In our second reflection on the Oxford Human Rights Film Festival, Alexandria Norris-Moore, a DEP Masters student (2016/17) who was one of the organisers, discusses the session that had the greatest impact on her.
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| (l-r) Jonathan Mazower, Regina Lim, Peter Kilroy, and Alexandria Norris-Moore |
Being on the Oxford Human Rights Festival Committee
was a great experience. The one night I would draw light on was the screening
of Utopia. This film is a documentary on the
extraordinary story about white Australia and its deeply dysfunctional
relationship with the Indigenous Australian community. Following the viewing we
held a panel discussion with three guests who were from very interesting
backgrounds, all looking at this issue of land rights for aboriginals and
indigenous peoples across the world: Peter Kilroy, Jonathan Mazower and Dr
Regina Lim.
Peter Kilroy is a British Academy
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and the
Department of Film Studies at King’s College London. Jonathan Mazower is
Advocacy and Media Director at Survival International, an organisation that
helps tribal peoples defend their lives, protect their lands and determine
their own futures. Dr Regina Lim of Oxford Brookes University did her PhD research in Philippine Cultural
Identity and Traditional Settlements in Development: Coming to terms with
cultural diversity in a nation-state.
This powerful film by John Pilger looks at the
awful truth behind white Australia's
dysfunctional relationship with Indigenous
Australians. In 2007, the Australian Prime
Minister claimed to have 'profound' evidence of high child abuse rates within
rural aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory of Australia. Based on
this information the Australian army went into these townships and took control
of the operation of the towns. This included quarantining a proportion of the
welfare benefits to all community members and controlling the access to and
from these aboriginal communities. This was called the 'Northern Territory
Intervention'. However, no prosecution for the reported 'child abuse' ever resulted
from the intervention and studies appear to conclude that the situation within
these communities were no better or worse then in other communities across all
of Australia. No apology was made to these communities on their treatment
during this time.
The panel looked at this through
the question around providing other examples of political interference within
the field of land rights for tribal people across the world.
The awful truth is that Indigenous
communities are often on mineral-rich lands that cause mouths to water in
mining corporation boardrooms. It has been stated that even if the
‘intervention’ wasn't a straightforward land grab, then it suited powerful
people who have a vested interest in keeping indigenous Australians second-class.
The panel looked at this tackling the question of land being taken away for
benefits of the government economically.
The panel then focused on the film
itself looking at what challenges a film maker may have in trying to get
involvement from Australian aboriginals to be a part of something like the
documentary Utopia.
It was a very educational and
insightful evening that took us from work with Bushmen of Botswana with
Survival International to indigenous Australians having remained itinerant and
stateless citizens in their own state, to the struggles of land rights for
tribes within the Philippines.
Pictures show the art exhibition at Oxford Brookes's Glass Tank space that ran throughout the Human Rights Festival.
