Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines how speech and speech acts are central to Othering First Nations people in Australia. Werner Herzog’s film, Where the Green Ants Dream (1984), centres around a fictional Dreaming story about green ants, which connect individual ancestral beings with the creation process, as well as forming the basis of First Nation law and culture. The Dreaming story projected in this film is intertwined with a specific nation of First Nations people and their connection and relationship to their Country (land). The film reveals an uneasy relationship between Dreaming and the positive law. In projecting First Nations people’s speech and speech acts within the context of a trial, the film illustrates how the adversarial nature of the law (English common law versus First Nation laws and culture) does not always adequately deal with hard cases. This film manifests the trauma and violence of the white settler state upon First Nations people to illustrate the shortcomings of Australian legality and how the state reckons with the Other.
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