ABC 1, Sunday 10 June 2012
Docu-drama "Mabo"
Website and video of this program: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/mabo/
Many Australians would be aware that the word "Mabo" is synonymous with the landmark 1992 decision of the High Court which paved the way for recognition of indigenous land rights (often referred to as "the Mabo decision").
However, relatively few people would be aware of the back-story of Eddie (Koiki) Mabo and his wife Bonita and their family, and how their courage and the strength of their relationship allowed them to sustain them in their commitment to a long and taxing cause.
Eddie comes across as a loveable larrikin who believed in himself and the equality of indigenous Australians long before it was either fashionable or legally required. He is exiled as a troublemaker from his home, Murray Island in the Torres Strait, and it is decades before the island Council allows him to return; not even when his father is dying. He has an enquiring mind, and is not afraid to try to expand his mind and his knowledge despite his limited formal schooling. In one memorable scene he is depicted reading the dictionary.
In many flashbacks and references, the close relationship that he feels with his people and his land is depicted, and he forms a somewhat surprising (for the times) alliance with sympathetic white academics and lawyers who take up his cause and the cause of indigenous land rights. They must take on the inherent bigotry and prejudice of the times as well as the infamous Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland, who tries to pass legislation retrospectively extinguishing native land rights. This legislation is ultimately struck down by the High Court as unconstitutional. Eddie himself comes out second-best in a bruising encounter with the Western legal system of evidence and cross-examination, but the High Court decides 6:1 that the concept of "terra nullius" (vacant land) should not apply where a close connection can be shown to the land by its indigenous traditional owners.
Tragically Eddie died five months before the High Court's decision was handed down, but Bonita and their children were able both to see his quest brought to fruition and to return Eddie to Murray Island as his final resting place.
The Australia depicted in the 1950s and 1960s was not that far removed from the segregation of the American 'Deep South' or the apartheid of white South Africa. Aboriginal Australians were regarded as 'second-class citizens' who were not allowed to vote, had few rights before the law and were subject to segregation in public settings. In one scene we are told that Aboriginals had to enter the cinema via a separate door and sit in a particular area, and in another Eddie is refused a drink when he goes to the pub with several white workmates. Eddie and Bonita and their young son are refused accommodation in a number of hotels simply for being 'black'.
While I was a medical student on a placement with another student in an Aboriginal Community Co-operative in country Victoria, we had our own taste of what it is like to be regarded with mistrust and suspicion in your own land. At one point the male manager launched a long diatribe about white people and, pointing his finger at us, suggested that "you blokes" (we) were responsible for all the ills befalling Aboriginal people. Since we were actually there to help them and to try to improve their health, it was hard to understand why we could not be taken on our merits but we "tarred with the same brush" as the colonial occupiers. It was also interesting that although some local people had left a bowl of beautiful fresh fruit and freshly baked healthy muffins, that when lunchtime came the Co-op members preferred to go into town for Maccas rather than eat the healthy food which had been provided for them. We got to know the women and participated in painting a large mural with them, and when we ran a health screening clinic, it was initially the women who we had built a rapport with who came, and then they spread the word that we were "OK" via the 'bush telegraph' and more people came (but still predominantly women). Aboriginal health outcomes still lag far behind those of non-indigenous Australians, but this experience taught us the importance of working with indigenous people and attempting to gain their trust and understand their culture.
Just in the past few days in the news there has been a discussion concerning a huge backlog of native title claims and the Federal Government's plans for reform in this area. Eddie Mabo has left an enormous legacy, but even twenty years later there is work to be done with reconciling hopes and desires with the ponderous reality of the legal system.
This dramatisation is definitely recommended viewing!
There is also a documentary available on ABC TV iView: "Mabo, Life of an Island Man":
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=Corp_TV-iView|Mabo_AdWords_:abc%20tv%20mabo_e_g_19728495079_&gclid=CKvWv5TPz7ACFUlMpgod831TWw#/series/Mabo
and a series of videos from the"480: Mabo" series which was aired around the same time as the movie on ABC TV:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/mabo/videos/
No comments:
Post a Comment