Film Note

A Question of Time: Ten Canoes

Louise Hamby Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University

Ten Canoes. 2006. Directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr. Script by Rolf de Heer. 35mm, Kodak, 90 minutes. Australia.

The film Ten Canoes has received many positive reviews and awards since its opening on March 19, 2006 in Adelaide at Her Majesty’s Theatre during the Adelaide Film Festival. It was shown in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. In September 2006, the film won a silver medallion at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and Rolf de Heer’s script won the award in the Film Script Category in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. In the 2006 Australian Film Awards Ten Canoes took six awards, including the most sought after best film category and best direction. The Australian Film Commission has submitted Ten Canoes as its entry for the best foreign language film in the US Academy Awards for 2007.

The time periods portrayed in the Arnhem Land story of Ten Canoes set in the Arafura Swamp are often brought into question. The Press Kit for the film describes them as the distant past (1000 years ago) and the mythical past (much longer ago). Arguably we could say there is also the present, as in the voice over of David Gulpilil. The distant past is often confused as being the 1930s when Donald Thomson worked in Arnhem Land making this film appear more as a documentary, which is not what de Heer intended. However, the fictional story is based on the dilemma of a young man who desires the youngest wife of his older brother. The press kit explains: ‘To teach him the proper way, he is told a story from the mythical past, a story of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, bungling mayhem and revenge gone wrong’.

I had a minor involvement with the film as a result of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Anthropological and Aboriginal Perspectives on the Donald Thomson Collection: Material Culture, Collecting and Identity. Working on Donald Thomson’s ethnographic collection from Arnhem Land has allowed me a glimpse into how one senior Aboriginal man from the area views it. The film was inspired by a series of Thomson’s photographs of a goose hunting expedition in the Arafiua Swamp taken in the last few days of April and the beginning of May 1937 and, in particular, the image of ten men poling their canoes through it. This image provided the film with its title and a major part of its content. De Heer, the director, met with David Gulpilil, a traditional owner from the area where the photograph had been taken and a recent star in de Heer’s film Tracker (2002), to discuss content for the film. In an interview with de Heer in March 2006, he explained to

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me and Lindy Allen, the Industry Partner Researcher from Museum Victoria, how Gulpilil brought to him the photograph of the ten men and his response. ‘This is so cinematic; this so fantastic-what an image. This is brilliant. So I looked at the photo and I looked up at David and said, “Right, we need ten canoes”’. The film was derived from de Heer’s cinematic conception and the Yolngu at Ramingining’s vision of their past lifestyle. In the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s 7.30 Report (March 20, 2006), Mike Sexton asked David Gulpilil about the content of the film. Gulpilil explained: ‘I wanted to introduce Donald Thomson; was a true story of Dr Thomson. He met the traditional people and he recorded, and it was my uncles, my father and my grandfather, and this is a story I wanted to come out’.

De Heer wanted to make a film in collaboration with the community but to incorporate drama. In the Longford Lyell Lecture 2005, held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, de Heer talked about the collaboration of story making:

Apart from Thomson’s photographs, about the only thing I got from the Community was that they wanted it to be set in old times, and they wanted to include goose egg gathering, which was part of the series of photographs by Donald Thomson . . . What they appeared to want was a documentary reconstruction of life as it was back then with all possibilities for drama taken away.

De Heer certainly got his dramatic story, mainly set in Ancestral times. In terms of what Yolngu people appeared to want- the documentary reconstruction of life as it was back then-some Yolngu are not so happy. De Heer’s story is a fictional one; he did not want to make a documentary. Even so, many people, both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal, do ‘see’ and think about the film as being true to life, not set 1000 years ago. The thoughts of a senior Mildjingi man, Jimmy Burinyila, on the film are most revealing in this respect. Burinyila is a man with an historical interest, particularly regarding the time when his father Rraywala, the main consultant and companion of Donald Thomson, was alive.

On August 30, 2006 Lindy Allen and myself were visiting Burinyila at his outstation Garinygirr, not far from Ramingining. He asked to see particular Thomson photographs from the nearby Galtji waterhole, which show women gathering taro and others of his mother Burrmijakili preparing gathered plant food. These photographs prompted him to talk about the film Ten Canoes. His first comment was: ‘It is all wrong. They should start from “thing”+ollecting food, hunting, gathering for water lily seeds. My mother making it. Taro and start from here’. The ‘thing’ Burinyila is referring to is a way of life that existed during the 1930s and in the past. Many of his comments are based on how that period is represented in the film, which he feels is the time shown in the film, not 1000 years ago. He commented: ‘David Gulpilil made wrong thing. He [Rolf de Heer] was doing his word. When the old people were sitting down and married. They went together collecting lily, grass lily, cycad. That’s how the people were living before. But David Gulpilil, what you call? He was directing wrong way around’.

Burinyila was unhappy about four basic aspects of the film. These all dealt with the content of the film not with its filming or aesthetic effects. They were: fighting and killing, wife stealing, witch doctor portrayal and aspects of life not shown clearly relating to hunting, gathering and marriage. In terms of killing, Burinyila commented: ‘Donald Thomson writes it is not there. He went to Blue Mud Bay and everything. They were making war at that end [of Yolngu country], not here’. Burinyila felt the stealing of the wife was not appropriate. ‘Also that two people grab that woman and ran away, they were running. It is not right what David Gulpilil describe. Even that one young fellow went to grab and she was saying, sa, go away.’

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Plate 1. Jimmy Burinyila discussing Ten Canoes at his outstation, Garinygirr on August 30, 2006. Photograph by Louise Hamby.

Burinyila was most upset about the portrayal of the sorcerer. ‘Philip Gudthaykudthay, he was witch doctor. It was not the right way! Because I tell you this man here, Wilindjango is marrnggitj [Medicine man]. He didn’t paint himself as Gudthaykudthay. When I saw him I said, where this man from, New Guinea? He had power bag. Painting not right.’ Burinyila bases his information on knowledge of rnarrnggiti in his own family.

His other criticism is based more on what is missing from the film. The goose egg hunt was an important part of Ten Canoes. However, Burinyila felt that it was basically the men’s side of the story that was portrayed not the entire family life, particularly that of the women:

They got to go to swamp to look for gurruma_ttji [geese], eggs. Women go to collect grass lily or cheeky yam and dig it up. Have a feed and sharing together, not making trouble. Sitting down and making peace, gathering and hunting they should be doing. In my knowledge if you go fishing, hunting they were all married. They got something and share every afternoon.

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The total family life, with married individuals interacting in the correct way, is, for Burinyila, an important part of existence:

The purpose of hunting and gathering like this one here. [Looking at Donald Thomson photos]. People like to share everything. That’s the way they were living before and they should follow Donald Thomson way. Donald Thomson is writing it all right. He was living with them. He went to Arafura Swamp and he knew they were living on that thing [tree platform].

Burinyila’s opinions are strong. He repeated them and asked me: ‘If you see that Ten Canoes again, make red smoke [possibly stroke] or a cross when you see Philip Gudthaykudthay’s painting, do a cross. When they are fighting, make them a cross. When young fellow try to get that girl, sa, go away, putt’im a cross’. Burinyila hoped that I had some power to change the way the film would be viewed in the future by blocking the scenes he was not happy with. By putting a cross or making smoke he is referring to a method of blocking or obscuring the passages of film that he has problems with. He also passed on a message to the director and perhaps indirectly to all of us involved in representing Aboriginal life: what is the meaning of our actions? ‘If you see that director ask him what is all this you were doing the bad thing. You never described Donald Thomson things because he was describing gathering and love. What is the meaning?’

Burinyila’s opinions reflect his thinking as a senior man in the community. They may not be the same as other members of the community. His unease with the content could be partially based on the fact that he felt some parts of the film were not appropriate images for public consumption in the current political situation and partly because he felt some of the incidents were not factual. They do however highlight the fact that Ten Canoes is not viewed as a totally fictional account of life before the coming of outsiders to Arnhem Land. It is largely seen as a portrayal of Aboriginal life as it existed at the time of Donald Thomson’s investigations of the people of the Arafura Swamp. The question of the time period portrayed does make a difference in the perception of the film. The time of the 1930s is still in the memory of many Aboriginal people who identify with the characters in the film. They wish for a more accurate representation of events. A fictional or mythical time gives much more scope to what could happen and what it means.