Latest news with #Aboriginal
ABC News
34 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Mum: Trailer
ABC iview Home Watch all your favourite ABC programs on ABC iview. More from ABC We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.
ABC News
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Compass: Series 39 The Wayside Weddings
ABC iview Home Watch all your favourite ABC programs on ABC iview. More from ABC We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Grave robber' posed for the cameras as he pillaged human remains
The collecting of human remains on an almost industrial scale began in the 19th century and continued long into the 20th. One of the museums most active in collecting human remains was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and it was a partner in the expedition to Arnhem Land, along with the National Geographic Society. Frank Setzler was constitutionally incapable of entering an Aboriginal burial ground without thinking about how to rob it. He had form on this front, having collected many remains of Native American people earlier in his career. They were all accessioned into the Smithsonian's physical anthropology collection, one of the largest collections of human bones in the world. It is a sign of his brashness that he allowed a colleague to film his 'grave robbing', as other scientists on the expedition called it. Captured on celluloid, Setzler's actions are repellent yet compelling. Watching it now in the 21st century, with the old 16-millimetre footage converted into a digital file, it is easy to stop and start the film, or to magnify it until the image dissolves into a pixelated blur. In making the film, Setzler transformed the fleetingness of the theft into something that would last forever. His handwritten diary is as brutally candid as the film. He frankly acknowledges his duplicity towards the Bininj, as the people of west Arnhem Land call themselves. In an entry some weeks earlier, he recorded the moment he first spotted the bones. At that stage he was still getting his bearings on the hill. When a Bininj guide showed him around, he could hardly believe the abundance of human remains. But he kept his thoughts to himself: 'I paid no attention to these bones as long as the native was with me'. By the time he was ready to take the bones, he knew the site well, having spent some weeks on the plateau excavating for stone tools. Before he took the bones, he liaised with the expedition's American photographer Howell Walker, who agreed to join him on the plateau and shoot both still and moving footage of their acquisition. The film shows how they tried to make the theft a pedagogical performance, presumably to give it scientific credibility. Setzler at one point can be seen lifting and handling a skull. He points out distinctive features and then slots its jaw in place before presenting to the camera its largely toothless grin. The final seconds of the bone stealing show a glimpse of distant scenery. There is a strip of land, the grass yellow-brown. Further away lies the gleaming billabong and beyond it the mission dwellings. The sequence ends when Setzler and the expedition Australian guide Bill Harney (who suddenly appears from nowhere) cross the frame. Manhandling the now lidded crate, they disappear from the picture. The film is jarringly out of time. It stinks of the body-snatching of the 19th century. Yet we see it through the medium of cinema, that most 20th-century of art forms, and in colour no less. Another disconnect is the lack of soundtrack. We tend to expect that a colour film will have audio, but without the lecture that once accompanied it, there is nothing but deadly silence. No voice. No birdsong. Everything is mute. This sequence is part of the National Geographic Society documentary film Aboriginal Australia. Exhibited only in the US at conferences and in lecture halls, it communicates the story of the 1948 expedition to Americans. Outtakes – often disposed of by production houses – have in this case survived and they tell a most fascinating tale. Not only did Setzler perform the theft for Walker's camera, but he re-performed it in various ways, actively experimenting with his presentation. In the footage intended for public exhibition, he assumes the role of a serious field scientist making a significant discovery. That is very different from a take in which he hams it up as a madcap explorer. In that sequence, he marches into frame and feigns astonishment as he 'discovers' the very bones that he first saw weeks earlier. With cartoonish gesticulations, he signals to the out-of-frame Harney to come and look. Not until Harney is fully in view and enacting his own surprise does Setzler begin to reap his grim harvest. Amidst the jumble of takes and retakes, we see him at one point returning a skull to its crevice so he can perform the theft in a different way. Sixty years later, having recently obtained copies of the film from the National Geographic Society, I sat with the eminent elder Jacob Nayinggul on his veranda in the Banyan Camp at Gunbalanya, watching this material on a laptop. He, too, was silent – silent with rage. As the film reveals, Setzler became brasher and bolder as the expedition neared the end. His personal diary reveals pride in the ruses he went to in avoiding the scrutiny of locals. To provide manpower on his digs for stone tools, which occurred in rock shelters on Injalak (conveniently close to the ossuaries), two teenagers from the mission were assigned to him as archaeological assistants. One was Jimmy Bungaroo, who would become a well-known community leader in Maningrida later in life. The other man was Mickey (whose full name never appears in the expedition records). The pair can be seen in expedition films and photos, sifting soil that throws up great clouds of dust. Setzler supervises, wearing a protective mask. But there were no masks for the two youngsters who were actually performing the hard labour. The heat of those days was crippling. Setzler estimated that inside the tents, the temperature reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) during the day. Outside, the air was thick and stagnant. The period known to Territorians as 'the build-up' had begun. High temperatures are matched with high humidity, a sure signal that the wet season is on its way. In these conditions, it is little wonder that Setzler's workers required a siesta after a morning spent shifting and inhaling dirt. This provided the opportunity to acquire another cache of bones, as Setzler explained. 'During the lunch period, while the two native boys were asleep, I gathered the two skeletons which had been placed in crevices outside the caves. These were disarticulated ... and only skull and long bones. One had been painted with red ochre. These I carried down to the camp in burlap sacks and later packed in ammunition boxes.' On November 1 it rained. The wet season was nigh. Setzler had discovered more bones that he would have stolen, but he had nothing to pack them in. Even so, he had garnered a rich harvest. He carefully 'painted the ammunition boxes containing skeletal material and numbered them consecutively after my personal box numbers'. He screwed them shut and noted: 'These will go to US without opening in Sydney'. They were ready for transportation to their eventual destination, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. There they would remain for the next 60 years.
The Age
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Grave robber' posed for the cameras as he pillaged human remains
The collecting of human remains on an almost industrial scale began in the 19th century and continued long into the 20th. One of the museums most active in collecting human remains was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and it was a partner in the expedition to Arnhem Land, along with the National Geographic Society. Frank Setzler was constitutionally incapable of entering an Aboriginal burial ground without thinking about how to rob it. He had form on this front, having collected many remains of Native American people earlier in his career. They were all accessioned into the Smithsonian's physical anthropology collection, one of the largest collections of human bones in the world. It is a sign of his brashness that he allowed a colleague to film his 'grave robbing', as other scientists on the expedition called it. Captured on celluloid, Setzler's actions are repellent yet compelling. Watching it now in the 21st century, with the old 16-millimetre footage converted into a digital file, it is easy to stop and start the film, or to magnify it until the image dissolves into a pixelated blur. In making the film, Setzler transformed the fleetingness of the theft into something that would last forever. His handwritten diary is as brutally candid as the film. He frankly acknowledges his duplicity towards the Bininj, as the people of west Arnhem Land call themselves. In an entry some weeks earlier, he recorded the moment he first spotted the bones. At that stage he was still getting his bearings on the hill. When a Bininj guide showed him around, he could hardly believe the abundance of human remains. But he kept his thoughts to himself: 'I paid no attention to these bones as long as the native was with me'. By the time he was ready to take the bones, he knew the site well, having spent some weeks on the plateau excavating for stone tools. Before he took the bones, he liaised with the expedition's American photographer Howell Walker, who agreed to join him on the plateau and shoot both still and moving footage of their acquisition. The film shows how they tried to make the theft a pedagogical performance, presumably to give it scientific credibility. Setzler at one point can be seen lifting and handling a skull. He points out distinctive features and then slots its jaw in place before presenting to the camera its largely toothless grin. The final seconds of the bone stealing show a glimpse of distant scenery. There is a strip of land, the grass yellow-brown. Further away lies the gleaming billabong and beyond it the mission dwellings. The sequence ends when Setzler and the expedition Australian guide Bill Harney (who suddenly appears from nowhere) cross the frame. Manhandling the now lidded crate, they disappear from the picture. The film is jarringly out of time. It stinks of the body-snatching of the 19th century. Yet we see it through the medium of cinema, that most 20th-century of art forms, and in colour no less. Another disconnect is the lack of soundtrack. We tend to expect that a colour film will have audio, but without the lecture that once accompanied it, there is nothing but deadly silence. No voice. No birdsong. Everything is mute. This sequence is part of the National Geographic Society documentary film Aboriginal Australia. Exhibited only in the US at conferences and in lecture halls, it communicates the story of the 1948 expedition to Americans. Outtakes – often disposed of by production houses – have in this case survived and they tell a most fascinating tale. Not only did Setzler perform the theft for Walker's camera, but he re-performed it in various ways, actively experimenting with his presentation. In the footage intended for public exhibition, he assumes the role of a serious field scientist making a significant discovery. That is very different from a take in which he hams it up as a madcap explorer. In that sequence, he marches into frame and feigns astonishment as he 'discovers' the very bones that he first saw weeks earlier. With cartoonish gesticulations, he signals to the out-of-frame Harney to come and look. Not until Harney is fully in view and enacting his own surprise does Setzler begin to reap his grim harvest. Amidst the jumble of takes and retakes, we see him at one point returning a skull to its crevice so he can perform the theft in a different way. Sixty years later, having recently obtained copies of the film from the National Geographic Society, I sat with the eminent elder Jacob Nayinggul on his veranda in the Banyan Camp at Gunbalanya, watching this material on a laptop. He, too, was silent – silent with rage. As the film reveals, Setzler became brasher and bolder as the expedition neared the end. His personal diary reveals pride in the ruses he went to in avoiding the scrutiny of locals. To provide manpower on his digs for stone tools, which occurred in rock shelters on Injalak (conveniently close to the ossuaries), two teenagers from the mission were assigned to him as archaeological assistants. One was Jimmy Bungaroo, who would become a well-known community leader in Maningrida later in life. The other man was Mickey (whose full name never appears in the expedition records). The pair can be seen in expedition films and photos, sifting soil that throws up great clouds of dust. Setzler supervises, wearing a protective mask. But there were no masks for the two youngsters who were actually performing the hard labour. The heat of those days was crippling. Setzler estimated that inside the tents, the temperature reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) during the day. Outside, the air was thick and stagnant. The period known to Territorians as 'the build-up' had begun. High temperatures are matched with high humidity, a sure signal that the wet season is on its way. In these conditions, it is little wonder that Setzler's workers required a siesta after a morning spent shifting and inhaling dirt. This provided the opportunity to acquire another cache of bones, as Setzler explained. 'During the lunch period, while the two native boys were asleep, I gathered the two skeletons which had been placed in crevices outside the caves. These were disarticulated ... and only skull and long bones. One had been painted with red ochre. These I carried down to the camp in burlap sacks and later packed in ammunition boxes.' On November 1 it rained. The wet season was nigh. Setzler had discovered more bones that he would have stolen, but he had nothing to pack them in. Even so, he had garnered a rich harvest. He carefully 'painted the ammunition boxes containing skeletal material and numbered them consecutively after my personal box numbers'. He screwed them shut and noted: 'These will go to US without opening in Sydney'. They were ready for transportation to their eventual destination, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. There they would remain for the next 60 years.
The Age
3 hours ago
- The Age
My job is to tell the UN about young lives in Australia. I wish the story was a better one
'It's a race to the bottom,' one youth worker said. She represented an Aboriginal boy picked up by Townsville police because he 'looked suspicious'. In NSW, a sign-language advocate tells me over a video call how Sydney police threatened a deaf man in his 20s walking on the street.'The cop said that if this young man didn't stop moving, he would pull his gun out,' she says. Fortunately, the man's sister who was nearby, rushed over – hands flying in frantic sign language – desperately trying to bridge the deadly gap between silence and misunderstanding. This could have easily ended in tragedy – all because an officer wasn't trained to recognise this young person's disability. This isn't just incompetence. It's a death sentence. And these are not isolated cases. Children as young as 10 are being locked away in watch houses across the country for weeks on end. Queensland's Draconian 'adult crime, adult time' laws mean a child can be sentenced like an adult for 13 offences, erasing any consideration of their circumstances, their development, or their potential for rehabilitation. Loading These are not just statistics, they are stolen futures. Australia has some of the worst child incarceration rates in the world. We have one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility out of 38 developed countries. This tells every child detained in a watch house, every young person failed by the foster care system, every First Nations teenager racially profiled by police, that their government does not care about them. And you know it's when survival looks like a jail cell for a child, that we haven't just failed these kids – we're beginning to destroy them. But I will also share something else – something easy to miss among the rubble of these stories. It is the quiet strength rising in unexpected places. In Tasmania's Ashley Youth Detention Centre, incarcerated young people are finding their voice. Guided by the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, they're using art to confront decision-makers with the lived experiences, resilience and insight of children inside the justice system. In regional North Queensland, for First Nations' children who have been removed from their families, from culture and from country, youth councils and cultural fellowships are offering the chance to lead, to heal and to reclaim what was stolen. In Alice Springs, Future Yayes (meaning 'Future Sisters' in the Arrernte local language); a heart-driven, youth-led movement, gives young Aboriginal women from local town camps the power to ignite change in their communities. Young women are encouraged to embrace their worth, find their voices and cultivate the self-love and confidence they so deeply deserve. And in every town, every school, every detention centre I visit, there are youth workers, counsellors, lawyers, community elders and volunteers who refuse to give up. Who fight every day, not because they're paid to – but because they believe every young person matters. I carry the pain of a generation that is exhausted. But I also carry their fire. So when I stand before the United Nations in October, on a world stage in front of almost 200 countries, it will be with all of that inside me. A voice not only for what we must fix, but for what we must nurture – because across Australia, against all odds, there are young people still daring to dream of something better. And that is worth fighting for.
