I kept my pants on

I didn't have to take my pants off - the spin doctors came good as I predicted (see post below).
But in another piece of bastardy I almost didn't notice, the government inserted a clause into the legislation making it impossible for Aboriginal people - and anyone else for that matter - to challenge this mine.
And they buried Barbara's brother on the weekend.

Now for a rambling tale about a movie, the point of which is not entirely unrelated.
'Ten Canoes' is an unusual film.
The actors are all Yolngu, the dilaogue is entirely in their language (Ganalbingu), it's shot entirely on location in the Arafura Swamp and it's a story within a story within a story about ancestral ways.
Rolf de Heer, the Dutch-Australian filmmaker (Bad Boy Bubby, Dingo, The Tracker etc etc) went out to Ramingining and took the time to develop the story, find the cast and shoot the movie.
The storyline owes its beginnings to a wetplate black and white photo taken in the 1930s by anthropologist Donald Thomson.
Thomson traveled through Arnhem Land with his dogs and his camera and took a marvellous photographic record of the rich lives of the Yolngu.
This particular pic shows ten goose hunters, standing in their canoes, at a point in the Arafura Swamp and its ia s starting point for the story in the film.
'Ten Canoes' has been very successful in critical and commercial terms.
In The Weekend Australian this weekend, de Heer writes about trying to tell one of his co-producers, Ramingining man Peter Djigirr, about an award they'd just won.
'Djigirr! You've won an award!.
'Right...what's that thing?'
'Like a prize.'
'A prize?'
'You know, recognition for doing good with the film.'
'Oh yeah...a prize.' Djigirr pauses. 'Any money?'
'Er, not sure about this one. Probably a piece of plastic.'
A long pause. 'Plastic?'
'Yeah, like a statue or something.'
'Ahh...what do I do with it?'
'Take it home, put it on a shelf.'
There's another pause, as Djigirr tries to digest the lunacy of everything I'm saying.
'I haven't got a shelf.'
This short piece of text, describing a conversation between two men who have managed the complex task of making a movie across a great cultural divide and who obviously have great affecton and respect for each other, is full of cultural dissonances.
Try as hard as he can to do otherwise, de Heer started the conversation with a series of assumptions about the extent of Djigirr understandingss about things that he himself takes for granted.
But understanding, even of the small things that pepper a conversation like the one above, is contingent on Djigirr having the sort of cultural capital that he obviously doesn't have.
So the talk is full of misunderstandings, of question and answers that only half clear up what is going on.
And note, de Heer is intellectually and emotionally honest enough to admit that what he is trying to do is 'lunacy' as he realises he's enmired himself in a swamp of his own making.
This kind of dissonance is not at all unusual for people who work in Aboriginal domains.
I've dropped myself in it repeatedly, as have most of the people I know.
But imagine how much greater the dissonance when you can't even hear what Aboriginal people are saying about their feelings for a river, say, that your sense of what's right - socially, culturally, economically and environmentally - says can and should be dammed, drained and diverted, all for what you determine to be the common good.
As de Heer might remark, how can we expect Aboriginal peope to grasp the lunacy of it all?