Genocide in the Wildflower State

Black Magic

Although about top Aboriginal sportsmen, BLACK MAGIC is more than a film about sport. It is an account of the creative use of sport made by the Noongar people of Western Australia's south-west to advance their people's standing. Denied access to other areas of social life like most Aboriginal communities at the time, the Noongars, from as early as 1920, channelled the natural talent of their young people into the arena of competitive sport, notably running, boxing and football. Competitive sport, as filmmaker Paul Roberts notes, is 'an open gate, a universal rite of passage, an opportunity to achieve recognition and acceptance.'

A Million Acres a Year

After World War Two, successive governments sold off and encouraged the clearing of less viable areas for agriculture. During the 1960s a million acres a year were opened up. Much of the land was unsuitable for farming yet the new landholders were obliged to bulldoze and burn the native bush or risk losing their allocation. Most were eager to do so and pressured the government to release even more land. The long-term consequences have been devastating, with industrial farming and salinity turning most of this priceless natural heritage into a biological desert.

The Habits Of New Norcia

The stories in The Habits of New Norcia are told by former Western Australian Aboriginal child 'inmates' of the New Norcia Benedictine Mission who were separated from their families in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and confined in this "orphanage without orphans". In recent decades the New Norcia Monastery has been packaged as one of the State's leading cultural tourist attractions. "A unique blend of Spanish architecture, European art treasures and pioneer history," "Monks, Music & Mystery," "New Norcia, Australia's only monastic town," the brochures announce. Aboriginal testimony in the film challenges this revised and sanitised history. The documentary provides damming evidence of the continuing violence of the Mission against its victims by deliberate omission of their experience in the New Norcia museum, guided tours, art gallery and promotions — an omission that represents a cruel and wounding cover-up.