'Engagements with walking, wandering, roaming the land are not new to Australian writers or filmmakers. A recognition of ambulation as discursive, as world-making, continues today: “First you have to learn to walk,” announces Stephen Muecke in a new book, co-authored with Paddy Roe, on learning how to move on Country. Muecke’s teachers and guides are Indigenous knowledge-holders; he walks only in their footsteps. But in post-Mabo narratives more generally, whose lands are being walked on? Whose worlds are being made as mobility is performed? This essay examines the trope of roaming and of the foot in contemporary Australian Indigenous-authored narratives, wherein walking or mobility in story invokes not only a connection to Country but an enactment of law making and an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty. In a seminal speech in Adelaide in 2003, Indigenous legal philosopher Irene Watson asked “Are we Free to Roam?” Watson asserted the freedom to walk, “to sing and to live with the land of [one’s] ancestors” as a measure of the attainment of Indigenous sovereignty. She called for Aboriginal voices to look “beyond the limited horizon” of the time towards a moment and place of sovereignty. I argue that these voices have now emerged. Beginning with an examination of Ivan Sen’s film Beneath Clouds (2002), I then examine walking and movement in a selection of more recent Indigenous-authored novels (by Alexis Wright, Kim Scott and Julie Janson) and film (by Richard J. Frankland), as well as in new legal thinking which suggests that law-walking might be more prevalent in Australia than previously known.' (Publication abstract)
'In the twentieth century, many of the most notable depictions of Indigenous Australians and their culture in feature films were steered by white filmmakers: see, for example, Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978), Manganinnie (John Honey, 1980) and The Fringe Dwellers (Bruce Beresford, 1986), to name a handful. While these are foundational and generally empathetic works, their dramatisations of Aboriginal life nonetheless exhibit signs of misguided exoticism, cultural appropriation and inauthenticity: on Jedda, for example, director Chauvel had the voice of lead actress Rosalie Kunoth-Monks (then Ngarla Kunoth) dubbed on the soundtrack due to uncertainty about presenting Indigenous voices on film, signifying a colonial hangover.' (Introduction)
'While cars have long been associated with masculinity and youth within cinema – through a now long established tradition of the road movie – the representation of girls and/with cars is less common and often problematic. Here, I argue that an analysis of the ways in which girls are shown to interact with cars within two independent road movies can reveal much about discourses of victimhood, power and agency. In these films, girls are rarely shown to be at the wheel themselves, instead they are driven by men; these experiences as passengers are shown to be complex and fraught with danger. However, through these representations the audience are invited to recognise and acknowledge pervasive discourses of victimhood and, in so doing, a new space is created. This new discourse is one which both acknowledges victimhood, but at the same time recognises the resilience and agency of young women.' (Publication abstract)
'In the twentieth century, many of the most notable depictions of Indigenous Australians and their culture in feature films were steered by white filmmakers: see, for example, Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978), Manganinnie (John Honey, 1980) and The Fringe Dwellers (Bruce Beresford, 1986), to name a handful. While these are foundational and generally empathetic works, their dramatisations of Aboriginal life nonetheless exhibit signs of misguided exoticism, cultural appropriation and inauthenticity: on Jedda, for example, director Chauvel had the voice of lead actress Rosalie Kunoth-Monks (then Ngarla Kunoth) dubbed on the soundtrack due to uncertainty about presenting Indigenous voices on film, signifying a colonial hangover.' (Introduction)
