Airdate: After the Apology

NITV will screen After the Apology, a documentary on the continued practice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child removal in Australia and the community response.

Written and directed by Larissa Behrendt it profiles four Aboriginal grandmothers challenging government policies to bring their grandchildren home.

This has screened at the Adelaide Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, Human Rights Arts and Film Festival and Maoriland Film Festival.

NITV Channel Manager, Tanya Orman said: “This film is a powerful reminder of the devastating realities that so many of our families are confronted with today and the resilience of those who work tirelessly to fight for justice.”

It’s been over a decade since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s national apology to the Stolen Generations, yet the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care has almost doubled in the past ten years*. Indigenous children are nearly ten times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous children and many Aboriginal families are questioning what the apology means**.

After the Apology is written and directed by Larissa Behrendt (Under Skin in Blood, Clan, Innocence Betrayed) and produced by Michaela Perske (Black Divaz, 88, Boxing for Palm Island) and follows four Aboriginal grandmothers who are each challenging government policies to bring their grandchildren home.

The four women are part of community group Grandmothers Against Removal (GMAR), and their grassroots actions have spearheaded a national conversation to curb the growing rates of child removal*. One of the women, Suellyn Tighe has become a ‘bush lawyer’ who quotes the legislation back at bureaucrats, and GMAR founder Hazel Collins, has worked to make changes in her own community. The documentary sees the extraordinary story of former DOCS worker Deb Swan who left her job within the system to start fighting it after her sister Jenny had her grandchildren removed.

After the Apology also includes animated vignettes of the stories of four women – Donna, Kerry, Audrey and Barbara – who share their own stories of unjust removals. They are a mix of fragility and steeliness and together they highlight the diverse range of women who are fighting for their families in what is clearly a national issue.

Aboriginal experts working from within the system – former FACS Minister Linda Burney, Victorian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People Andrew Jackomos, and CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, Muriel Bamblett – all reinforce the approach advocated by GMAR, that the solution to the issue should come from the Aboriginal community and that there should be a greater support network for families. They all advocate an approach of self- determination, which is a key recommendation of the Bringing Them Home report.

After the Apology draws out the links between what is happening now and the events that were chronicled in the 1997 Bringing Them Home report. Behrendt brings the archival material to life through performance in a way that merges past and present, evoking the emotional experience of members of the Stolen Generations who were brave enough to tell their stories and stand as a reminder that the past is always present.

Sunday 14 October at 8.30pm on NITV.