Here is a documentary every Australian should watch...Utopia - John Pilger
Utopia is long overdue. The so-called 'intervention' in 2007 was one of the most devastating setbacks suffered by Aboriginal people. Do non-indigenous Australians understand the pain and trauma this cynical action by the Howard government caused? I doubt it. The national smearing and humiliation, the lies and consequent tragedies ' the increase in suicides, for example ' rank with the worst official behaviour towards the first people of Australia.
Utopia is one of the most urgent films I have made. That Australian governments believe they can manipulate and discriminate against Aboriginal communities in a manner that has been described in the UN as 'permissively racist' is astonishing in the 21century. How ironic that as Nelson Mandela was buried and venerated, another form of the system he fought against was alive and well in Australia.
You ask if Utopia does enough to promote Indigenous excellence? Almost every Indigenous person who appears in the film is a shining example of true excellence ' courageous truth-tellers like Noel Nannup, a teacher, and Bob Randall, a film-maker, and Patricia Morton Thomas, an actor and film producer, and Rosalie Kunoth Monks, leader and historian, and Arthur Murray, and Robert and Selina Eggington, whose healing centre is the epitome of excellence. These people of course don't fit the western notion of individualised, often money-based 'success' because each dissents from the system imposed on them. But excellent they are in every way.