STATION IDENTIFICATION:THE ABORIGINAL PROGRAMS UNIT O F THE

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

FAYE GINSBURG

Over the last decade, the production of media by andabout Aboriginal Australians has undergone geometricexpansion, from a few experimental efforts at developinglocal video production in the early 1980s in remotecommunities, to the current situation in which videoequipment and television broadcasting are available topractically every Aboriginal settlement that wants it. Itis not only the work of remote-living Aboriginal peoplethat has taken off. Urban Aboriginal independentfilmmakers such as Tracey Moffatt are well-known inindependent film circles; Moffatt has just completed herfirst feature, "Bedevil," that was shown at Cannes and iscirculating in an international market. While the costsand benefits of such developments are still being debated(Ginsburg 1991; Langton 1993), Aboriginal media hastriggered interest worldwide for indigenous groups thathave formed alliances around the production of theirown media. It has also engaged the interest ofwesternerswho seem to be fascinated by the seeming disjunction ofAboriginal people — stereotypically identified by theirrelatively simple material culture and distinctly non-western cosmology—working comfortably and on theirown terms with the latest in satellite and videotechnologies.1

To most people interested in media and/ or thingsAboriginal, the mention of indigenous media in Australiaevokes one of those two developments. Less well-knownis the remarkable growth since 1987 of an AboriginalProgram Unit (APU) as part of the Australian BroadcastCorporation (ABC), Australia's national state-supported

television channel. Because of the broadcast range of theABC (a national network that regularly commands 20%of the television audience) and the resources it has as astate institution (approximately $450 million/ year)(Meadows 1992) which allow it freedom from commercialsponsorship, the APU is playing an important part inincreasing the televisual representation of Aboriginalpeople throughout Australia. However, perhaps due totelevision's distinctly national profile, ephemeralcharacter, and middle-brow status among intellectualsand artists, the APU has had virtually no recognitionoutside of Australia, despite the quality of the work itproduces. This article (and the accompanying interviewby Jacqueline Urla with Frances Peters, a producer forthe APU) are first efforts to introduce some of the workof the APU to people outside of Australia. Its programsbear consideration in terms of form, substance andreception; and the Unit itself is of interest as a precedent-setting model for including indigenous people and theirconcerns in the televisual imaginary of the nation stateand beyond.2

BACKGROUND

Aboriginal media is barely a decade old.3 It emerged outof transformations in consciousness of both Aboriginaland Euro-Australians, historically changing governmentpolicies, as well as the presence of new media technologies.Many Aboriginal producers see their work as continuous

92 Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 Visual Anthropology Review

with the 1970s social movements for Aboriginal rightswhich were aided by the Australian Labor government'sliberal left policy in support of Aboriginal "self-determination" (Leigh 1988). Aboriginal awareness ofthese connections between political enfranchisementand the need to control their own images in the publicsphere has been growing over the years and continuestoday as is still evident, for example, in recent debatesover media representation of Aboriginal concerns thatemerged in the Mabo decision and in recent positionpapers written by Aboriginal cultural activists for theAustralian Film Commission (Langton 1993;MacPhersonl993).4

These concerns first crystallized with thegovernment's 1985 launching of AUSSAT, Australia'sfirst communications satellite. Its presence meant thatanyone in the country—including traditional Aboriginalpeople living in remote parts of Australia's CentralDesert that had been out of range of television signals —could receive at least one ABC television channel andtwo ABC radio stations (Meadows 1992). It was out ofa concern that they have some say in what the satellitemight bring into their lives that Aboriginal activists werecatalyzed around access to and control over media, assummed up in phrases such as "Land rights and airrights." The ideological climate surrounding the resultingpublic debates organized by Australia's BroadcastTribunal in the 1980s favored the notion thatmulticultural expression was an acceptable version of theAustralian nation; this influenced national support ofAboriginal media associations and the Aboriginally-owned satellite downlink in Alice Springs, ImparjaTelevision (Batty 1993).

Pressure on the part of Aboriginal people for increasedrepresentation in mainstream Australian media grewwith the approach of Australia's Bicentenary in 1988.5

Aboriginal trainees at the ABC protested the lack ofattention to Aboriginal concerns in national televisionprogramming (Sandy 1992). In response, the ABCformed the Aboriginal Programs Unit in 1987,recognizing that

a special need exists for the Aboriginal people to

develop their own cultural identity in order toredress the special disadvantages they have suffered.Accordingly, the ABC will encourage communityawareness of the Aboriginal people's aspirations inits programs, and it affirms its commitment toproviding television and radio programs made byAboriginal people themselves. (ABC n.d.)

Specifically, the ABC made a commitment to havingat least 2% of its workforce be of Aboriginal or TorresStraits Islander descent, in line with the percentage ofAboriginal people in the country. As of 1992, thisaccounted for 116 members of ABC staff throughoutAustralia, including the members of the APU.6 This isnot a particularly startling statistic, until one compares itto the situation in the U.S., where the possibility of aregular state-supported presence of indigenous people inbroadcasting is almost inconceivable to a nation that hasbecome accustomed to the virtual invisibility of NativeAmericans in our media.

The Aboriginal Programs Unit began by producingor purchasing occasional works on Aboriginal topics.For example, the biting dramatic parody of the 200 yearlegacy of racism in Australia, "BabaKiueria," was broadcastduring 1988 as a counter to the celebrations of thebicentenary year that took no account of the Aboriginalview of this event. While this work has become a kind ofa cult classic, Aboriginal stafFat the ABC were increasinglyfrustrated that they were working for non-Aboriginaldirectors and producers (although with Aboriginal actorsand production crew) and that theirworkwas not part ofany ongoing schedule.

In response to these demands for regular Aboriginalprogramming, with Aboriginal directors and crew, theAPU has been p roducing a 30-minu te weekly series since1989. "Blackout" is made by Aboriginal producers andaired at prime-time (8 pm) for 8 — 1 0 weeks during thetelevision "season." The show was originally conceivedas a studio talk show, but the staff felt it was too narrowand formal, and it has now developed an eclectic formatto reach diverse audiences throughout Australia. Since1991, "Blackout" has been organized around weeklythemes, with a format that varies from live audience

FAYE GINSBURG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM IN CULTURE & MEDIA AT

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, IS CURRENTLY AT WORK ON A BOOK PROVISIONALLY ENTITLED MEDIATING CULTURE: INDIGENOUS

IDENTITIES IN THE AGE OF ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 9 3

T H E ABORIGINAL PROGRAM UNIT OF THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCAST CORPORATION. FRANCES PETERS IS THE FOURTH FROM

THE LEFT.

discussions with prominent Aboriginal figures in artsand politics, Aboriginal music and dance, interviews,and documentary segments made throughout AboriginalAustralia. In 1992, theAPU also produced adocumentaryseries, "The First Australians" with work acquired fromindependent filmmakers on topics concerningAboriginalcultures, history and politics.

By 1993, the Aboriginal Programs Unit wasoperatingwith a budget of approximately $2,000,000 (Australian)annually for the production ofits own programming andthe purchase ofwork of a distinctive Aboriginal nature"by independent producers. The unit has a core staff ofsix Aboriginal producer-directors and two researchers,employing additional people as required for particularprojects. (As of late 1992, there were still no Aboriginalcamera or sound people to work with the APU, whichhas been a source of some concern.) Additionally,

original documentary specials produced by the unit havebeen integrated into general ABC documentary series.

Frances Peters, a Kamilaroi Aboriginal woman whogrew up and wen t to university in Sydney (where she alsoperforms frequently as a vocalist) joined the Unit in 1989as a researcher for "Blackout.v The following year, sheproduced and directed her own first half-hourdocumentary for 'Blackout, OceansApart,' forwhichshe also wrote and performed the music. The piece isbased on the lives of three Aboriginal women who wereraised in white families; as adults, they reconnect withtheir Aboriginal heritage either direcdy, by seekingcontactwith their families oforigin, or through cultural activitiesin the arts, communications, and education. Peterschoseas hcrsubjects women who "don't lookAboriginal,'who are sophisticated and middle-class, and who areanything but victims. This was a deliberate strategy to

94 Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 Visual Anthropology Review

subvert conventional stereotypes of Aboriginal people inthe dominant media which tend to focus on men:traditional bush-living people engaged in ceremony orpainting, or urban dwellers represented associal problems.The women's unusual narratives offer extraordinaryexamples of the possibilities of recapturing a contemporaryindigenous identity in the face of tremendous forces ofassimilation. The piece is also powerful for the strikingdifferences in the women's lives despite their commonstruggles: Peters takes care to draw attention to thediversity of Aboriginal experiences. Additionally, whilethe history of Aboriginal children being taken away andplaced with white families is one of the more tragiclegacies of the government's stance toward Aboriginalchildren of mixed descent, "Oceans Apart" avoidsbecoming a simple attack By allowing the women'sstories to guide the piece it makes viewers aware of thecosts of institutional racism as we are drawn into theirlives, enabling us to see both the consequences of policyand the ways that they have managed to overcome them.Frances Peters explained her choice as an effort to avoidtreating Aboriginal people as issues:

They are speaking on behalf of themselves, from apersonal point of view and therefore the politicalcomes from the individual, the issue comes out ofwhat is happening, and the person's experiencerather than putting the experience up, and havingthe people speak on behalf of the experience. So bydealing with it on a personal level, we find that it isstronger politically as well. (1992)

In 1991, Peters worked with Aboriginal producerDavid Sandy, to produce the first documentary special oftheAPU for broadcast in 1992. The tide, "Tent Embassy,"refers to the event that galvanized the beginning of whatsome have called the "Aboriginal civil rights movement."On "Australia Day" (January 26) 1972, four youngAboriginal men erected a small tent on the lawns of theParliament House in Canberra and declared themselvesa sovereign nation. The action succinctly dramatized theissue of Aboriginal land rights in the Australianimagination, and helped catalyze a broader socialmovement. The return, in 1992, of some of the originalactivists, now in their 40s, to the site of the originalprotest to re-assert their claims and to occupy ParliamentHouse as well becomes the occasion for the film to

explore the last twenty years of Aboriginal politics. Thehistory moves from the confrontational activism of theAboriginal BlackPower and the BlackPanther movementsin the 1970s, to the establishment in the 1980s of theAboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Commission(ATSIC), a $5 billion bureaucracy which has beencriticized by some activists as co-opting Aboriginalpolitical power. "Tent Embassy" is built out of thestories of key activists — lawyer Paul Coe, scholar andactivist Roberta Sykes, politician Charlie Perkins — aswe see them in archival footage, in extended contemporaryinterviews. It opens with a wonderfully humorousdramatic recreation that suggests the spontaneous originsof the first protest and holds fast to the principle ofmaking people primary over issues. Other events aretracked through archival footage, not only of the Embassyprotest, but also of crucial events leading up to it, such asthe discovery of bauxite in the 1960s which helped putland claims on the national political agenda.

While "Tent Embassy" was received extremely wellin the general press (e.g. Stewart 1992), the piece iscontroversial in the Aboriginal community for itsrevelations of considerable division among political leadersas to whether one can change the system while actingwithin it. This is, to my knowledge, one of the first mediaworks made by an Aboriginal producer (or aboutAboriginal issues) that looks at political debate withinthe community, rather than framing issues as Aboriginalvs. European Australian, or representing Aboriginalsociety as a seamless whole. Peters and Sandy seethemselves as a new generation committed to exploringthat complexity which they encountered when theycame of age in the early 1980s. As Peters framed it,

It is not just a film about black versus white; it is afilm that questions our own political strategies andwhere they take us all. It is perhaps the luxury ofbeing in the generation that followed these earlyactivists to question and re-examine the history theycreated.

Bearing the legacy ofthose who helped alter the politicallandscape for Aboriginal people in this century, Petersand Sandy are new kinds of cultural activists. For them,the Aboriginal Programs Unit enables them to enter intomedia production in order to assert the multiple realitiesof contemporary Aboriginal life, not just for their own

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 95

communities but in the national arena, where Aboriginalactivism and political claims are generally effaced fromthe official histories. While the ideology of televisionassumes the lowest common denominator in its viewers,these Aboriginal producers are finding ways to drawpeople in—using music, humor, and drama—withoutsimplifying or reducing the Aboriginal experience forwhat are still predominantly white audiences.

In considering this kind of work in relation to visualanthropology, one must recognize their media productionas a form of social action. It is crucial to understand thedifference it makes when members of disadvantagedminorities become the authors of representations aboutthemselves, as opposed to the dominant model inethnographic filmmaking where the maker is generallyfrom outside the community. Frances Peters articulatedthis difference clearly to me in discussing the position ofbeing an Aboriginal producer:

Unlike you, we can't remove ourselves from theprograms we're making because they're about us aswell. And because they are about us, we always havethat responsibility to our Aboriginal culture andcountry. Alot of program makers don't. It becomesa 9 to 5 job. You come to work, you make a programas an observation, and basically, in many ways, youcan walk away from that.

So we can't walk away and just make aprogram on a different theme next time, you know.Non-Aboriginal filmmakers—when they're makingprograms about different topics have the luxury ofsaying, "We'll I've dealt with the disabled, and nextweek it's going to about women, and next week it'sgoing to be about X... And ultimately you're notreally answerable to a hell of a lot of people. You'reeither answerable to your executive producer, to acertain section of the community or society, orwhatever. But we, with every program that we make,are ultimately responsible to a larger Aboriginalcommunity. And we can't remove ourselves fromthat responsibility.

Peters' comments speak to the complex and embeddedsense that indigenous producers bring to their work,never seeing it as existing apart from the mediation ofsocial relationships. While for most producers, theserelationships have been primarily with their communitiesof origin, new more expanded communities of identityare emerging. For example, the most recent project that

Peters is engaged in as an APU producer is the Pac Riminitiative, a documentary series being made jointly byindigenous filmmakers from Australia, New Zealand,the U.S., and Canada. Thus, indigenous producers suchas those at the APU are engaged in more than the creationof media images of themselves that alter their place in theworld of representations. Additionally, throughcollaborative activities, they are building transnationalalliances of indigenous people that transcend theboundaries of the nation states that encompass them.

NOTES

1. For a full discussion of this ideaofWestern fascinationwith indigenous media makers, see Ginsburg 1993.2. This article is based on interviews I conducted at theABC in Sydney in the spring of 1992 with Unit producersFrances Peters and David Sandy; and with Frances Petersat the Dreamspeakers World Aboriginal Film Festival inEdmonton, Alberta in September 1992, and again in thewinter of 1993 in New York City, following herappearance at the "Shock of Recognition" conferenceand film festival in Amherst, Massachusetts organized byJacqueline Urla and others. The work of the unitincludes the magazine format current events series"Blackout"; the dramatic piece "Babakieuria" (1988);and the documentaries "Oceans Apart" (1990), producedand directed by Frances Peters; and "Tent Embassy"(1992) produced by Frances Peters and directed byDavid Sandy, the first documentary special produced bythe Aboriginal Programs Unit, broadcast as part ofABC's "True Stories" series.3. Different aspects of this involvement are summarizedin essays by film historian Michael Leigh (1988),filmmaker David MacDougall (1987), the late EricMichaels (1986), Aboriginal anthropologist and activistMarcia Langton (1993), myself (Ginsburg 1991,1993)and communications scholar Helen Molnar who remindsus that many remote-living Aborigines have beenproducing their own radio programming since the 1970s,"leaping over the print generation to begin recordingtheir languages, stories, music and culture" (Molnar1990: 148).4. Most have a negative view of the media's coverage(or lack of it) of Aboriginal issues, and regularly complainof racial discrimination and stereotyped representationsas "angry young militants" or the "drunken no-hopers1*(Watson 1978; Meadows 1992: 83).

96 Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 Visual Anthropology Review

5. If one examines the history of its involvement withradio, the ABC has been active with Aboriginalbroadcasting since the 1970s when it gave support to thefledgling Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association(CAAMA) in the Northern Territory. According tomedia scholar Michael Meadows,

In the 1980s, the ABC established a consultationprocess with communities to ensure a continuingrecognition of the complementary but differentroles sought by itself and Aboriginal communications(John Newson, November 14, 1989; personalcommunication)... The aim is to help local mediaassociations in remote areas set up their own broadcaststations using ABC transmitters...

By 1990, the ABC broadcast over 100 hours of Aboriginaland Torres Straits Islander radio programs in Aboriginallanguages throughout Australia. The ABC is aware ofthevery local nature of broadcasting desired by Aboriginalcommunities, as opposed to former trends toaccommodate all Aboriginal interests in nationalprograming (Meadows 1992: 90). However, this in noway suggests that there is no need to have an Aboriginalpresence in the prestigous national center of televisionproduction.6. In addition, the government established a separateSpecial Broadcast Service (SBS) in 1978, initially to serveimmigrant minorities; by the mid-1980s, the SBS alteredits policy to include the presentation of Aboriginal radioand television programs, and to take as its mandate thecorrection of popular misconceptions about Aboriginalhistory and culture. The SBS, however, as a UHFchannel has a much smaller audience and less than aquarter of the budget of the ABC (SBS 1980).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Australian Broadcasting Corporationn.d. Aboriginal Programs Unit. Pamphlet. Sydney:

ABC.Batty, Philip1993 Singing the Electric: Aboriginal Television in

Australia. In Channelsof Resistance: Global Televisionand Local Empowerment: 106 - 125. TonyDownmunt, ed. London: British Film Institute.

Ginsburg, Faye1991 Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global

Village? Cultural Anthropology 6 (1): 9 2 - 112.

1993 Aboriginal Media and the Australian Imaginary.Public Culture 5 (3): 557 - 578.

Langton, Marcia

1993 Well, I Heard it on the Radio and I Saw it on theTelevision and I Heard it on the Radio..: An Essay onthe Politics and Aesthetics of Filmmaking by and AboutAboriginal People and Things. Sydney: AustralianFilm Commission.

Leigh, Michael1988 Curiouser and Curiouser. In Back of Beyond:

Discovering Australian Film and Television. ScottMurray, ed. Pp. 70 - 89. Sydney: Australian FilmCommission.

MacDougall, David1987 Media Friend or Media Foe. Visual Anthropology

l(l):54-58.MacPherson, Shirley1993 Report and Recommendations to the Australian

Film Commission on Promoting Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Involvement in the Film andVideo Industry. Unpublished paper.

McCarthy, W.1985 The Value of the National Broadcaster in New

Communications Technology. Transactions of theMenzies Foundation 9: 141 - 144.

Meadows, Michael1991 Broadcasting in Aboriginal Australia: OneMon,

One Voice, One Land. In Ethnic Minority Media:An International Perspective. Stephen H. Riggins,ed. London: Sage.

Michaels, Eric1986 Aboriginal Invention of Television: Central

Australia 1982-86 Canberra: Australian Institutefor Aboriginal Studies.

Molnar, Helen1989 Aboriginal Broadcasting in Australia: Challenges

and Promises. Paper presented at the InternationalCommunication Association Conference, March.

INTERVIEWS

Peters, Frances1992 Aboriginal Programs Unit, ABC, Sydney,

4.30.921992 Dreamspeakers Festival; Edmonton, Alberta,

September.Sandy, David1992 Aboriginal Programs Unit, ABC, Sydney,

4.30.92.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 9 Number 2 Fall 1993 97