Reckoning

The Uluru Statement from the Heart’s call for voice, truth-telling and treaty makes it clear that the systemic relationship between Indigenous and settler Australians remains unresolved. This fault line runs through the nation’s soul and affects every citizen. From an Indigenous perspective ‘sovereignty was never ceded or extinguished’ and the rest of us must jettison the myth of ‘peaceful settlement’ and acknowledge that the land we live on was taken by dispossession.
But what then? How do we square our being here with the fact that those who cared for this land for some 60,000 uninterrupted years were pushed off it? In Australia we have had 20 years of ‘reconciliation’ which has failed to change much for First Nations people. Will truth-telling turn out to be another iteration of Aboriginal victimhood? Reckoning will explore these questions and in doing so aims to offer practical models of how we might approach responsibility for the past and deal with the persistence of injustice.

We aim to bring viewers to acknowledge the myth of the ‘peaceful settlement’ of this country and confront the uncomfortable questions that follow in a way that doesn’t perpetuate disempowering feelings of guilt. In the spirit of truth-telling called for by the Uluru Statement the film will model a way forward which an audience as broad as the population of this continent can buy into. It will offer agency to every non-Indigenous Australian in addressing the past by acting in the present.

Whilst specific impact goals and measures are yet to be properly developed, in the short term the film will contribute towards changing attitudes among settler Australians (ie. all non-Indigenous citizens) through the sharing of recent historiography and models of action taken up by participants in the film.
In the medium term the impact campaign will provide impetus and resources for progress in Indigenous settler relations – in educational, advocacy and political circles and organisations.
In the long term it is hoped that Reckoning will become a model resource for change and that the practical examples of agency featured in the film will be copied and built upon throughout the country.

A panel of advisers to the film, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, is being formed during its development. Executive Producer and Co-Writer Steve Kinnane*, a Marda Marda scholar, writer, filmmaker and activist from Mirriwoong country in WA, is providing cultural advice and the project is also forming relationships with the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration at University of Melbourne. As we work with specific communities, key representatives will be drawn into the advisory circle. The film will be made collaboratively with participants, both black and white (Cultural protocols available on request).
Advisers to the project include historian Prof Henry Reynolds and until her recent sad and untimely death, Prof Lyndall Ryan.

*Steve Kinnane is Research Coordinator at the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre. His creative work over 20 years includes the award winning documentary ‘The Coolbaroo Club’ (1995) and the multi-award winning book ‘Shadowlines’ (2003).

The primary response which Reckoning will hope to provoke is that audience members examine their own position on Indigenous settler relationships and the challenge of the proposal that ‘we all live on stolen land’. Through asking what action they might personally take in response, we are seeking to change the audience rather than spark it to advocate, although that may follow. Accepting that we all have agency in resolving Indigenous settler relations in this country in line with the Uluru Statement, audience members can borrow from the models demonstrated by participants in the film or develop their own. They will also be able to participate in the impact strategy accompanying the film, for example by hosting screenings, working for policy change, engaging with social media or simply learning about the Aboriginal history of the particular land on which they live.