Truth-telling, film-making, and skill-building in a far northwest Australian community

Working with partners Roebourne High School, Ngaarda Media, Karratha Library and Red Earth Centre, we will use research findings developed in the 'Digital Panopticon' to support new approaches to building community resilience in a marginalised far northwestern Australian community. The proposed project will form a bridge between historical data and modern social problems to impact on and improve the lives of Indigenous Australians (particularly Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Elders and youths) by working in partnership with a variety of cultural, media, community and educational bodies to significantly enhance their efforts to support children, adolescents and adults in challenging the most acute issues in their communities.

In Australia, race, class, and the criminal justice system have sat together in a complicated and disastrous relationship for over two centuries. Indigenous people account for about a quarter of Australia's prison population, vastly disproportionate to their numbers in society. The imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians is five times higher than that of Black South African men during Apartheid; and higher than African American rates in the US today. Our proposed project is set in Karrathashire (Western Australia) which has two urban centres: Roebourne (which has become notorious as one of Australia's most crime-plagued) has a resilient but vulnerable community where young people suffer multiple disadvantages. Two thirds of children have been sexually assaulted, and one third of adult men have been imprisoned. Many young people in custody previously visited their own fathers in custody. The town is constantly and almost wholly associated with crime, abuse, and the young people still suffer from association with a history and narrative not of their own making. Karratha is Australia's newest city, created by a mining-boom, which is unhelpfully characterized as a wealthy but uncultured brash newcomer which has little heritage or history. Our project aims to help local communities change this narrative by facilitating local people, particularly elders and school students, to challenge existing stereotypes about themselves and their communities, and to work with local and national media to disseminate positive narratives about Roebourne and Karratha.

Together we will co-produce cultural and heritage material for long-term use which will engage and enthuse Indigenous and Non-Indigenous communities in the area to engage more fully with their past, particularly the continuities and discontinuities in Indigenous experiences of policing and punishment, building social cohesion across different communities. In providing real-world film-making skills and opportunities for local school students to boost local employment opportunities, we hope to decrease the likelihood of criminalization, and leave a lasting legacy for the people and the educational/cultural/heritage structures that support the people in far northwestern Australia.