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Article Excerpt
In 2000, the Council for Reconciliation brought out the 'Road map' for reconciliation 'as we walk together along the reconciliation road'. (1) In May 2004, Reconciliation Australia launched 'Pathways to Reconciliation', again implicitly linking the trope of the road to nation, reconciliation and political progress as movement. This situates the politics of reconciliation within a discourse of 'freedom of the road' which has its cinematic apotheosis in the road film. Critics who suspect that reconciliation is the next phase in colonial re-settlement and domination (2) will appreciate that the road film is bound up with narratives of imperial expansion. This is clear in Timothy Corrigan's terra nullius sounding description of the road film genre as perpetuating 'freedom on the road to nowhere' (3) (emphasis added), or Cohan and Hark's 'back to the nation's frontier ethos' (4) where the road signifies 'an empty expanse, a tabula rasa, the last true frontier'. (5) Such terra nullius images of the US road movie genre ring hollow in postcolonial Australian cinema and culture that attempts to account for post-Mabo history, (6) and also the persistent history of Aboriginal sovereignty. This essay follows the associations that the 'road to reconciliation' conjures up and looks at how this trope of the road has been taken up in cinematic depictions of Aboriginality and whiteness on the road, both prior to the 'road to reconciliation' and after it.
The road bears a long tradition of figuring not only colonisation, (7) but also social movements of white and black resistance. In the case of 'actual' roads for instance, Stephen Muecke's book No Road: Bitumen all the way (8) indicates that a 'road' is not always bitumen but can be a path/track that is actually imperceptible to settlers. (9) Thus roads/tracks can be sites for demonstrating and calling attention to the performativity of Aboriginal sovereignty. (10) Such 'performativity' is well documented by some of the films discussed here, many of which take the 'road' as the site for this reclamation of national space.
The road is a liminal space, both a 'sign' of, or material semiotic form of, settler occupation, but it is also a site for its critique. Alongside the rise of the road movie genre in the US during the 1960s there was the Freedom Ride's critique of race relations. In Australia in 1965 we had our very own 'Freedom Riders'. The Freedom Riders were a group of mostly white University Students (led by Charles Perkins) who set off in a bus from the University of Sydney to Moree, Walgett and other towns practising overt racial discrimination. In February 2005, forty years later, the Freedom Riders set off again with a different group of students (and many more Aboriginal Riders) to reenact the original journey (with air-conditioning). This indicates the longevity of the issue of racial discrimination and also the endurance of the road's association with 'freedom' and political 'movement'. I followed this trip for some of the way and kept a critical eye on the road metaphor, how that metaphor of 'escape' and 'freedom on the road' disguised other histories of containment. I wondered whether or not the Freedom Ride, like reconciliation's love of the road metaphor was tying itself too closely to a history of (post)colonial expansion and Aboriginal containment. At the same time it was impossible to remain untouched by the excitement of political movement. I got caught in the momentum, while thinking that momentum might be part of the problem: appealing to a desire to quickly 'solve' something, we keep things moving rather than sitting down, slowing down and thinking, which is often presented as not 'progressive', the opposite of 'action'/movement.
On the road there are always other things happening that might not be perceived, which is perhaps why the road is an apt metaphor for reconciliation: whites like me cannot presume to 'know' what reconciliation will mean finally. Four months before the bus load of Freedom Riders went north from Sydney, Michael Long began his 'Long Walk' along 'secondary roads' from Melbourne to Canberra to see the Prime Minister to discuss Aboriginal politics. While the Freedom Rider's mobility was not cast in terms of authenticity (even in spite of the 're-enactment'), Michael Long's 'Long walk' was. In the Sydney Morning Herald it was depicted as a walk through the land of his ancestors; he was, along with his Aboriginal supporters 'at home here among the gum trees. Their ancestors have walked the land for 40,000 years or so'. (11) Stephens was clearly touched by the powerful statement of this man's walk to Canberra, but his nostalgic reading cast the roads that he walked on outside of the frame of contemporary Aboriginal politics, suggesting that the road is a less authentic place for an Aboriginal person to be and not a site for contemporary Aboriginal politics. The 'road to reconciliation' suggests that this is not the case, as do numerous Aboriginal road films. Roads are always contested postcolonial places: neither entirely resistant (Freedom Rides) nor entirely dominant (No way to forget), but both and more. The following discussion of specific films attempts to draw out that contestation.
There are several films, documentaries and a TV series which highlight the relationship between Aboriginal people, whites, the road and the road film. These include feature films Backroads (1977) and Backlash (1986), the rock n' roll road documentaries Beating about the bush (1993) and End of the corrugated road, (2001) as well as the rock n'roll road film Wrong side of the road (1983). The ABC TV documentary Cop it sweet (1991) and TV series Bush mechanics (2001) are also important, as are the short films No way to forget (1996), Confessions of a headhunter (2000) and Road (2000). Some of these films have been directed by whites (Backroads, Backlash, Wrong Side of the Road, Beating about the bush and Cop it sweet). These films contribute to a critique of whiteness and they also demonstrate Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal collaboration (successful or not), as well as indicating Aboriginal input into the 'agenda' of the films. (12) For instance, Backroads was directed by Phil Noyce but with considerable input from Gary Foley. Backlash (1986) was written, directed and produced by Bill Bennett but with input and script improvisation from the cast (though probably less than in Backroads). Wrong side of the road (1983) was directed by Ned Lander with the script written in collaboration with Graham Isaacs and the bands Us Mob and No Fixed Address. Beating about the bush is a film with two white directors (Sherwood and Adler), about a white and Aboriginal band Djaambi, lead by Richard Frankland, who also acted as scriptwriter and producer of the film, and whose influence and presence is particularly clear throughout the film (he has a central role). While Frances Peters-Little argues that 'both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal film and television makers ... [are] capable of telling real Aboriginal stories', Beating about the bush is probably not one of those success stories. Importantly, the Aboriginal characters in the film are divided over its politics of representation. In the film, Peter Rothmanus criticises it as a 'white documentary like another version of the bush tucker man in the Northern Territory' and, on the other hand, Richard Frankland still appears hopeful that 'white Australia will be really touched by what they have seen ... and perhaps they still will be'. As a film about and based on white and Aboriginal collaborations, it is difficult to argue that the film is 'white' only, though it demonstrates brilliantly some of the problems with white...
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