV for more information.
Project Link
http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/aboriginal-culture/seeing-the-land-from-an-aboriginal-canoe/
Image Source
Web and print media images can be found here for download.
About Wind & Sky Productions
Wind & Sky Productions is an independent film production company specialising in short documentaries.
Working mainly in digital video, they produce stories for smaller screens, web and digital formats. They are based in Ballarat in regional Victoria. They take on commissions and also produce self-driven projects where they develop story concepts, source funding, and bring together project partners and collaborators. Their remit is to produce stories which promote positive change and social responsibility.
Wind & Sky Production’s work is often distributed online, projected at special events, viewed on plasma screen installations or produced on DVD.
More information about Wind & Sky Productions is available at http://www.windsky.com.au.
Contact
Lucinda Horrocks, Producer, Wind & Sky Productions, enquire@windsky.com.au, (03) 5339 5469.
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