Australian belonging, difference and Indigenous media representation in High Ground (2021).
The notion of “difference” is one that, as Hall (2000) asserts, is capable of possessing both a positive and negative function, but nonetheless remains crucial in forming understandings of social identities and dominant ideologies within a culture and society. This essay examines the manner in which Indigenous representation in media, alongside an observance of contrasting cultural attitudes toward belonging and possession within an Australian colonial and post-colonial context, can lead to a greater understanding of positive and negative configurations of othering and difference as it exists with various interpretations of Australian social identity. This is done through an analysis of the recent Australian film, High Ground (2021) through the approach it takes to challenging both hegemonic trends within the Australian media landscape and previous iterations of belonging from non-Indigenous perspectives in the Australian Outback film.
As a contemporary “Outback Western” and historical drama filmed entirely within Kakadu and Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory, High Ground is the latest of a series of Australian films, alongside Leah Purcell’s “The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson” (2021) and Justin Kurzel’s “True History of the Kelly Gang” (2019) to challenge the representation of Australia’s violent colonial past and initial interactions between Australia’s First-Nations people and British settlers. The film, which according to director Stephen Maxwell Johnson is “inspired by true characters” (Dean, 2021), first screened domestically in 2021 and premiered internationally at the 2021 Berlinale Film Festival. As one of few Australian films in the year to possess U.S. distribution rights, held by Samuel Goldwyn Films, it presents an opportunity for a greater understanding of Australia’s colonial history on a global scale. Set after WWII in 1919, the film begins with a confronting massacre, instigated by the visit of a well-meaning but naïve Christian missionary and accompanying white policemen that impulsively open-fire on an indigenous family gathered peacefully alongside a plunge pool, against the wishes of ex-soldier Travis (Christian Bale). What develops thereafter is a power struggle between the men responsible for the massacre and Baywara, one of two survivors from the massacre, enacting his vengeance for the crimes committed against his people. The film also documents the complex relationship between the young Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul), Baywara’s nephew and the other sole survivor from the massacre; the white settlers who raised him; and his responsibility to his family and kin.
If media is defined as “’cultural forum’” that poses the ideological scaffold for shaping and deciding national identity (Newcomb, as cited in Staiger, 1992, p. 90), then a deliberate exclusion and misrepresentation of one social group enacts a process of Othering them from the dominant cultural narrative, supressing their ability to form a concrete part of that national identity. The sustained failure of Australian media to provide meaningful and accurate representations of Indigenous perspectives has sanctioned the systematic exclusion of Indigenous Australians within the public sphere and political landscape (Thomas, 2019). High Ground promotes a greater understanding of this process of systematic othering within the dominant cultural discourse through its treatment of representation of historical events and its direct involvement of Aboriginal perspectives throughout the creation of the film. The film’s script was developed and produced principally through the collaboration of Aboriginal men, Witiyana Marika and Dr M Yunupingu, alongside writer Chris Anastassiades. Further, an interview with director Maxwell-Johnson reveals the extensive input of Jacob Nayinggul in shaping the narrative who, the director reveals, was passionate about “throwing all his country, all these people and everything he had culturally, to the telling of the story because it was his story” (Dean, 2021). Thus, the film highlights the trend in Australian film-media which “has brought Aboriginal people from the observed to observers” (Shirley, n.d.). As a result, High Ground functions as an example of what Thomas (2019) defines as the “Sovereignty/Nationhood narrative” in media, which “accepts the continuation and growth of the Aboriginal polity and recognises its right to self-governance and (…) self-determination” (para. 14). It is through the film’s extensive consultation with first-nations individuals that we, as an audience, arrive at a greater understanding of Australia’s historical colonial narrative, allowing for a greater degree of indigenous self-determination within wider cultural discourse (Thomas, 2019). Australia’s history of racial misrepresentation in media is made wholly transpicuous when British Superior Officer “Moran” directs a photo taken of Travis and two Aboriginal men, following a scene in which Travis and one of the men drag a crocodile out of a creek together in an act of shared labour. Moran directs the two men on either side of Travis, now holding a rifle, to crouch alongside him whilst declaring that it is “the responsibility of those who make history, to record it” (Maxwell-Johnson, 2021, 0:22:05). The act of othering, in this case, is done by creating meaning through the placement and posture of Aboriginal figures within the photograph as signifiers to mark difference to the dominant other (Hall, 2000), constituting what Hall describes as a “negative” function of difference. Additionally, the narrative in which Anglo-Saxon colonisers conquered and dominated the land through achievement marked as being “individual in nature, singular and independent” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. 5) is made explicit. An argument used to legitimize the minimization of Indigenous standpoints in both colonial and post-colonial Australian culture.
The notion of ‘belonging to the Land’ as its own entity in Australian cultural and social identity takes on a variety of different forms, dependent on whether it is expressed from an Indigenous or non-Indigenous perspective. Through facilitating a dialogue between depictions of Indigenous and Anglo-Saxon expressions of knowledge and cultural signifiers, High Ground facilitates an interrogation of varying sentiments and definitions of belonging from a post-colonial lense. White-Australian claims to belonging, which form dominant hegemonic narratives within Australian culture, are dependent on the history of violent dispossession of Indigenous people from their land, “denial of Indigenous rights under customary law” and is “inextricably linked to a racialized social status the confers certain privileges” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. 1). Additionally, and somewhat paradoxically, there exists a strong ideological current within non-Indigenous and Anglo-Saxon Australian definitions of belonging, defined by Moreton-Robison as an “apartness” from land, of “migrancy” (2015, p. 1). This sense of feeling Other to the land saw its expression within early Australian Outback cinema. The desire of early colonizing settlers to dominate, control and “tame what Europeans saw as a wild and alien landscape” (Shirley, n.d.), alongside the sentiment of simultaneous rejection by the landscape itself can be observed in films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Wolf Creek (2005). Both films involve depictions of a “malign Australian landscape” (Shirley, n.d., para. 22) set on incapacitating its inhabitants. High Ground takes a different approach to representations of non-Indigenous sentiments of belonging by facilitating an understanding of Indigenous and White definitions of belonging through dialogue between Travis, the film’s white protagonist, and Gutjuk, one of the film’s indigenous protagonists. In the scene, Travis and Gutjuk are pictured standing on the edge of a high cliff observing the desert below, a break from their expedition to find the warrior Baywara, Gutjuk’s vengeful uncle. When Gutjuk asks Travis, “What are we doing here?” (Maxwell-Johnson, 2021, 0:39:56), Travis replies “when you get to high ground, you control everything” (0:40:00). This sentiment stands in direct contrast to the previous shot, in which Gutjuk points to a hawk flying above the two characters, explaining to Travis that this is the animal he was named after. In this example, we observe the difference in “situatedness” possessed by the two characters on the basis of their race and how an “ontological (…) inalienable relationship to land” (Moreton-Robinson, p. 11) forms the primary axis of difference in between Indigenous and White perceptions of belonging. Furthermore, the nature of othering and difference in a positive form, as defined by Hall as crucial because meaning can only be constructed and attained through “a dialogue with the other” or “two or more speakers” (2000, p. 235) is made demonstrated.
In conclusion, High Ground presents an important opportunity to analyse shifting attitudes toward Indigenous othering and representation within historical dominant hegemonic narratives in Australian culture, from a post-colonial point of view. Analysis of the film sheds light on perceptions of situatedness, belonging, connection and ‘apartness’ from land from both Indigenous and White perspectives. Additionally, a greater understanding of systematic othering and misrepresentation of Indigenous standpoints within the Australian media landscape is facilitated, emphasising the importance of an intentional shift in attitude toward a form of media that allows for accurate, nuanced representation of Indigenous culture and a greater degree of self-determination on behalf of First Nations people.
References
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