Yolngu Boy: Petrol sniffing

Yolngu Boy was a stunningly ambitious project – the first feature film of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, shot entirely in remote and difficult locations in Arnhem Land, with an entirely untrained Indigenous cast, and aiming to communicate with a wide youth audience. Even more significant, it aimed to be consultative and collaborative at every step – a joint effort between white filmmakers and black communities to tell a story those communities wanted told.

It’s no wonder the process took six years and a great deal of goodwill on both sides. The director Stephen Johnson had grown up in Darwin, where his father taught at an Aboriginal high school. Johnson had connections with the Yolngu communities through his music clips for the band Yothu Yindi, but the process of getting appropriate permissions and agreement took several years. The scriptwriter Chris Anastassiades visited various communities over five years to gather material.

The resulting film is surprising on many counts. It’s visually stunning, making great use of the landscape to give a sense of the role that land plays in the Yolngu culture, but very young and contemporary in style – with a driving soundtrack, fast editing and a sense of fun. The three young actors give natural performances, and the story does not overly romanticise the culture. Indeed, the film’s greatest asset is the way it directly addresses the difficult realities facing its characters, especially in the final scenes in Darwin, where tragedy strikes with full force. The film is a remarkable achievement for all concerned.

Yolngu Boy synopsis

Botj, Lorrpu and Milika are three Yolngu teenagers from northeast Arnhem Land, who are about to become men. Botj (Sean Mununggurr) is estranged from his parents and prone to glue sniffing. He’s upset when his friends Lorrpu (John Sebastian Pilakui) and Milika (Nathan Daniels) are chosen for a men’s ceremony, and he is not. He leads a break-in at the local shop that goes disastrously wrong. The three boys determine to run away to Darwin, 500 kilometres away, in a stolen canoe. On the journey, they rediscover hunting skills they learned as children and strengths they didn’t know they had. They are becoming men, but their arrival in Darwin brings much bigger challenges.

Notes by Paul Byrnes

Additional curator's notes

Yolngu Boy is the story of three boys as they journey into manhood, not all of them destined to make it. The issues addressed by Yolngu Boy are done tastefully, the Indigenous characterisations not sacrificed by Western guilt by way of over romanticisation or dehumanisation of the culture and main characters. Instead, Yolngu Boy does its best to examine the tensions between Western and Indigenous cultures, and the task of securing a rightful place in the world.

The displacement of the Indigenous male(s) is the theme that dominates this narrative, and the possibility of being an Indigenous male denied a place within both their traditional community as well as the wider (non-Indigenous) community is a predicament that is explored by the filmmakers. Audiences are urged to sympathise with Botj (Sean Mununggurr), the Indigenous youth who is struggling to find his place in the world, having been demoted to the status of boy until he proves himself worthy of becoming a man. The kinship bond between the three main characters ensures that though the characters may undertake a journey together, each destiny is unique in nature and outcome.

Additional notes by Romaine Moreton

Education notes

This clip shows Botj (Sean Mununggurr), who has broken into the Women’s Community Centre, sniffing petrol. As he looks at a painting with traditional Indigenous symbols he begins to hallucinate and then goes on a rampage, smashing up the Centre. He attacks a painting of his totem, Baru the crocodile, venting his anger on his Indigenous culture. As he destroys the painting he has flashbacks to an initiation ceremony he underwent as a young boy, when his chest was decorated with his totem. He lights a cigarette, which ignites his petrol-soaked sleeve and starts a fire in the Centre.

Educational value points

• Substance abuse is depicted in this clip. Abuse of legal and illegal drugs, including petrol sniffing, is a problem in some Indigenous communities. It has been linked to socioeconomic factors that have their roots in the dispossession and colonisation of Indigenous people, including high unemployment, inadequate education, low self-esteem and the breakdown of extended family networks.

• Botj is shown sniffing petrol. Petrol sniffing is a major problem among young people in some Indigenous communities, particularly in remote and regional areas. Sniffing petrol damages the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and immune system. Its use leads to health, behavioural and social problems, including self-harming behaviour and suicide. Some communities have responded by using aviation fuel instead of petrol in their vehicles, while Opal, a non-sniffable fuel, has been introduced in the Northern Territory. It has been argued that if petrol sniffing is to be eradicated, its root causes, which lie in wider issues of social dysfunction, need to be tackled.

• After inhaling petrol Botj staggers, hallucinates and becomes violent. Petrol moves from the lungs to the bloodstream and into the brain. It slows down brain activity and depresses the central nervous system, inducing feelings of euphoria, tranquillity, dizziness and numbness. Like Botj, petrol sniffers may also experience lack of coordination, disorientation, hallucinations and aggression. Sniffing can cause death, as the petrol replaces oxygen in the brain. In some cases people who have sniffed petrol have suffered serious burns or died when the petrol caught fire.

• This scene occurs after Botj has been excluded from an initiation ceremony and argued with his friends Lorrpu and Milika. Botj’s self-destructive behaviour is linked to a sense of alienation from the community. This alienation has been reinforced by his mother’s rejection of him (she cannot cope with his violent outbursts, caused by petrol sniffing) and the fact that his father did not visit him while he was in a juvenile detention centre. The elders have decided Botj is not ready for initiation, a decision that, along with the rift with his friends, compounds his feeling of low self-worth and he turns to petrol sniffing as an escape.

• Botj’s response to his exclusion from the initiation ceremony indicates the importance of this rite of passage. Only initiated males can assume their adult role within the community, including getting married and carrying out ceremonial responsibilities. During initiation elders pass on knowledge about their country (homeland), enduring customs and Dreaming, all of which inform the individual’s sense of identity and belonging. In communities where petrol sniffing is endemic, elders are concerned that there will be no-one to pass on this knowledge.

• Botj is shown lashing out at his totem, Baru the saltwater crocodile. Baru is the primary totem or symbol of the Gumatj people, who are one of 16 clan groups in Yolngu society. Baru is represented by a diamond pattern and cannot be hunted by the Gumatj people. The conflict between Indigenous and Western cultures is a central theme in the film, and Botj’s destruction of his totem implies that he is rejecting his Indigenous heritage. The mix of rap and Indigenous music and sounds in the soundtrack represents the sometimes conflicting influences of the two cultures in Botj’s life.

• In this clip Botj rejects his Indigenous culture. Young Indigenous people sometimes find it difficult to reconcile their place within their Indigenous community with an involvement in mainstream Australian society. According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the difficulties some Indigenous people experience in negotiating these two worlds are evident in the over-representation of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system, as well as lower levels of educational attainment, higher unemployment and higher suicide rates among Indigenous youth.

• Yolngu Boy was the first feature film produced by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. Director Stephen Johnson worked closely with the Yolngu people during the film’s development and production. Writer Chris Anastassiades developed the script over a 5-year period, visiting Arnhem Land and observing and talking with Indigenous children, some of whose stories were incorporated into the film. The film was shot in the NT, mainly in Yirrkala and Gove, and the predominantly Indigenous cast were all non-trained actors from the region.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia