Tiriki Onus Tiriki Onus i(23287655 works by)
Gender: Male
Heritage: Aboriginal ; Aboriginal Yorta Yorta / Yota Yota
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Works By

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1 In 1951, Corroboree Dancers in Darwin Went on Strike: Their Actions Would Reverberate as Far as Melbourne Amanda Harris , Linda Barwick , Tiriki Onus , 2023 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 7 August 2023;
1 1 Performing Aboriginal Rights in 1951: From Australia's Top End to Southeast Amanda Harris , Tiriki Onus , Linda Barwick , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Australian Journal of Politics and History , June vol. 69 no. 2 2023; (p. 227-247)

'In 1951, performers from Daly River and Tiwi Islands Aboriginal communities staged a corroboree strike. The musicians and dancers had routinely entertained visiting cruise ships in the Darwin Botanic Gardens, but now joined dockside workers to protest the jailing and exiling of two Aboriginal agitators Lawrence Wurrpen (Urban) and Fred (Nadpur) Waters. In Melbourne, the Australian Aborigines' League expressed solidarity with the Darwin strikes and protested the exclusion of Aboriginal voices from the Jubilee of Australian Federation. The League's leaders Doug Nicholls and Bill Onus produced a new work of musical theatre featuring east coast Aboriginal performers Fred Foster, Margaret Tucker, Georgia Lee, Harold Blair, and others in ‘Out of the Dark — An Aboriginal Moomba’. In this paper we examine political uses of performance in Australia's assimilation era, and show how Aboriginal agitators used music and dance to connect struggles for rights across Australia, and to keep cultural identity alive. In doing so we show how performance operated both as work and as assertion of cultural sovereignty.' (Introduction)

1 1 form y separately published work icon Ablaze Alec Morgan , Tiriki Onus , ( dir. Alec Morgan et. al. )agent Australia : 2021 23287682 2021 single work film/TV

'Ablaze tells of Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri man from Victoria, a truly heroic cultural and political figure who revived his peopleʼs culture in the 1940s and ignited a civil rights movement that would, against enormous odds, change the course of history.

'Through rare archival footage, state-of-the-art animation, vividly created digital motion graphics and eye-witness accounts, Ablaze is the compelling tale – part detective story, part contemporary opera – of how Bill and supporters brilliantly orchestrated their campaign for equality through performance, entertainment, film  and sheer audacity outsmarted mighty forces seeking to destroy Indigenous cultures, languages, and communities.

'Ablaze is an enlightening film for today’s turbulent times.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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