Cinema: INFRACTIONS
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta) shows an unlined evaporation pond near gas infrastructure and dried up sacred springs in Ntaria (Hermannsburg). The landscapes of Namatjira’s paintings are now connected by a pipeline to the Queensland export market.
“Because we have a conventional mining company there already, that’s getting conventional gas, for sure there are other resources they want to get their hands on. It’s a threat to us, we’re not benefitting from it.”
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Community leader and artist Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa) at McArthur River crossing,
Borroloola:
“They got this only one area that they’re protecting, certain areas, that’s all. But we don’t want fracking at all. We want a total ban on fracking. That’s why I had to get up, and go down lobbying in parliament, and get my voice out there, because our representatives can’t get our voice out there. We have to get the media down here ourselves to let them know. We have to do a big protest across this bridge to let them know.”
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Artist and former water bore runner Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra), points to existing and prospective wells upstream of Lake Woods and Newcastle Waters, an important gathering ground, historic also for 1966 pastoral industry walkoffs.
“It’s a Native Title area, which is another way of saying, nothing much we can do. But there is time. There is a thing we can do. Get everyone together, and stand
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Artist and educator Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng) navigated Gladstone LNG Native Title negotiations under the threat of compulsory acquisition.
Neola Savage:
“Every week I’d just cry, from when I turned at Rio Tinto and looked over and saw all those buildings. You know, if I had my chance again, I wouldn't sign…At least I would have peace of mind, you know, for the people that I represented. Because we got nothing out of it.”
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Settlers fishing on Gooreng Gooreng country, Yallarm (Gladstone harbour). Voiceover, Professor Irene Watson:
“As Western Europeans you are so long in your disconnection from your own stories or laws of the land...
At the critical time that we are now, globally, with climate change and the destruction of local ecosystems, when we think about what we have, to hold on to the future, to care for country, we have a Western European legal system that has no concept of those responsibilities.”
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Ntaria community worker and law student Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta) reflects on cultural and protest futures in the wake of the NT Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing.
*They came with their big jargons, and had all these high and mighty hard words, and we told them 'Look, break it down we’re normal people we don’t have degrees yet. For you to talk to us like that!’
I was still trying to figure out to myself, who gets a Phd in water, and yet you don’t have the answers? I laughed at the expert in water, who did not have an answer for that. The question that we asked was, ‘Is the water safe, will
the water be safe from fracking?’*
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Jack Green (Garawa, Gudanji) paints mine power in Gulf Country since the 2006 McArthur River Mine expansion cut sacred sites and leaked toxic waste into the river.
What’s in the back of their mind, they keep worrying about money, money, money, so they dig up the land, destroy the land, and that’s also fracking doing the same thing. They can never tell us what damage can happen down the
bottom… This land, it will give up somewhere on us, you know?”
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INFRACTIONS, 2019,
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Early fracking experiments, accelerated in the USA in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo, were trialled simultaneously in Australia. Current gas plans globally mean fossil emission ‘lockins’ that far exceed habitable UN temperature goals.
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Left: Map connecting Mataranka thermal springs to NT groundwater flows.
Right: National map of prospective gas permits, Oct, 2019.
Yellow = Approved.
Green = Under application.
A review conducted by UTS Jumbunna Indigneous House of Learning found most - if not all - permits in the NT were issued in the absence of free, prior and informed consent.
INFRACTIONS
2019
[60 min]
Now showing in cinema.
20 July - 7 August
www.infractionsdocumentary.net
Featuring:
- Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra)
- Jack Green (Garawa, Gudanji)
- Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa)
- Robert O’Keefe (Wambaya)
- Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng)
- Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta)
- Cassie Williams (Western Arrarnta)
- The Sandridge Band from Borroloola
- Professor Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj)
Artspace Aotearoa and Slow Boil presents INFRACTIONS (2019), a feature-length video installation platforming the struggles of frontline Indigenous cultural workers against threats to more than 50% of the Northern Territory of Australia from shale gas fracking.
Refuting capitalist and colonial models of land and water in the driest continent on earth, INFRACTIONS features musician/community leader Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra); two-time Telstra Award finalist Jack Green, who is also winner of the the 2015 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award (Garawa, Gudanji); musician/community leader Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa); ranger Robert O’Keefe(Wambaya); educators Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng); Ntaria community worker and law student Que Kenny(Western Arrarnta); musician Cassie Williams (Western Arrarnta); the Sandridge Band from Borroloola; and Professor Irene Watson(Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj) contributor to the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1990-1994.
More information including podcasts with First Nations speakers as part of the Institute of Modern Art national tour can be found here: ima.org.au/exhibitions/infractions/
Crew:
- Director/Research/Camera/Sound: Rachel O’Reilly
- Producer: Mason Leaver-Yap
- Editor/Visual Research: Sebastian Bodirsky
- Camera: Tibor Hegedis, Colleen Raven (Nharla Photography)
- Sound mastering: Jochen Jezussek
- Map visuals: Valle Medina, Benjamin Reynolds (Pa.LaC.E)
- Subtitles: Katharina Habibi
- Additional support: Australia Council for the Arts