Abstract
‘This black armband view of our history’ was a phrase used by Prime Minister John Howard in a 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture. Howard used the phrase, first coined by historian Geoffrey Blainey, to counter the arguments of opponents who were insisting that the post-contact treatment of the Aboriginal people must be recognised and included in Australian historical discourse and public forms of remembrance. The musical ensemble that is the subject of Natasha Gadd and Rhys Graham’s documentary film, Murundak: Songs of Freedom (2011) developed its name and its intention in protest against Howard’s dismissive rhetoric. This article examines the ways in which the film extends the platform for the Black Arm Band’s performances of cultural-political intervention begun in their highly successful murundak concerts. We argue that the film constructs an alternative Australian history through strategies that authorise the personal memories disclosed by the Aboriginal band members – the film’s protagonists – and enable them to be gathered into a form of collective, social memory. Songs and song-writing provide the focal point for this work of remembrance, and the unifying thread that weaves a regenerative narrative through three major stages of Aboriginal history: the struggle to survive; the process of healing; and reconnection with kin, country and language.
Highlights
This essay selects particular moments within the 2011 film Murundak: Songs of Freedom which reveal and create strategies used by Aboriginal people to maintain individual memories, recreate collective memory, revive culture and seek justice at both the personal and national levels
These memories become unified— without sacrificing their specificity—by means of the film’s central, knowledgeable and charismatic actors, the musical force called the Black Arm Band, which is itself a constellation of this rich diversity and intergenerational connection—several members of the band explicitly liken the band to a family
As Willoughby puts it: ‘Some of us old fellas, we’ve got some sort of Vietnam syndrome, you know, and we’ve never even been in a war.’. The latter type of testimony comes from members of the Stolen Generations, such as Ruby Hunter, Kutcha Edwards and Archie Roach, who tell personal stories of being taken from their families as children
Summary
Coming together with the Black Arm Band you realise that, you know, you’re not alone—you’re not the only one doing this, you’re not the only one going out there, you know, singing songs about, you know, about the injustices that have happened to our people.
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