Melanie Hogan

Melanie Hogan (born on 8 July, 1977) is a film director and producer of Australian documentaries. Her directorial debut, Kanyini, premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2006. Her film narrates the Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective, as she acknowledged that she had not been educated on it despite having attended Australian schools through the tertiary level.

Melanie Hogan

Overview

Since 2004, Hogan has made documentaries in remote Aboriginal communities, exposing the challenges they face.

Her first documentary, Kanyini (2006), was distributed in Australia by Hopscotch Films. It won the 2006 Discovery Channel Inside Film Best Documentary Award, the Independent Spirit Inside Film Award, and the Best Documentary Award at the London Australian Film Festival (2007).

Hogan’s other documentary films, Yajilarra (2008) and Tristan (2011), both premiered at the United Nations in New York and Government House with Australia's Governor General, Quentin Bryce, as host. Yajilarra received a standing ovation at the UN.

Between 2009 and 2012, Hogan wrote, edited, directed, and produced an online project for the Australian Federal Government called the Stolen Generations Testimonies.[1] The site tells the stories of Aborigines who were taken from their families and known as the Stolen Generations.

Films and documentaries

Kanyini

Kanyini is her attempt to connect fellow Australians with the story of Australia’s past and present from an Anangu perspective in the hope Australia can move forward in proper friendship with Australia’s Indigenous peoples. The film’s title is ‘Kanyini: 40,000 years of culture, one philosophy that connects us all.’

Kanyini tells the story of one Aboriginal man from Pitjantjatjara country called Bob Randall and the separation he experienced from his country, his family, his traditional lore and his spirituality since he was a young child, as a result of Europeans imposing their superior sense of self and their will on the Indigenous people of Australia. It is therefore also a story of Indigenous wisdom clashing against materialist notions of progress. Despite the fact his people are struggling in a modern world, Bob hopes non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians can walk together going forward, even though they have not done so in the past. As Bob explains, "The Earth is our Mother. That makes you and me brother and sister."

Kanyini is a story that is fundamental for understanding contemporary Australia, for only by knowing our past and our present can we dream of a future that includes everyone. Kanyini won the Independent Spirit Award as well as the National Geographic Best Documentary Award at the Australian Inside Film Awards the year the film was released.

After Kanyini was released, Hogan went on to develop an education program called Yarnup around Australia, which attempted to connect Australian high school students with their local Indigenous elders.

Yajilarra

Still committed to connecting with Indigenous Australians, Hogan then directed her next documentary in the Kimberley in 2008 with the inspirational and courageous women of Fitzroy Crossing. The film’s title was devised by the local women themselves: ‘Yajilarra’ which means ‘to dream’ in the Bunuba language.

The project came about because the federal sex discrimination officer at the time, Elizabeth Broderick, had heard about what the local women had done to reduce the devastating effects of excessive alcohol consumption in their Fitzroy Valley communities and she wanted their heroic story to be told to the world. She contacted Hogan to direct the film.

The women of the community, led by June Oscar AO and Emily Carter, jointly led a campaign to place a ban on the sale of full strength alcohol in their community. The ban, which was not without controversy, resulted in a 43% reduction in domestic violence reports, a 55% reduction in alcohol related hospital presentations, an increase in school attendance levels and an 88% reduction in the amount of alcohol purchased. The film premiered at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2009 where it received a standing ovation.

Tristan

In 2011 the women asked Hogan to return to the community to make another film about the children who had fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) as a result of women drinking excessively during pregnancy. The film was made to educate the wider community about the dangers of drinking during pregnancy as well as to educate the world about the support such children need in order to live fulfilling lives given their disability. The film’s title ‘Tristan’ brings to life the struggles of a 12-year-old boy living with FASD. It also highlights the efforts by the members of the Fitzroy Valley community to deal with the disease. The film premiered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2012.

Stolen Generations Testimonies

Hogan launched another project in 2011: an Online Museum devoted to capturing the testimonies of Australia's Stolen Generations. The museum was launched at Parliament House to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations. Hogan had been capturing testimonies since 2009 inspired by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. By 2012, 46 testimonies had been collected from around Australia.

By allowing Australians to listen to the Survivors’ stories with open hearts and without judgement, it is hoped, more people will be engaged in the healing process. The project has been created with the aim of producing a national treasure and a sacred keeping place for Stolen Generations’ Survivors testimonies.

“For those people who do feel challenged by the Stolen Generations’ we ask you to listen to just one of the testimonies to see if you still feel the same. That’s all we ask.” Debra Hocking, Survivor.

Indigenous children were taken from their families from the very early days of the colony. On the frontier there were many instances of children who were kidnapped by settlers who often became servants for the newcomers. On missions and reserves across the country children were often separated from their families. They slept in dormitories and had very limited contact with their parents. This system helped convert the children to Christianity by removing them from the cultural influence of their people. But the removal of Aboriginal children intensified at the end of the 19th century. There were a number of Aboriginal children being born of mixed race. Colonial authorities believed the children with training and education could be absorbed into the white population ridding them of the so-called ‘half caste’ problem.

Professor Anna Haebich – Historian. “Imagine this scenario of police patrolling and observing things and noting down who was where and looking out for half caste children and then they might do an early morning raid so there everybody is sleeping, they might be just starting to wake up and police come thundering in on their horses. Aboriginal families had developed over time little ways of trying to stop the children from being taken away. They had look-outs and warning systems and kids might rush off into the bush. Some families put them in suitcases, sat on the suitcase, they might have, if they knew about it might have the children blackened up with charcoal.”

Aboriginal children across the country were taken from their families and placed in institutions and foster homes, often not knowing their parents were alive or searching for them. They were taught to reject their Aboriginality, and often experienced abuse and deprivation.

In 1997 the Commonwealth Government undertook an inquiry into the Stolen Generations as these children had come to be known. Hundreds of Survivors gave evidence of their experiences and a report of the extent of these practices was made public.

Professor Marcia Langton- Anthropologist – “If we were to compare the impact of these so called assimilation policies in their consequences to doing something similar to the Australian population today. Let’s say we’d leave one third of Australians living in their family homes, living their lifestyles. Another third we’d take out of their homes and we’d put them in the illegal immigrant detention centres and then the other third, take them away from their families, their children and we’d enslave them and we’d make them work on cattle stations and on mines or leave them with strange families to cook and clean.” Many of the Stolen Generations are still finding their way home, still searching for the families they lost and putting together the pieces of their lives.

Awards
Film YearCategoryResult
Kanyini 2009National Geographic Best Documentary Film AwardWon[2]
Kanyini 2009Glenfiddich Independent Spirit AwardWon[2]

References
  1. https://www.stolengenerationstestimonies.com/
  2. Kanyini Creative Spirits. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
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