Benny and the Dreamers: Path to progress

Pintubi people tell us about their experience in the mission schools, and how the strange ways of the white fellas scared them.

Benny and the Dreamers synopsis

A documentary about the Pintubi people’s first contact with white people, and the affects of dispossession and institutionalisation when the peoples were forced from their lands into missions.

Benny and the Dreamers curator's notes

In the 1930s, the Pintubi people came into contact with Westerners for the first time. Benny and the Dreamers is a documentary about that first contact. It talks about personal responses to this first contact with whites, such as the attraction of having an easy and accessible food source, which was sustained through trade, and the eventual breakdown of the social group due to dispossession. There are many interesting aspects to this film, one being the gradual realisation by the Pintubi that their country was no longer theirs alone, and many of the main subjects in Benny and the Dreamers talk about the experience of being taken into the mission at Hermannsburg – the confusion of being confronted with strange cultural ways as well as realising that relatives they believed to have perished were all present in Hermannsburg.

The Pintubi peoples’ land is in the centre of Australia west of Alice Springs, and Benny Tjapaltarri is one of the few Pintubi who remembers life before contact with Westerners. Benny tells us about the first time he tasted Western food – in this case jam – and the taste delighted him. Freddy West Tjakamarra tells us how he thought that the tinned food contained human flesh. Ronnie Tjampitjinpa says that when he first saw white people he thought they were devil monsters. Yanatjarri Minyin Tjampitjinpa laughs as he recalls his first impression of trousers with zips on them.

Notes by Romaine Moreton

Education Notes

The clip shows schooling at the Papunya settlement in the 1960s and Indigenous accounts of experiences at the school. In current-day interviews, Smithy Zimeran Tjampitjinpa and Yuyua Nampitjinpa talk about their memories of the school. The interviews are intercut with black-and-white footage of a teacher showing students a globe of the world and students listening to a gramophone. The 1960s narration discusses schooling in the settlement. There is footage of children lining up and marching to class, and men and women working in domestic and farm roles.

Educational value points

• The clip presents Indigenous people’s critical perspectives on their education at the Papunya school in the Northern Territory in the 1960s. Smithy Zimeran Tjampitjinpa explains his sense of alienation because of being in 'someone else’s world’. Yuyua Nampitjinpa explains her fear of the teacher and his 'strange whitefella ways’, illustrated by the example of children cooking apples because they did not understand how else to eat this new fruit.

• The clip presents the 1960s non-Indigenous perception of the school as equipping Indigenous children for 'the modern world’. This is symbolised by the globe of the world and the example of Western technology in the form of a gramophone. The viewer is positioned to query the notion of schooling as a 'path to progress’ by the contrasting accounts of personal experiences of former students from the school.

• The clip includes 1960s footage depicting Indigenous people working in practical roles on the settlement as part of their preparation to fit into 'the modern world’. The 1960s narration indicates that many Indigenous people were trained for work in the settlement in roles such as butchers and cooks but does not refer to payment for this work. Such training was usual on missions and reserves where Indigenous people were often given only very basic schooling.

• The clip intersperses 1960s footage and narration with 1990s interviews to reflect an Indigenous view of the Papunya school. Personal reflective accounts provide detail and points of connection with Indigenous experiences at the school. This positions the viewer to be critical of the images of the teacher and the regimented children in the 1960s footage and to recognise the institutionalisation and dispossession that were taking place.

• References in the 1960s narration to Indigenous people working and thinking in the same way as the rest of Australian society reflect common government assimilation policies from the 1930s to the 1960s, and popular attitudes of the time. Schools such as Papunya played an important role in assimilation. Emphasis on full citizenship rights was often part of assimilation rhetoric.

• The Papunya school was part of the Papunya settlement established in 1959 by the federal government to facilitate the assimilation of desert peoples. Situated approximately 255 km north-west of Alice Springs in central Australia, Papunya included Pintupi, Warlpiri, Luritja, Arrernte and Anmatyere people, only some of whom went there voluntarily.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia