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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
This film depicts the 1918 massacre of Aboriginal people at Mowla Bluff, Western Australia. The story of the massacre is told in interviews with surviving Nyikina, Mangala and Karajarri peoples, as well as through dramatised reenactments of the testimonials of Aboriginal witnesses.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Indigenous Performance of History, Loss and Remembrance in Whispering in Our Hearts : The Story of the Mowla Bluff Massacre
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , vol. 15 no. 2 2013; (p. 211-223) 'This essay undertakes a cultural analysis that draws from the authors' different disciplinary and media backgrounds – Romaine Moreton in Indigenous philosophy, spoken-word performance and filmmaking and Therese Davis in film and cultural studies – to examine the Australian historical documentary film Whispering In Our Hearts: The Mowla Bluff Massacre (2001). Directed by Mitch Torres in collaboration with her community, the Nyikina, Mangala and Karrajarri people of northwestern Australia, the film uses a range of performance modes to expose how Indigenous accounts of a massacre in 1916 have been systematically covered over in and through written history. We examine ways in which the film ‘translates’ the meanings of the Indigenous community's songs and stories, making their content available to a wider audience and argue that the film is more than a contested or competing history in the western sense. The community innovates to produce a new historiography by adopting and adapting film technology as a means for transmitting Indigenous embodied ways of knowing the relation between the present and the past, sentient and non-sentient, to perform Indigenous history and remembrance for the purpose of cultural healing.' (Authors abstract)
-
Indigenous Performance of History, Loss and Remembrance in Whispering in Our Hearts : The Story of the Mowla Bluff Massacre
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , vol. 15 no. 2 2013; (p. 211-223) 'This essay undertakes a cultural analysis that draws from the authors' different disciplinary and media backgrounds – Romaine Moreton in Indigenous philosophy, spoken-word performance and filmmaking and Therese Davis in film and cultural studies – to examine the Australian historical documentary film Whispering In Our Hearts: The Mowla Bluff Massacre (2001). Directed by Mitch Torres in collaboration with her community, the Nyikina, Mangala and Karrajarri people of northwestern Australia, the film uses a range of performance modes to expose how Indigenous accounts of a massacre in 1916 have been systematically covered over in and through written history. We examine ways in which the film ‘translates’ the meanings of the Indigenous community's songs and stories, making their content available to a wider audience and argue that the film is more than a contested or competing history in the western sense. The community innovates to produce a new historiography by adopting and adapting film technology as a means for transmitting Indigenous embodied ways of knowing the relation between the present and the past, sentient and non-sentient, to perform Indigenous history and remembrance for the purpose of cultural healing.' (Authors abstract)
Last amended 13 Aug 2018 08:07:41
Subjects:
- Mowla Bluff, Kimberley area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
- 1918
Settings:
- Mowla Bluff, Kimberley area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
- 1918
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