THE COST OF COUNTRY Capital and Ownership in Undermined: Tales from the Kimberley
‘How are we, as Australians, letting our country be developed [and for] whose benefit?’ This is the question posed in voiceover in the opening sequence of feature documentary Undermined: Tales from the Kimberley (Nicholas Wrathall), which premiered at the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) and was financed by the MIFF Premiere Fund. It’s the urgent question at the heart of a complex and complicated collection of stories that are at times inspiring, disturbing and baffling.
An Australian filmmaker who has spent many years living and working in New York, Wrathall is best known for the 2013 political and literary portrait documentary Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia. He is also a writer and producer on Undermined, alongside Stephanie King, an award-winning campaigner around welfare and sustainability. While Wrathall and King are white Australians, the voices showcased in their unashamedly political film are almost exclusively Indigenous. Importantly, young Bardi / Kija / Nyul Nyul activist and musician Albert Wiggan, also a co-producer and adviser on Undermined, emerges as the documentary’s most compelling character.
The region in question is the Kimberley, located in the north of Western Australia (WA) – a stunningly beautiful and mineral-rich territory roughly three times the size of England. A substantial proportion of its long-term residents are Indigenous, and more than half of them live in around 200 remote Aboriginal communities, comprising anywhere from twenty to 900 people.But, with the full support of state and federal governments, Big Mining and Big Agriculture are fast moving in, promising jobs but posing serious threats – not just to the local communities, many of which are being pressured
