Please join us for a screening of Exile and the Kingdom, an award-winning feature documentary made with the Yindjibarndi, Ngarluma, Banyjima and Gurrama people of Roebourne, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

The film is a comprehensive account of the experiences of an Aboriginal community from pre-colonial times to the 1990s. It makes the connection between Aboriginals in chains in the nineteenth century and Aboriginal people in prisons today. Thus, the film provides a deeper understanding of how the violence and denials of the past inform the present. It argues that the relentless removal of the Yindjibarndi/Ngarluma people into coastal ghettos has led to the community’s current problems. Yet it never allows the viewer to forget the significance and influence of spiritual homelands, the bedrock upon which Yindjibarndi/Ngarluma tribal law is based. Above all, Exile and the Kingdom is a beautifully logical and persuasive argument for land rights.

In the beginning, when the world was soft, Creation beings lifted the earth out of the sea. Then the world became hard—colonisation, slavery, mining booms. This is the story of the Aboriginal people of Roebourne—their Law, their tribal voice, their survival.

The film is produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission, ScreenWest, ATSIC, AAPA (WA) and Ngurin Aboriginal Corporation. Produced by Frank Rijavec and Noelene Harrison, and directed by Frank Rijavec.