Back Trackers
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Making History
Director: Lew Griffiths
Released: 1992, re-released 1996
Duration: 24 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 617 8

This video has been commissioned by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in association with the Department of Employment, Education and Training as part of the National Reconciliation and Schooling Strategy. It provides information about the importance of recording and documenting local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history. The book, Telling it like it is, by Penny Taylor, ($19.95 incl GST) is a useful accompliment to this CD.


Camels and the Pitjantjara
Director: Roger Sandall
Released: 1969
Duration: 45 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 618 5

The camel, introduced into central Australia in the early days of European penetration, soon ran wild. In the more arid regions, the Pitjantjatjara (Pitjantjara) now make use of the feral camels. By taming and using them as pack animals, it is possible for the people to maintain social and cultural ties throughout the vastness of their country.


Cass—No Saucepan Diver
Director: Wayne Barker
Released: 1983
Duration: 12 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 619 2

Aboriginal film-maker Wayne Barker returned to his home in Broome, Western Australia, to make this film about his grandfather, Cass Drummond. The result is a personal portrait of a staunchly self-reliant old man as he looks back on his life in the pearling industry and comments on what it was like to be Aboriginal in the polyglot culture of the coastal northwest earlier this century.


Collum Calling Canberra
Directors: David and Judith MacDougall
Released: 1984
Duration: 54 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 620 8

Gordon Smith, head of the cooperative that runs Collum Collum Station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, it's manager, are trying to get a government loan to stock the property with breeding cattle so that it can become financially independent. So begins their frustrating experience of dealing with official decision-makers in Canberra.


Coniston Muster
Director: Roger Sandell
Released: 1972
Duration: 28 minutes
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 621 5

This film is a sympathetic portrait of Coniston Johnny, the Aboriginal head stockman of Coniston Station, northwest of Alice Springs. It is a personal and often humorous insight into a way of life that has involved large numbers of Aboriginal people.


Familiar Places
Director: David MacDougall
Released: 1980
Duration: 50 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 622 2

Anthropologist Peter Sutton is taken by an Aboriginal family, the Naponans, to map hereditary clan country in northern Queensland where they hope to live one day. To the children it is all new; to an old man it brings back vivid memories.


Full Circle
Director: Kim McKenzie
Released: 1987
Duration: 20 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 623 9

The identity of Garawa men centres on their skills with horses and cattle. The film looks at the development of this identity as stockmen recount their history against the backdrop of the annual muster and the local rodeo.


Giving it a Go
Directors: Wayne Barker and Kim McKenzie
Released: 1983
Duration: 22 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 624 6

This film was made at the request of the residents of Benelong's Haven near Kempsey on the central coast of New South Wales. Benelong's Haven is a centre for Aborigines who recognise in themselves a problem with alcohol and wish to give a different way of life 'a go'. Despite limited resources, the success of the centre attracts people from as far afield as central and northern Queensland.


Good-bye Old Man
Director: David MacDougall
Released: 1977
Duration: 66 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 625 3

A last request of a Tiwi man on Melville Island was that a film be made of the pukumani (bereavement) ceremony to follow his death. The film follows his family, from the days of preparation to their final leave-taking of the old man.


Groote Eylandt Music and Dance
Director: Alice Moyle
Released: 1969
Duration: 20 minutes
Audience: tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 626 0

Made on Groote Eylandt in 1969 these films are mainly for students wishing to analyse the dances and associate songs of two Aboriginal groups in the eastern Arnhem land region.


House-Opening, The
Director: Judith MacDougall.
Released: 1980
Duration: 42 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 627 7

When Geraldine Kawanka's husband died she and her children left their house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times, a bark house would have been burnt, but today a 'house-opening' ceremony — creatively mingling Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European elements — has evolved to deal with death in the midst of new living patterns. This film records the opening of the house and Geraldine's feelings about it in her informative and personal commentary.


It's A Long Road Back
Director: Coral Edwards
Released: 1981
Duration: 12 minutes
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 628 4

Between 1883 and 1969, approximately 6,000 Aboriginal children in New South Wales were taken from their families and put into institutions run by Aborigines Welfare Board. While in the ‘homes’, the children were deprived of their Aboriginal identity. This film tells of the effects that such an upbringing had and the struggle of one woman to regain her Aboriginality.


Link-Up Diary
Director: David MacDougall.
Released: 1987
Duration: 90 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 629 1

A film about the effects of the New South Wales government's long-term practice of forced removal of Aboriginal children. It takes the form of a personal journey by film-maker David MacDougall as he spends a week 'on the road' with three workers of Link-Up, an Aboriginal organisation devoted to reuniting Aboriginal families whose children were taken.


Lockhart Festival
Director: Curtis Levy
Released 1974
Duration: 32 minutes
Audience:  primary, secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 630 7

A dance festival organised by the Aboriginal people of Lockhart River in northern Queensland, becomes an occasion of forging social links among eight Aboriginal groups in Cape York Peninsula and Groote Eylandt.


Lurugu
Director: Curtis Levy
Released 1974
Duration: 56 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 631 4

When this film was made, few young men on Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria had passed through the traditional ceremony that signals manhood. Lurugu shows the revival of the ceremony and the interplay, in both ritual and everyday contexts, of people on the Island.


Make it Right!
Director: Kim McKenzie
Released: 1988
Duration: 22 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl.GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 633 8

Make it Right is a film of the 1988 Barunga Festival which includes scenes with representatives of various Northern Territory Land Councils such as Galarrwuy Yunuping, John Ah Kit and Pat Dodson, and the then Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gerry Hand. It also includes a speech by Bob Hawke (then Prime Minister) where he promises that a treaty will be negotiated with the Aboriginal people.


Making a Bark Canoe
Director: Roger Sandall
Released: 1969
Duration: 16 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl.GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 632 1

A huge sheet of bark cut from a single tree is the basis of a canoe made by Aborigines in one part of Arnhem Land, to collect the eggs of the magpie geese. In the film two men show how it is done in the swamps west of Buckingham Bay.


Malbangka Country
Director: Curtis Levy
Released: 1977
Duration: 30 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 634 5

Gustav Malbangka and his family lived at Hermannsburg Mission in central Australia. Like many others, they wished to leave the social problems of congested settlements behind them and return to their traditional land. This film is about their attempt to carve out a more satisfactory life for themselves, drawing their strength from being in their homeland again. Narrated by Gus Williams, a member of the family.


Mourning for Mangatopi
Director: Curtis Levy
Released: 1975
Duration: 53 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance.
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 635 2

A pukumani (bereavement) ceremony of the Tiwi of Melville Island. An old man organises the ceremony held for his dead son's spirit, the first full-scale ceremony of its kind to be performed for many years.


Something of the Times
Director: Kim McKenzie
Released 1985
Duration: 40 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 636 9

In the remote wetlands of the NT, white shooters relied upon local Aboriginal labour to hunt the feral buffalo and export their hides. As a result, the lives of certain Aborigines came to revolve around the buffalo industry. The film looks at the varied relationships this produced, and the lasting effects of the buffalo upon people and the land.


Stockman's Strategy
Directors: David and Judith MacDougall
Released 1984
Duration: 51 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 637 6

Stockman's Strategy explores the philosophy of teaching and learning of Sunny Bancroft, manager of an Aboriginal-run cattle station in northern New South Wales, and his 16-year-old apprentice, Shane Gordon.


Sunny and the Dark Horse
Directors: David and Judith MacDougall
Released 1986
Duration: 83 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 638 3

The true story of a family's involvement and growing passion for 'picnic racing'. Sunny Bancroft is an Aboriginal cattle-station manager in New South Wales. With his non-Aboriginal wife Liz, two daughters and Liz's mother 'Tex', he searches for a winning horse to triumph on the local circuit — but things don't always go his way.


Takeover
Directors: David and Judith MacDougall
Released 1980
Duration: 87 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 639 0

On 13 March 1978, the Queensland government announced its intention to take over management of Aurukun Aboriginal Reserve from the Uniting Church. The people of Aurukun feared that the state was merely seeking easier access to rich bauxite deposits on their reserve. When the Federal government took the side of the Aborigines the stage was set for a national confrontation. This film provides an inside view of a community under threat.


Three Horsemen
Directors: David and Judith MacDougall
Released 1982
Duration: 50 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 640 6

Bob Massey Pootchemunka has spent most of his life as a stockman and drover. Now over 75, his ambition is to see an all-Aboriginal cattle station operating at Ti-Tree on his traditional clan land. Three Horsemen focuses on Bob, his nephew, Eric, and Eric's son, Ian, who struggle to make his ambition a reality.


To Get that Country
Director: David MacDougall
Released 1978
Duration: 66 minutes
Audience: tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 641 3

An important historical film of events surrounding early meetings of the Northern Land Council in 1977, where uranium mining, land rights and Aboriginal leadership were the key issues.


A Transfer of Power
Film-makers: David and Judith MacDougall
Released: 1986
Duration: 21 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 642 0

Replacing the engine in an old car is a familiar rural task, but how people go about it differs. For these Aboriginal men in New South Wales, it's an occasion for affirming continuing relationships in characteristically Aboriginal ways.


Waiting for Harry
Director: Kim McKenzie.
Released: 1980
Duration: 55 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 657 4

Set in Arnhem Land, east of Maningrida, we witness Frank Gurrmanamana as he prepares the final mortuary ceremonies for his dead brother.


A Walbiri Fire Ceremony: Ngatjakula
Director: Roger Sandall. Edited version by Kim McKenzie.
Released: 1977
Duration: 21 minutes
Audience: secondary, tertiary, contains Aboriginal music and dance.
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 643 7

Originally shot in 1967, the footage in this film is re-examined ten years later by anthropologist Nicolas Peterson.

Ngatjakula is one of the most spectacular ceremonies of central Australia, employing fire to inflict real and symbolic punishment on those responsible for a social transgression. It serves to resolve conflict and, in the process, makes manifest underlying structures of Warlpiri (Walbiri) society.


Western Desert Woomera
Final version prepared by Wayne Barker
Released 1981
Duration: 11 minutes
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 644 4

Made from footage shot in 1970 this film shows the making of a spearthrower by two Pintupi men of the Lake McDonald area and underlines the importance of the spearthrower to these people.


York Billy
Director: Kim McKenzie
Released 1981
Duration: 18 minutes
Audience: primary, secondary, tertiary
DVD $19.95 incl. GST, plus postage

ISBN 978 0 85575 645 1

Yorky Billy spent his long life in the bush in a part of the Northern Territory now undergoing massive change with the development of open-cut uranium mines. His mother was Aboriginal, his father from Yorkshire. He talks of his life as a professional buffalo shooter, dingo hunter and gold prospector.