Views from Western Australia

Archie Roach has made a documentary, Liyarn Ngarn, with English actor Peter Postlethwaite.

Peter was studying to be a Catholic priest with Bill Johnson; Bill later married and came to Australia, adopting an Aboriginal boy taken by the from a family in Alice Springs and given the name Louis St John. In 1992, on his 19th birthday, Louis St John Johnson was attacked and killed by two white young men while walking home. 

Johnson blames talkback, "It had been a terrible summer," he says. "Every day on the radio they were attacking Aboriginal people." Johnson funded the production of the documentary becuase he wanted to publicise, both here and overseas, the lack of progress in the reconciliation movement over the past 10 years.

After Louis’ death Johnson took his body back to Alice Springs. The Johnsons had previously visited Alice Springs and tried to track down his family, but the local bureaucracy resisted their inquiries. This time Louis’ family were found, with more than a hundred turning up for the funeral.

When Archie was about three he was taken from his parents at the Framlingham mission, outside Warrnambool. When he was 15, he got a letter from a sister (he didn’t know he had a sister) saying his mother was dying (he thought his mother had died when he was an infant) and that he should hurry if he wanted to see her. He ran away, but arrived too late.

Archie went to the street where Louis was beaten, then dragged on to the road and driven over. Watching Archie stand there, listening as Pete tells the story of what happened that night, you see the pain.

Robert Walker was a young Aboriginal man who died following a beating by prison officers in Fremantle jail. Archie and Peter visit the cell where he spent his last night and Archie sings a song he has written from a poem by Kevin Gilbert. Archie loses the song, or whatever it is that guides him when he is singing. "Are you all right?" asks Postlethwaite. "I’m not singing it for me," he says, almost angrily. "I’m singing it for this feller."

After dealing with the death of Louis, Walker and John Pat (another death in custody) they travel to Broome to talk to the former chairman of the reconciliation council, Patrick Dodson, who gives the film its political edge.

They visit the desert outside Fitzroy Crossing where the people hold the land their people have always lived in. In 1996, they made a giant painting to assist their claim under the Native Title Act but by the time the film is made the claim still hadn’t been decided and a third of the original claimants were dead (since the making of the film, the claimants have won Native Title over their claim).

Postlethwaite has had to understand what he has seen. The most difficult concept he has heard is ‘terra nullius’, the land of no one, the fiction by which the land was taken. Then Archie sings the title track of the album, Liyarn Ngarn, two Yawru words from Broome, the first meaning inner guide, the second being a place where fresh and salt water meet.

His voice is old now, cracking a bit like that of Johnny Cash in his latter years, but its reverence for life is undiminished. The light in his eye is not one of serenity. Although he is easily drawn to laughter, his manner is mostly distant. It’s like he’s looking at something bright but broken, wondering how to fix it. Journey, the CD, was made when the media was full of reports of the Federal Government sending troops and police into the Northern Territory to protect Aboriginal children. When Archie was taken from his parents, it was for his "protection". He says he still misses his mother every day and now he can see it all happening again. He says what’s happening in the Northern Territory is going "to wash over all Aboriginal people regardless". "You can’t just come in and override us with police and army. There has to be a better solution, a better way."

Archie still trusts Australians, because he trusts people. He believes people are starting to see through the political tricks that have been used over the past decade to foster division.