We are the Landowner...That’s Why We’re Here

1985, 48 Minutes

This film documents the work of the Clan Homeland Resource Centre at Yirrkala in 1982, and the running of one homeland centre at Baniyala.

One of the most positive aspects of traditional Aboriginal Australia today is the outstation or clan homeland movement. Throughout central and northern Australia, groups have left the large centralised government settlements and church mission stations to form small communities on their own land.

Yirrkala, in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, used to be a church mission station and is now an Aboriginal township. Today it is one of the most active centres for the clan homeland movement, supporting over 15 small homeland settlements. Yirrkala is also on the doorstep of the massive Gove bauxite mine, which the Yolngu unsuccessfully tried to stop when they initiated the first Aboriginal land rights case in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This film starts with a general introduction to Yirrkala and the Gove bauxite mine. Then from the Yirrkala Homeland Resource Centre the film goes to Baniyala, the homeland settlement of the Madarrpa clan, on the northern shores of Blue Mud Bay.

A Film Australia National Interest Program. © 2011 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.