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Exile and The Kingdom Part 1
About
In the beginning, when the world was soft, Creation beings lifted the earth out of the sea. Then the world became hard — Colonisation, slavery, mining booms. This is the story of the Aboriginal people of Roebourne — their Law, their tribal voice, their survival.
Exile and The Kingdom — a multi award-winning feature documentary in two parts. Made with the Yindjibarndi, Ngarluma, Banyjima and Gurrama people of Roebourne, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
An account in of the experiences of a community of Aboriginal people from pre-colonial times to the 1990s. This film makes the connection between Aboriginals in chains in the 19th century and Aboriginal people in prisons today, providing an incisive understanding of how the violence and denials of the past inform the present. Ultimately, the film gives conviction that with their extraordinary resilience, the Indigenous peoples of Australia will survive and flourish.
The documentary argues that the relentless removal of the Yindjibarndi/Ngarluma people from their hinterland estates into coastal ghettos has led to the community’s current problems. However, as the film moves us through the period of British colonisation, unearthing appalling facts about slavery and the violent rule of pearling and pastoral overlords, to the abuses of the 1960s iron ore mining boom and problems of alcohol, it never allows the viewer to forget the significance and influence of spiritual homelands — the bedrock upon which Yindjibarndi tribal law is based. Above all, the film is a beautifully logical and persuasive argument for land rights.
