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Enlarge textEmily Booth explores the significance of initiation ceremonies in Indigenous communities.
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Rituals always offer interesting insights into the values and ideals of a community. The rituals of small communities must be truly powerful to survive. To have significance and meaning they must touch upon and keep alive deeply felt emotions within the community and connect strongly to its values.
In My Father’s Country explores the beliefs and values of the Dhuruputjpi community in northern Arnhem Land at a unique historical moment – the lead-up to a young boy’s initiation. Seven-year-old Ananais is about to leave the world of boyhood and enter the world of men. The initiation ceremony will bind him to the ancient laws of the land and to untold generations of forebears. It will provide the moral and spiritual basis for his life as an adult, and will make him a vessel for his culture and its values. The documentary reveals how a ritual, practised among a small group for generations, is vital and integral to the community’s survival.
Dhuruputjpi was founded during the ‘homeland’ movement of roughly three decades ago, in which tribal elders brought their people back to ancestral lands to provide a refuge from the alcohol, materialism and violence that existed in towns and larger communities. Dhuruputjpi is tiny - four houses and an office - and has fewer than one hundred residents. There’s no mains power, no shop, no alcohol and no gambling. Its core purpose is to provide its residents with a safe home through preservation of traditional culture and law.
Filmed prior to the Howard Government’s intervention in 2007, In My Father’s Country shows how the threat of increasing federal interference is clearly present for the people of Dhuruputjpi. The documentary captures the discussion around the government’s plan to enforce paid employment in the community, as well as the general concern that inhabitants will be forced to seek work in town. The nearest urban centre is the mining town of Nhulunbuy, roughly 280km away. Nhulunbuy embodies all the problems - drugs, alcohol, gambling and violence - that drove the elders away in the first place. And so we are introduced to the profound challenge faced by this community - how to preserve ancestral values and protect the younger generation in the face of the sharp decline of traditional culture in urban life.
The initiation ceremony, in which Ananais and peers will learn the Law of Men, is crucial to how Dhuruputjpi will cope with the conflicts between modernity and tradition. These are laws, mythologies and principles that have guided his people for generations, and that offer clear and relevant instruction about how to behave. These aspects of the ritual are intended to help him survive in the uncertain world ahead, in which his culture is in visible decline and he is a minority within a minority.
In My Father’s Country is a tender and moving look at the kind of Indigenous Australian community that most of us will never see first-hand. It offers impressive insight into a small group working thoughtfully and constructively to avoid the pitfalls that threaten too many indigenous communities throughout the world.
Parents everywhere will relate to the elders’ desire for their children and grandchildren to have the confidence to know who they are and where they have come from. The elders’ central wish is for the boys to mature into “calm and knowledgeable men”. While the challenges faced by this community are highly specific, their aspirations are universal and deeply sympathetic.
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Comments (8)
In my father`country
Let the Dhuruputjpi people teach to the young generation their culture and beliefs that have been helping them to survive for thousands years, like many indigenes cultures from others countries. We have to learn from them to love our Mother Earth
16 Jun 2010 8:50 AEST
From:
film
Gary, you can get a copy of the film by calling 0402439912.
12 Jun 2010 18:23 AEST
From: Adelaide
Copy of show
Does anyone know where I can obtain a copy of the show, or if it will be available onlline on theSBS website? I accidentally taped over the last half of it and woudl very much like to watch it! Thanks
12 Jun 2010 18:22 AEST
From: Adelaide
Copy of show
Does anyone know where I can obtain a copy of the show, or if it will be available onlline on theSBS website? I accidentally taped over the last half of it and woudl very much like to watch it! Thanks
27 May 2010 20:54 AEST
From: Rockhampton QLD
My Fathers Country
Thankyou for an enlightening insight into the culture and rituals of the Dhuruputjpi tribe. I was both delighted and terrified watching this program. I do not understand why such a small and innocent child has to be intiated in this way. The fear in the childrens eyes will stay with me for a long time. I appreciate it is a historical ritual, but to me it seemed like child abuse. Every one watching whilst an innocent child was objected to such pain and exposure in front of many others. I hope the boys remember this ritual for the purposes it was intended, and take the learning of their ancestors into adulthood. I on the other hand will remembering it as a brutal act inflicted on innocent children.
26 May 2010 19:23 AEST
From: Geelong
Reply to Mary
So, Mary, the paintings were very pretty? Glad you got that out of it.
26 May 2010 16:03 AEST
From: Melbourne
In my father's country
I must say that I am glad I persevered with watching the program because at the beginning it so stereotyped much of what is wrong as I see it, in many societies. The men watch TV, the women work (at bark painting), men go off to the pub with women's money - and women and children to shop which is really just more work for her!! The woman at least got paid $6,000 for her work but it didn't explain how much of the room full of paintings that amount included! The men sat in the pub talking with a South African and they discussed the virtues of Mandela and how awful the white Australian was to the black man's comfort. They are required to work along with the rest of society in order to share its wealth? Tough? most of us do it for fifty years of our lives. But I noticed those same black people were using the tools of the white man's world from the wheelchair, modern car, electricty and dare I mention it - computers! The men did attempt to show leadership with the children by teaching them that the townships they'd visit as young men, wouldn't always be about soft drink! Then came the scenes showing the initiation ceremony where the three children being circumcised, were painted and decorated in a most loving and caring way - as much as that barbaric act of circumcision could ever be elevated. Right there and then, the boys were trained not to show their true feelings and emotions - of course they cried and of course they hurt!! Their little faces showed their 'fear'...... Being trained at a very early age that it is not manly to cry is not something that I'd personally cultivate in a young child but that is their history.... As the man said "White Man Laws changes every year, but Aboriginal's Laws, never does".... Thank you SBS for continuing to provide such informative programs about our indigenous people's way of life. It certainly can't be easy trying to straddle the two cultures of the black and white Australians. The aboriginal paintings, both of the boys and by the women, were very impressive.
25 May 2010 23:35 AEST
From: Adelaide SA
tonights show
Ive just finished watching this and immediately decided I must thank you for enlightening me. Thank you to the film makers, and also to the people. I feel I understand so much more, now that I have seen this.
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About this Blog
Dr Emily Booth was educated at the University of Adelaide and La Trobe University in Melbourne. She was a research associate at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London.
Emily Booth Dr Emily Booth was educated at the University of Adelaide and La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1997 she was a research associate at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. She gained a PhD in history from La Trobe in 2002. Since that time she has taught in a range of history courses at La Trobe, Deakin University and Melbourne University.
Emily Booth is the author of a short café guide to Melbourne and a long book on seventeenth-century English medicine, and co-editor of a collection of essays on Vasco Da Gama. She’s written a variety of articles for print media and was for some years a regular public radio broadcaster. For the past nine years she has worked for Melbourne-based independent publishing house Text Publishing, where she is currently the Sales & Marketing Director. Emily Booth lives in Melbourne with her family.
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