This dispatch left Yuendumu on 13 March 2015.  Assimilation  – “Alas (they) could not know that the assimilationists hadn’t finished:  The latest they’re taking is people’s life style choices.”
With grateful thanks to our Dispatcher

Hola amigos,

In 2000 there was a brilliant BBC TV series called ‘The Sins’. The main character Len Green (played by Pete Postlethwaite ) is an ex-con trying to get straight, and confronted by temptation (one deadly sin per episode). Whilst I can’t remember much of the series, the final scene, in which Len Green leads a horse drawn hearse in a funeral procession, is one that I doubt has been forgotten by anyone that saw it. Such emotional solemn splendour! Cinematographic art and acting at its finest.

Some considerable time ago someone gave or sent me a DVD ‘Liyarn Ngarn’. I can’t remember who someone was, but whoever you are ¡Muchisimas gracias!

I finally got around to watch it and what a true pearl was enclosed in that video casing!

For those that can’t enlarge this image, this is what it says:

“Our language is like a pearl inside a shell.

The shell is like the people that carry the language.

If our language is taken away, that would be like a pearl that is gone.

We would be like an empty oyster shell”

“When you lose a language,” he told a reporter, “you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It’s like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre.” Ken Hale

Liyarn Ngarn is like a Musical Dispatch. Songs by Archie Roach, and pearls of wisdom from Patrick Dodson are interwoven into Pete Postletwaith’s story telling. It is a story of more than language loss.

It is a story of injustice and resilience. Beautifully told. All Australians should see it. I’m glad I did.

Archie Roach- Beautiful Child…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXtj21ALOHE

One of the musicians featured in Liyarn Ngarn is Patrick Davies.

Rocky Old Road:
It’s a rocky old road that we travel
All the tricks that are tried are not new
They’re just wrapped in gift wrapping paper (Mr.Barnett)
And handed as favours to you
And no you can’t take all that you’re given
Oft times it means selling your soul
And all they can take has been stolen
…find you are the last one to know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFAdylvx34c

This was posted to Youtube two years ago.

“And all they can take has been stolen”

Alas Patrick Davies could not know that the assimilationists hadn’t finished:

The latest they’re taking is people’s life style choices.

Que les vaya bien

Franklin