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An Australian Story Book

We take a look back at Message Stick through the eyes of some of the best filmmakers in the country, as they recall the stories that resonated with them and that affected them the most.

Exploring the extensive Message Stick archive, we take a look at the historical events, the quest for social justice and the political struggles that have shaped us as Indigenous Australians. We also celebrate the extraordinary people who have strived to maintain culture, who have broken new ground, who have scaled the heights of the arts and who have been lauded for their sporting feats.

KODIE BEDFORD: Hi, I'm Kodie Bedford and welcome to the final episode of Message Stick. For over a decade, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander filmmakers have been sharing our stories through Message Stick, introducing our audiences to inspiring people, communities and culture. Now, on our final episode ever, it's time to reflect on the past and look to the future. So where do we start? Well, after catching up with some of our talented writers, directors and producers who have honed their craft on Message Stick, we delved into the archives to bring you some of our most memorable moments.

GARY FOLEY: Roll up! Roll up! Roll up! You peeping toms of the Spectacular! It's here at last, the Jimmy Sharman Boxing Troupe has arrived!

WOMAN: Black theatre has been used and certainly began with a political context. It was a way to get the message across and doing it with theatre, which obviously was something that Dad said was if you can't entertain, you can't educate. I take my inspiration from my father's generation and those guys who uncompromisingly dived in and had no questions about the role of politics in arts. There was no question, the two were inseparable.

INTERVIEWER: Bob, why did you choose this theatrical for demonstrating?

BOB MAZA: Because we're a black theatre and this the best way that black people can protest effectively.

WOMAN: It was all about shining a light and making very public the situation that was happening here in this country.

ZAC MARTIN: (Sings) # They'll take up your cause with passion # For black is now the fashion. #

WOMAN: Here was a woman taking the courage to come down to this really important event that meant so much to Aboriginal people right across Australia. And here was this woman being punished for taking this courageous act.

WOMAN: Police come to the house and the welfare will come to the house. I was confused and I didn't what was going on. She had to go different places here and there to, you know, try and get my brothers and sisters back.

WOMAN: Another stage, we didn't really realise why we were taken from my mum. You know, and all we knew is that we couldn't wait to get back to her and we were there with her.

MAN: Just look at the Olympics for starters, you know. It stands for peace and unity, equality and things like that, you know. But where is it all? While they're spending billions and billions of dollars on these games in Sydney, Aboriginal people get nothing again.

NEWSREADER: A riot has broken out in the Palm Island Aboriginal community in North Queensland. Armed police reinforcements have been sent to the island from Townsville and Cairns.

ELIZABETH CLAY: Wasn't a riot, it was a resistance against antural justice, everything that was being heaped up against us and they're expecting us to sit there and accept this. There'd be public outcry anyway. This is Australia 2006 and we still have to live like this.

SAM WATSON: It was more or less a need by the Aboriginal family members and community to make a statement that this death in custody was just one death too many. This is a line in the sand drawn with the blood of our brother.

MIRIAM COROWA: Thousands of Australians have travelled to the national capital from all corners of the country to be a part of this historic occasion.

KEVIN RUDD: We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these, our fellow Australians. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

BESS PRICE: There are other people who think the intervention's done them good. The older people, the women, children and the young people. Now they've got food in the fridge for kids, for their children over the weekends, you know.

BOB RANDALL: They took everything away from 78 communities in this Northern Territory. And also took away our human rights through legislation. Yeah... Wow... I never thought any government would stoop that low, I really... not in my lifetime.

RIMA TAMOU: What I wanted to do in life was to, I love the team environment, I love to travel and I love to learn and find out new things. And this job in Message Stick, the show has enabled me to do that.

ADRIAN WILLS: Like kids in a candy store. Just like running out into Australia and making stories and meeting these people and...

CATRIONA MCKENZIE: Apart from all the development that's done to a whole lot of filmmakers, it's actually allowed, it's raised the consciousness of white Australia to Aboriginal, you know, stories, issues, people, how beautiful it is, you know, and country. I mean, everything.

ADRIAN WILLS: If anything, it was a new medium and a new platform where every day, black fella was able to tell their story.

JULIE NIMMO: What it's done is really stamped our faces as Australians.

ADRIAN WILLS: But yeah, I mean, it was a real hub. It was kind of like this little mini black fella studio.

JULIE NIMMO: It changed the ABC. Influential people from all the different departments around the ABC, if ever they're in doubt or question something to do with Aboriginal people in our culture, they don't just make assumptions. What's fantastic is they either pick up the phone and talk to someone in the Indigenous Unit or they walk into the Indigenous Unit and sit down and have a cup of tea.

ADRIAN WILLS: First story was Knight Rider. Which was about a woman who had just started rodeo riding again. It was a great story to start off with and she was a great character. She was this tiny woman but she kind of scared the hell out of me. She was a really big character, a lot of energy and quite brash. I hadn't met a woman like that before. But their love story connected me. That's what got me into their story.

MARION KNIGHT: The way I try and prepare before a rodeo is to actually run the calves through... ..a couple of times a week. So I practice with calves.

WAYNE KNIGHT: If she wants to do something, she's pretty determined to do it. Like taking up rodeo at 40 years of age.

ADRIAN WILLS: I remember doing an interview and I got a tap on the shoulder from the cameraman. And he said, 'We have to go now.' I'm like, 'OK, I'm in the middle of an interview.' Kind of awkward. And he goes, 'No, there's a bushfire.' And we had about 20 minutes to get out of the property. It was pretty dangerous actually, it was pretty scary at the time. We had a PA who was driving me. She just floored it. She was, like, flooring it on the highway. Looking at me, going, 'Are we gonna make it?' I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? Keep your eye on the road.' This flame was right behind us in the car. You know, coming onto the road. It was huge. Baptism by fire.

KODIE BEDFORD: Miriam Corowa was the most recent presenter on Message Stick. While she looked deadly on screen, she also worked tirelessly behind the lens as one of our most prolific producers. Miriam is now working as weekend presenter on ABC News Breakfast.

MIRIAM COROWA: First ever Message Stick story I worked on, was a story called Murray, Life And Death. And it was all about looking at the health of the Murray River and in particular, visiting two communities, the Yorta Yorta community and also going down to the mouth of the Murray River to the Coorong. Yeah, it was really an incredible opportunity to get out in the country, meet some amazing people and to do a story that really touched on a lot of important issues in terms of how we care for our country and what it means. A lack of water flow due mainly to irrigation further upstream is showing its greatest impact on the environment down here.

MAN: Living along the Coorong, and the Coorong is so rich, it was alive with fish and birdlife.

MIRIAM COROWA: I'd actually come from working in news over at SBS so, you know, it was... An average day, you'd maybe do a story that was a minute and a half, two minutes long at the most so making the leap to working on a whole 28-minute documentary was terrifying... (Laughs) ..exciting, it was just a wonderful opportunity, really, to spend a lot of time, I guess, looking at issues, talking to people and just really involving yourself in that process of telling the story which was really wonderful.

PAULINE HOOLER: If you don't make the proper sound, then you're not sounding Gumbaynggirr. So if you make the right sound, you'll get that Gumbaynggirr accent. That's why I always go through the sounds real quick. It's not real hard. It's exercise for your tongue, we'll Gumbaynggirr-ise your tongue. And 'waggarghee', 'waggar', we get that from, Gumbaynggirr word for 'axe' because we reckon number nine looks like an axe. so the word for 'axe' is 'waggar' but we change it to 'wagga' and the 'ghee' gives it that tense there, the ninth.

NARRATOR: Ownership of Uluru was handed back to us, traditional owners, in 1985 and it became part of the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park. To us, Aboriginal custodians, Uluru holds a special spiritual place in our lives. Uluru was formed by giant ancestors in the time of creation or Tjukurpa. There are two major stories of Uluru. One is the Mala Tjukurpa. Mala is the name of the rufous hare-wallaby. The other is the story of our two giant ancestral snakes and their epic battle, the scars of which can be seen on Uluru.

REPORTER: These dancers from Queensland's Torres Strait have travelled a long way to tell their story and celebrate their history.

MAN: Our dancing grounds are our museums. Our dancing grounds are our libraries, our textbook and this is where our culture is being preserved.

MAN: They can go up to mainland but if you'd ask them, 'Where are you from?' 'From an island.' 'Do you know anything about customs of the island? Things like that?' They'll perform for you to show you they're from the island.

MAN: Indigenous astronomy I think is one of the oldest cultural perceptions of astronomy on Earth so I think it's absolutely fantastic that we have the opportunity to sit under the stars and learn about some of that.

MAN: But when I was with old Joe in the bush and all the other grandparents living in the bush whenever you get lost, go out and you must use the stars to track you to where the waterhole is or where your camp is. The stars will drag you all the way around up to where you are.

JULIE NIMMO: The first story I ever made for Message Stick was a profile piece on Linda Burney. When I was following her, she was running for politics so nobody knew if she was going to win her seat or not but she's always been an absolute role model of mine, a real inspiration as an Aboriginal woman who's made a massive contribution for all our people and history shows us that yes, she did win.

INTERVIEWER: Assuming your election in the seat of Canterbury, you'll be the first Indigenous woman elected to the New South Wales parliament.

LINDA BURNEY: Well, I'll actually be the first Indigenous person elected into the parliament and it's incredibly significant. What's been just wonderful is the thing that's excited the people of Canterbury is in fact tonight where - touch wood - we're going to create a little bit of history in this state. One of the seminal moments, I suppose, in my life happened when I was about ten and a half, 11 years old. I remember being told really close to my face by a non-Aboriginal woman in the town, 'You'll never amount to anything.' Looking back on it was probably one of the most difficult things I've herded but one of the best things that'd ever been said to me. I think that really did set me on a course for what I was gonna do, exactly what I decided I was going to do.

JULIE NIMMO: What affected me personally about that story is that I got to interview her husband and he told me all of the reasons why he was in love with Linda Burney, what an incredible person she was and a couple of years after that interview, he passed away so it was a really powerful moment in my life and I'm just glad that something is now on the record so that if Linda ever wants to look back, she can, she can see her husband talk about how much he loves her.

MAN: He's probably got more credentials after his name than some professors that I've met at law school at Melbourne Uni. An Order of Australia, an MBE, a KCBO, which is a knighthood. But he was also awarded headman of all tribes in Australia. And that was an award that was done by the TIs back in 1971. Doug was born at a time when people started standing up for their rights.

WOMAN: But he wasn't prejudiced against white people. And he thanked the people for what they done for him. That's where he got on top.

MAN: Well, he was a pioneer for his people in terms of... ..the improvement to the Aboriginal position in Australian society. He was unsurpassed as a leader.

CHARLES PERKINS: One of the things that was really bad with Walgett apart from being a big racist town was the fact the RSL banned Aboriginal people from becoming members. So we decided this would be the place we'd make our stand, in front of the great sacred cow, the RSL in Walgett. So we line up in the street all along here. And the rest of Australia was looking on, waiting to see what the final outcome was.

MAN: The effect of that period, that period of two weeks was quite dramatic in the sense that it brought to the general public attention the kinds of injustices that were occurring daily in rural communities.

CHICKA DIXON: Oh, why he didn't want to educate us, because they'd have lost their cheap labour so they purposely kept us illiterate. Fortunately, I got educated in four universities - Long Bay Jail, Goulburn Jail, Bathurst Jail and any other bloody jails. There's a lot like me and I had to get sober to become political so I become a fighter for justice. Not power, power corrupts. I'm talking about justice for our people.

MARCIA LANGTON: We have shown that we were not violent, we were peaceful at all times. We are not asking for privileges. We are asking for basic human rights and we're asking for rights which have already been recognised by the United Nations as inalienable rights of the human being. We want a stable, peaceful country and we want rule of law. That's where the Stolen Generation's report will be sorted out - by rule of law. Biggest challenge is always, being an Aboriginal person in Australia, is to be taken seriously as a human being. So even though I have a first class honours degree and a PhD, nobody will address me by my correct title. You know, I'm always Miss Langton, not Dr Langton or Professor Langton, MISS Langton.

PAT O'SHANE: I look at my daughters and think, 'They are different people than I ever was.' They have a strength, an inner strength, that I had to learn to develop. They didn't experience the level of racism that I experienced. Or that my mother before me experienced. Or that her mother before her experienced. And nor should it be that way. I mean, if we've done what we should do for ourselves, we must change that world which they had to contend with.

ADEN RIDGEWAY: On this special occasion, I make my presence known as an Aborigine and in this chamber I say, perhaps for the first time - (Speaks in Aboriginal language). Translated, it means 'My father is Jaingatti, my mother is Gumbayynggir and therefore I am Gumbayynggir.' Being the only Aboriginal person in federal politics is quite demanding in many different ways.

CATRIONA MCKENZIE: Just joining the scenes of a shot from last week with... sort of driving and trying to solve the problem in the episode called Family. We're working on Redfern now. It's a great six one-hours. Great scripts, Indigenous writers, Indigenous directors, Indigenous producers and with Leah Purcell who is a dream. She's such a professional and, you know, really talented and she's going to direct some as well. Wayne Blair is doing it, he's come back from The Sapphires and he's going to direct one episode. Rachel Perkins, myself. That was a good thing about Message Stick, you know, you get to actually make documentaries and, you know, documentaries, it's chaos. It's crazy, like, you never know what's going to happen so you've to be really looking for where's the story, you know? Well, I'd actually done this short film called Box in Mundine's gym in Redfern and I'd done this whole little boxing short film that led to me doing something on Message Stick called Bunj, Bunjie, which is 'brother' in Bandjalung and it was all about him wanting to go from playing football for St George to becoming a boxer like his dad and, you know, his hero is Muhammad Ali and his dad. And so, yeah, that was good. That was, you know, hanging out at St George in the change rooms with all the blokes and they just take all their clothes off and I'm like, just interviewing them, looking up and looking down. It was really good to be able to sit back now and look back at Bunj, at Message Stick and see what Choc's achieved.

ANTHONY MUNDINE: I'm getting paid $600,000... a year. I could stay in football for the rest of my life. Now knowing and seeing myself how racist an institution it is. That's the only reason why I've been left out of the rep teams. I see football as being too small for me. Where boxing is international, where I come in and push my cause to the world about Aboriginal people and the way they're suffering in this country.

CATRIONA MCKENZIE: There's something very honest about a boxing ring. It's a very little square and there are two people inside it that are, their agendas are really clear. They want to smash each other. There's nowhere to hide, it's sort of a raw character moment where you just have to front up to who you really are and so there's something about that in terms of story. Like, it's very simple, dramatic kind of context and so there's something about that context which I find really appealing in terms of narrative and in terms of drama, in terms of politics, in terms of a whole lot of things. You know, Tony Mundine was an incredible fighter before his time and he started, you know, he came down from the North Coast and he came to Sydney and he played football and he boxed and he was able to achieve incredible things. Doesn't really matter what colour you are, what creed you are, when you get into that ring, it's very simple - the best man wins.

WOMAN: I can always remember Jimmy Sharman, he was a great shaman.

JIMMY SHARMAN: Which one of the corners are you? Berry corner! Come on, get up here.

WOMAN: You could be walking around in anywhere in the show and you'd hear the drums banging and the bells ringing and then everybody just sort of swarmed there around the boxer tent.

JIMMY SHARMAN: I was 13, there was no work about at that time for Aborigines, no work about for anyone. So you either had to be a drover, a boxer to get a living so I took on boxing. In the boxing camp, it's just like a... (Speaks indistinctly) You gotta be good actor, not to get hurt. You get two good actors in there and you put on a good show. I swear that we, you know... (Speaks indistinctly)

MAN: For Tiwi Island people, football is a religion. It may be a cliche but it's true. From the time we can walk, all we want to do is kick a football. We've watched our fathers, our grandfathers, our uncles all play football. We want to be just like them. I don't know what it is but we have made this game our own. It is a game that we have embraced from the moment it was introduced to us. We didn't worry about flash boots and jumpers, we just wanted to play. We did it our own way.

WOMAN: Yeah, they were laughing at us at the start of it. They thought, like, we were just a big joke. This is the day they were going to have a laugh at a few girls hitting each other. But when we started winning, they just started coming behind us. Favourite thing about playing rugby union is you get to hit someone and you're allowed to and you walk away from it not getting charged.

NARRATOR: In 1962, Lloyd McDermott played for the Wallabies and was the first Aboriginal to represent Australia in rugby union.

LLOYD MCDERMOTT: In 1962 when I played for Australia in rugby union, we weren't called Aboriginals, we were just darkies or bongs or black fellas in those days.

MAN: Perhaps it was a logical thing at South's because of the communities that existed wherever, you know, Redfern or La Perouse community. It just seemed a seamless event that happened there and it traces back, as far as I know, back at least to the 1930s. The Redfern All Blacks Club was formed in 1930. That produced some fine players.

MAN: It's always been a close affiliation with South, with the juniors so to say that you had, Redfern All Black, you had a Redfern United. In one little area, you had about eight or nine teams in one little area like Alexandria, Surry Hills, Redfern, Waterloo, all that area. And they all had Aboriginal flags with them.

CATHY FREEMAN: Between the age of six to nine, I've come here three days a week and run. This is just a happy place for me, really. This is it, this is the track where I trained for Sydney. When I was training, I used to feel like I was a soldier going out into the trenches to fight, to try to overcome some private war or something being waged in my own little brain. I see myself all around here. This is one of the reasons why I'm so strong because of where I'm from, where my father's from, where my grandparents are from, where my ancestors are from.

TV COMMENTATOR: It's a famous victory, a magnificent performance. What a legend. What a champion. It seems as if the whole of Australia right now has a smile on his face.

RIMA TAMOU: Yeah, the Koori Knockout at Dubbo was my first shoot. It was a long time ago now and there's been a lot of stories that have come and gone in between but I do remember, I don't think people realise when they watch TV that there's always a back story. It was very interesting, I learnt a lot about how to work with organisers who are quite unhappy with you being there. It's not uncommon for a non-Indigenous person to come up to you and say, 'I've never met an Aboriginal person before.' And I think this medium of television, non-Indigenous people can meet Indigenous people telling their stories in a non-confronting way 'cause you can just switch on and see somebody who's done an amazing thing. And they're just everyday Aussies, you know. They just happen to be black. Indigenous storytelling in the future is on a very steep incline. It's rising very quickly.

ADRIAN WILLS: One story that I really was affected by by another producer was Penny Smallacombe's Leila Murray. That's an amazing story. And a story that has stuck with me. The way she allowed their story to come out was so beautiful and so in control of what... So in control of her craft, of what she was doing.

REPORTER: Eddie Murray was found hanged in a cell at Wee Waa in Western New South Wales in June, 1981.

REPORTER: ..Justice Muirhead inspected the cell where Murray had been found hanged an hour after he'd been detained by police for drunk...

REPORTER: ..Muirhead says he certainly died of hanging from his own actions. But it could not be classed as suicide because of doubt over Murray's intent.

WOMAN: You have to remember at that time there was a death on average every 14 or 15 days during the course of the Royal Commission and it was the agitation of families like the Murrays which eventually enabled that Royal Commission to be called.

MAN: It makes you think what a magistrate would bring down such a finding and have no-one charged. After police had lied on oath at an inquest.

ADRIAN WILLS: I know for a fact that my grandmother was a little old white lady in Balgowlah, this was her favourite show on television. It was a storybook that was so Australian. That's what Message Stick was, it was an absolute storybook. And people that never had met an Aboriginal person in their lifetime could finally turn on the television and see so many different types of Aboriginal people doing so many different things, inspiring, challenging. There's so many things that Message Stick has brought to this country in terms of its narrative.

JULIE NIMMO: My Sundays have been greatly enriched by being able to sit down, stop doing housework and watch half an hour of my people tell their stories. But a couple of stories that really stand out for me was one by Adrian Wills. He did a doco with a lady named Lillian Crombie and it was just so fun and her life's had ups and downs.

LILLIAN CROMBIE: God, it's hard. (Aristocratic accent) Hello. My name Bettina Regina Windsor.

JULIE NIMMO: But that documentary was just so beautiful and so fun and full of life, energy and great filmmaking skills that I hold that up as a bit of a beacon on what's possible. And another story that I really loved was by a dear friend and colleague, Kelrick Martin, he made a film about children from Western Australia who were removed from their families and put into a kids' home and they all learned how to paint in watercolours and the artworks have become really famous now, documenting the country because it's all changed and it's a bit of a snapshot on what their lives were about, these children, and it was done with such grace and beauty and creativity... ..that I also hold that up as the standard that I'd like to be able to achieve with my stories.

MAN: Kids needed to get out of a settlement, it was too constraining, it was an institution. So he started taking the kids out of school for what he called rambles, for walks in the bush. And he expected the kids when they came back from these walks to reflect on what they'd seen and maybe write a little story, it started with a little story, and very quickly one or two of the boys started decorating the frame of their story page with a few kind of images, pencil things, a kangaroo, a dog, a tree.

MAN: He said you don't draw a tree just like that with a bush around like that. Take it - see how that tree is in the ground? You do it like that. You take it from the bottom. And you put all the little limbs out.

VERNON AH KEE: The art I make is about my life and my experiences as a black fella in this country. So it has to be considered Aboriginal art and I have to be considered an Aboriginal artist.

MAN: If there's a better artist than Vern out there, I want to see who they are.

WOMAN: I first started working with Destiny in 1994 when I curated her work, Brown-Skinned Babies On The Menu, into an exhibition called Bad Toys at the Australian Centre For Contemporary Art. And ever since then, I've been completely intrigued by her work, her use of humour and the way that she gets so much emotional intensity from inanimate objects like dolls.

DESTINY DEACON: Oh, well, OK, so you're here. Well, I'll try to explain things. Last time I had bloody ABC here was for that Michael Riley 'Black Out' thing years ago. And now you come back to haunt me. Anyway, at least my friend the witchdoctor's still here. OK, so we'll give it a go. I don't know, I suppose I've been lucky 'cause people have sort of have asked me to be in another show, another show and curators and stuff. And, yeah, just one thing leads to another.

MAN: You see the development of his art practice from 1969. It was the year that he acknowledged Peter Carroll who was a missionary who travelled to Gunbalanya at the time, encouraging him to paint for the Western art audience with works on bark and on paper and also print media. From those very early works, the image is almost sort of shimmering on the surface of these bark paintings, to the development of that into working on paper and later in his life, in print media from etchings and lino prints. And, I suppose, you get a real understanding of the evolving nature of his professional practice.

RICHARD BELL: One of the only rays of hope that we have is that, you know... ..there are people who, if they're willing to buy a piece of confrontation like I produce, well, they're obviously ready to be, um, spoken to on other issues... as well.

WOMAN: The Emily exhibition is arguably the biggest single artist show ever to travel overseas from Australia, with over 200 works worth some $50 million. Because of working with Japanese partners, it was really important that they got to experience Emily's country first-hand. The Japanese party was lead by Professor Tatehata, whose idea it was to take an Emily exhibition to Japan. It was essential that members of Emily's community be in Japan for the openings.

WOMAN: We are very lucky Aunty Emily's paintings are doing this and bringing more focus on our place, you know, Utopia.

MAN: Finally... I can meet this painting again. It's my long dream.

WOMAN: It's a big ceremony, this one.

RIMA TAMOU: There was a story, though, of... I think Adrian did it, it was of a woman who's the first person to run an Aboriginal pub on the North Coast somewhere and it just, you know, it's one of those weird things that, like, pub, black fellas, woman owning, it just didn't... You know, 'what?!' you know?

DOROTHY WOTHERSPOON: I was never out in the public at all. And to come through under this bar, with people all around, was very scary. To see their faces, white faces, no black faces, was very scary.

RIMA TAMOU: Just the ability to go, 'Yes, we'll do this story,' because it's about empowerment, it's not being fearful or being, you know, showing an Aboriginal woman owning a pub. But it wasn't about that, you know, it was about the love between her and her husband and the hardship they had in establishing this pub and he passed on and she held on to that. And I think that's what's great about the show is that they're about romances, they're about people struggling that non-Indigenous people, anyone relates to. And I think the colour drops away and people relate to that as a meaningful story and then the gap of difference or perceived difference between black and white just, you know, disappears or gets a bit smaller.

MIRIAM COROWA: In terms of stories that have probably stayed with me the longest, I'd have to say a project that I worked on over the course of three years about an opera called Pecan Summer is one that's perhaps closest to my heart. Just because it's a story that I stumbled across myself and I worked really closely with a woman called Deborah Cheetham who's responsible for creating what is essentially Australia's first Indigenous opera and she was involved in developing a lot of new young talent, Indigenous opera singers and it was just really inspiring to go on that journey with people and to follow it over three years.

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: An opera is a massive undertaking. It really draws on the resources of so many different people but in our case, it was just a few people who had to be very resourceful.

MAN: There are hardly any Indigenous opera singers in Australia whatsoever and Deborah wanted to change that because opera is beautiful music. Pecan Summer, it has a lot more depth than a lot of operas or any other works that I've seen because it written from experience and history. You know, there's three generations of Stolen Generation in the opera. When you're watching the singers, you can tell that they have this real connection with what they're singing about because of the fact that it is real.

WOMAN: It was one of the first times that Aboriginal people took a stand and did something about the situation that they were in.

SIDNEY SALTNER: For me, it's exciting to bring back some of the old style of Bangarra which we haven't touched for many years and also to teach the younger generation that this is where it all started.

FRANCES RINGS: I spent many years in the performing arts particularly working with Bangarra Dance Theatre. I spent 12 years with them. A good eight of them were as a performer and dancer with the company and then after that I started to delve into choreography. And I had a real push from Stephen who really encourage me to choreograph and to explore my own storytelling.

DAMIAN SMITH: Went to LA, did a gig, was doing Nutcracker guestings in the San Francisco Ballet. I went and did the audition, I nailed it, I had a great class, I felt good, I pulled it off and they were impressed and they asked me to join the company. And then at 27, I was promoted to principal dancer. And that's basically the highest level in the company that you can achieve. For me, it was like, 'Oh, my goodness! How'd this happen? I'm a principal dancer, don't screw it up!' I think I said before that I know my family are always going to be here for me. So, that's something I can depend on, rely on and trust.

MATTHEW SHIELDS: I think pole dancing is a form of artistic expression. I use elements of Aboriginal dancing on the pole as well. So it looks very earthy and very artistic. I feel like I've promoted Aboriginal culture in a sense that I incorporated the elements into the pole and I've brought it to the world and showed the pole dancing world, 'Hey, this is where I'm from. I'm Aboriginal. I'm an Aboriginal Australian man. And we're amazing.'

CATRIONA MCKENZIE: I developed Satellite Boy over a number of years because I was learning how to write and so in the writing of it, I sort of learned about what it was to actually write which is what I was doing. I really wanted to make it so simple and so predictable in a way that anyone from any part of the world could watch it and they could go, 'Oh, yeah! Yeah, I know that.' 'Cause for me, the way it connects us through the heart rather than through, you know, not politics but coming up from the other way. When I was writing it, it's about a little boy who goes on a journey across the desert and his relationship with his grandfather and people at one point said, 'You're a woman, why don't you make Little Pete a girl?' I thought about it, 'Hmm, he's ten years old. A ten-year-old girl wouldn't go across the desert. she'd say, "I'm not doing that, I'm not crazy."' You know what I mean? So it's that sort of, I don't know. There's a difference, I'm not quite sure what it is. But I just feel more, you know, boxing, cars, boys. I don't know, I like the more masculine sort of themes, I guess. I think women are more complicated. And I think that as a kind of an archetype or figure that can take us through a narrative, I think that there's something sort of... simple, pure, sort of, about a little boy, you know, or a man. I don't know, like, it's... I don't know. It's interesting. Maybe I should go on a therapy, I'll get back to you on that one.

RIMA TAMOU: I think the story that really affected me the most, the story with Mark Bin Barker and it was called The Man Behind Mary G. And the obvious thing to do in a story about Mary G or Mark is to do it through Mary G. But I thought for me, personally, that I didn't know Mark that well. I didn't think Australians knew Mark. But, man, I was interested in knowing how he got to become how he got to become. It was about country, it was about Stolen Generations so we could go to that country, we had Mark and his mum walking on that country so it was beautiful, he knew how to express his story.

MARK BIN BARKER: I got bored, do you know what I mean? I was just kind of sitting here and I thought, 'I'm going to create a guest,' taken the Mickey out of myself. I said, 'In the studio we have a lovely lady here. Hello, my dear, what's you name?' you know?

MARY G: 'Don't worry about my name, darling.'

MARK BIN BARKER: It created this illusion that there was this woman in the studio. So it grew out in the community, to the degree where people were saying, 'Who's this Mary G?' you know? 'She can't talk like that!' Mary G would say, 'So and so reckons she don't know me but when we were little girls, we went looking for boys all the time.' So what happened was, all the grandchildren turned around, 'Nana used to do this,' and the kids would laugh at their mothers and, you know, cause this chaos for the grandmothers.

RIMA TAMOU: One of the biggest challenged on a shoot is you have a certain time, We're not Australian Story, we're Message Stick so you have a certain time to hit. And it really depends on, for me, the people you're interviewing and them being into it and them being giving. And I think that story was a combination where Mark and Tania, his partner, we worked very closely, they were very giving and we could just schedule our time around getting the very best out of it. And his parents were so sharing too in their own way so I think when I look back and talk about the seamless story, the one that I feel fulfilled that we've got everything, I look at that story and then go, for me it was like that perfect wave, you know, that I look back and go, 'That's seamless.'

JULIE NIMMO: The story that probably affected me the most was working on a story with women in the city of Sydney who were all dealing with varying degrees of depression and they dealt with their depression by doing an art therapy class. And it was, again, a really beautiful and privileged space for me to be in. They really welcomed me with open arms and were generous enough to share all their stories and their heartache and what was going to make their lives better.

WOMAN: Oh, I'd never painted before. I actually went in there and said, 'I can't do this. I can't paint.' They said, 'Don't be silly. You can and get to it.'

TEACHER: They're telling their troubles through their art 'cause art is an expression of one's self. Art is the inner self of your own soul.

JULIE NIMMO: But what affected me personally was not only learning that you can live with depression and actually get over it but I met a lady in the class, an old aunty who met me and I didn't really know how I was connected to my Aboriginal heritage on my grandfather's side and I only really knew about my grandmother and when she was asking me where am I from, I told her my grandfather's mother's name and she went, 'Ah! Allan Lacy! Oh, I know where you fit in!' Da-da-da-da... And your great-grandfather was this person and this happened in their history and this is what happened in their lives and she just painted a whole picture. She opened up one side of my family that I didn't know about and it had such a big impact on my life, I carried on researching that side of my family and I learned that my great-grandmother and the man that she married got married at Milton Court House, my great-grandmother was a Budawang woman and when the time came for me to get married, I got married at the same court house so my name could be down in the records just like my great-grandmother. And maybe one day, descendants will find me who didn't know me.

ADRIAN WILLS: One of the most amazing interviews I ever did, Uncle Vic Simms' mother who was 93 years old when I met her. I interviewed her and I don't think I'd ever met an Aboriginal woman who was 93 years old before. Thinking about what she would have seen in her life, I'm just in awe of that.

BARBARA SIMMS: He used to save the swan for us. We'd give him five shillings for the swan. That was our Christmas turkey and it was beautiful.

VIC SIMMS: Good tucker. Adrian said, 'What's your favourite?'

BARBARA SIMMS: Turkey... Oh, no, not turkey.

VIC SIMMS: Not the swan.

BARBARA SIMMS: My favourite is 'susee'. What's 'susee'? Ask me.

ADRIAN WILLS: What's 'susee'?

BARBARA SIMMS: Rabbit.

ADRIAN WILLS: Oh...

VIC SIMMS: She likes the old underground mutton. We're very fortunate, me and my sisters, because everything we know in our lives, even to...to taking care of ourselves, has been implemented by our mother, you know. We've been taught the ways of survival by our mother.

ADRIAN WILLS: She really affected me. I walked away, changed by her.

WOMAN: When we got the message, Bret called to let us know we won the Red Ochre. We reckoned, 'Wow, what's that?' you know. He's our manager, he reckoned it's a big award. 'Oh, that's nice. We'll have to go down and get it.'

PEOPLE: (Sing) # I've been to Queensland I've been to New South Wales # I've been everywhere, man! #

SEAMAN DAN: Ever since I was 16 years old, I worked on a trochus lugger. I've been at sea most of my life so they call me Seaman. Seaman Dan.

WILMA READING: (Sings) # I'm a girl and by me that's only great # I am proud that my silhouette is curvy # That I walk with a sweet and girlish gait # With my hips kind of swivelly and swervy # I adore being dressed... # I knew when I was 12 years old, I wanted to be a singer. # ..to get me at my place # Out I go with... # I thought I was out of this world. I said, 'Well, it couldn't be happening to me. Pinch me. Am I still alive?' Without television in those days, everybody relied on their entertainment for themselves. We provided our own entertainment. And they'd always say to the kids, 'Come on, kids, joins us. Come on, help us sing, help us sing.' That became a natural thing for us to do and it was a pleasure. It was always a pleasure to do that.

RUBY HUNTER: Because I didn't really want Archie to know that I was writing songs. Because, this is Archie Roach, my man - he's a singer-songwriter. What am I doing writing this song? So he made me sing it. He made me sit down and sing the song Down City Streets. # It was daily living for me... #

ROGER KNOX: I was first influenced by music through the church, through the gospels, through the church that grandmother ran. And she taught us a lot of them old songs. Today if I'm sort of feeling a bit down, I'll sit around I'll sing some of these old gospel songs. I don't know it seemed to give me a bit of a lift.

KEV CARMODY: Music's such a powerful, powerful tool. Every culture in this world initially, way back in time, carried their whole history and, well, their religion as well, through the spoken word or music. It's our music. And if you listen to the young lads that did that hip-hop version on there, holy mackerel, it's just phenomenal.

NAOMI WENITONG: I think if I can hear a song and go, 'Oh, that's so true.' I want people to do that when they hear stuff that I've written. And I say this all the time but I really reckon that music can change the world.

ADAM BRIGGS: If you're whack, you're whack, and if you're dope, you're dope. It doesn't matter... It doesn't matter what your skin colour is or... If you got skill, you got skill. And you gotta use that to your advantage. And that's what I've done.

JIMMY LITTLE: And from the home base, the roots of where you get it, you plant new seeds in the present so the garden keeps growing.

WOMAN: (Sings) # Telephone to glory # Always answers just in time #

JIMMY LITTLE: One more chorus! So there we have it, the Little story continues and hopefully, beyond our anticipation, we will see other Littles in the sometime distant future.

JULIE NIMMO: Message Stick has been a really big part of my life and my family's life. My mum passed away earlier this year but she was a fantastic ambassador for Message Stick because she always used to like wearing the Message Stick T-shirt and you might say, 'Oh, well, she just like free T-shirts.' But she was really proud of the TV show. And the first time my mum had seen my six-month-old son, so the photo I've got is Mum holding Jasper, my little boy, and she's wearing the Message Stick T-shirt. So Message Stick is going to be a big part of the rest of my life and probably my little boy's life because I'm sure he's always going to say, 'What was Message Stick? How come Nanna was wearing a Message Stick T-shirt?'

ADRIAN WILLS: All good things come to an end. I am very sad today, this being my last day at Message Stick... ..and because of the legacy of Message Stick. I'm going to miss it, I grew up on that road. I grew up making the mistakes and telling the stories and making those Message Stick episodes.

MIRIAM COROWA: Probably the fondest memories I have of the team sitting around at production table, having a cup of tea, talking about all sorts of things. I mean, when you think about the incredible people who've worked on Message Stick over the years, some of the series producers I worked with, Julie Nimmo, when I first came across from SBS to ABC through to Susan Moylan-Coombs, Dena Curtis, Pauline Clague, of course, who was before my time but her legacy lives on and, yeah, it's just wonderful to be able to have the time to sit around and talk to all the amazing people who've worked on the show over the years.

JULIE NIMMO: Year by year, we're having a much bigger impact as producers and filmmakers and directors and storytellers. We're getting better at what we do as well. We're developing the next generation to come through and we're making a safe and creative place for them to have a career.

RIMA TAMOU: The future of Indigenous storytelling, I don't think there's any limits. I think there's different ways of telling the same stories, stories of empowerment and love and struggle and adversity and, you know, all of that. We have that in our own experiences as Indigenous people. We should also look forward to a future that is more than, you know, that is about comedy, that is about horror, that is about whatever you want to do because, you know, at the end of the day we're human beings who want to express ourselves in all these different areas.

CATRIONA MCKENZIE: And that's what's exciting now about the drama and now that we're moving into drama is that, you know... ..we're really starting to sort of fly now.