Making revisions

‘The land had its own stories.’ A common narrative among European settlers was that the lands they occupied were empty and, therefore, free to claim. This assumption, imposed across many colonies, severed Indigenous peoples from places to which they held deep cultural and spiritual ties. Central Australia was no exception: the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’, used to justify British claims over Australia, treated the land as if it belonged to no one, disregarding the long histories of Aboriginal communities who had been living there for tens of thousands of years. For this short documentary, the British artist Patrick Waterhouse collaborated with the Warlukurlangu art centre to revisit that history by intervening in official colonial documents and maps. Working for several years with Warlpiri artists from Yuendumu and Nyirripi, he invited them to respond to these archival materials through their own visual languages. The film captures the collaborative process, the conversations prompted by these documents and the striking works that emerge: pieces in which colonial cartography intersects with Indigenous knowledge and art.