AustLit

'This article analyses the Australian film Ten Canoes (2006), which was co-directed by non-Indigenous director Rolf de Heer and Indigenous director Peter Djigirr. The essay forgrounds the relationship between the 'I' of the Indigenous narrator and the 'you' of a mainstream non-Indigenous audience that must read the English subtitles while viewing the visual text, which brings the viewing experience closer to that of engaging with a long poem. The narrator encourages an affective response from the viewer by inviting the viewer/reader to 'see' the story and therefore to 'know' it. This combination of corporeal and mental engagement with the text brings the reading strategy close to what Gayatri Spivak calls 'critical intimacy', a strategy that we argue is an appropriate - and indeed ethical - way for non-Indigenous (and perhaps non-Yolgnu) viewers to respond to this film, which is the first Indigenous language film to be produced in Australia.' [Authors' abstract]