Each month the editorial team at The Monthly and The Saturday Paper curate a selection of insightful articles which explore a particular topic. Coinciding with a featured documentary topic for new DocPlay releases, these selections provide a great opportunity to dive deeper.
Two documentaries about the racial vilification of AFL champion and former Australian on the Year Adam Goodes have premiered at film festivals this year: The Final Quarter and The Australian Dream. The AFL likes to consider the game egalitarian, but, as Sam Vincent writes, both of these documentaries reveal how, only four years ago, this decorated player who dared to assert pride in his Aboriginality was hounded into retirement by wilful spectators and critics in the media, and assisted by an inactive administration.
The Goodes case represents a high-profile and shameful moment in Australia’s journey to reconciliation. But, as Kim Mahood writes, there are less-known, successful efforts being made elsewhere. Through the Uti Kulintjaku project, the Anangu people of the Western Desert region and health professionals are working towards a common language, to make it easier to share complex ideas about mental health. Mahood describes it as “one of the most exciting and encouraging and hopeful developments that I’ve seen in Central Australia”.
Swan Song: Documenting The Adam Goodes Saga
In the story the AFL likes to tell about itself, Australia’s Indigenous game is a forum for the advancement of First Nations people. Much vaunted is the statistic that since the national competition was established in 1990, the proportion of its players who are Indigenous has climbed to around 10 per cent, compared with 3 per cent of the wider population … In practice, the AFL celebrates black Australia on white Australia’s terms.
At The Edge of Comprehension
In Pitjantjatjara, to listen properly and to understand are synonymous. You can’t listen if you don’t understand the language of the other people in the conversation. This isn’t a difficult concept, but it seems to have eluded the grasp, or at least the capacity, of governments, educators, police and health professionals.
Voice, Treaty, Truth
The voice to parliament is not an original idea. It is as old as the calls for treaties. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always wanted an enhanced role in decision-making in Australia’s democracy. Having a role in democracy, though, does not mean that the bureaucracy should be the conduit of that participation. Especially when the bureaucracy has a penchant for new-age philosophy.
