THE PLEDGE

The profound disconnect and misunderstanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and Australia’s failure to understand the desperate realities of people’s lives in places such as Tennant Creek and other remote Indigenous communities in 2024.

We hope to ring an alarm bell on the profound institutional failure of successive governments in addressing and fixing the challenges facing remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Since people were pushed off their land into town camps in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the situation has progressively deteriorated. It is now at a stage where Latenzia described Tennant Creek, her home, as a “prison”.
She said: “I feel like I am in prison but this is my home. What am I supposed to do?”

In addition we would like to:
• Raise awareness of the dire situation in remote Indigenous communities
• Spotlight the intractable cycle of desperation through one family’s radical plan to save the next generation of children so they too don’t end up being consumed by the cycle.
• Focus on commonalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – we all love our children and want the best for them. And if that means leaning on family or friends for help so be it so long as the children are safe.
• Provide a platform for the amplification of the family voice, so they can share with audiences the terrible intergenerational bind in which they find themselves – keep your kids close and risk them getting in bad trouble or going off the trails (because of the prevailing culture among bored and untethered teens in the town) or send them away, far away, on a wing and a prayer to try to keep them safe and break the cycle.

The Pledge documentary is possible to make because of the deep trust exists between The Pledge creator Amanda and the family of Latenzia, whom Amanda’s mother took under her wing in her teens when she was at boarding school. Latenzia’s bond with Amanda and her family was profound and enduring. Hence when Latenzia, having returned to Tennant Creek, reached a crisis point, she turned to Amanda, asking her to help by raising Naida. Because of the trust and enduring family relationships which have evolved since the death of Latenzia, Amanda has the full support of Latenzia’s family and the Warumungu community to make The Pledge. When Latenzia was alive she formally asked Amanda to tell her story to the world because she was desperate for people to understand the reality of life there and felt the message was never getting through. Following her passing, her sister Lavina Grant has approved and embraced this film, and isn a co-producer of it. And family and community elder Josephine Grant (one of Latenzia’s aunts) and other family members have all embraced the making of the documentary, as has Naida herself.

This is a personal and family story that raises as many questions as it answers. It is not like That Sugar Film or others that have a direct CTA.
The impact is the raw response of the tragedy of one family’s story that we hope will change hearts and minds, increasing compassion and diminishing racism.