The film, “Kanyini” tells the story of the Stolen Generation: A generation of Aboriginal children who were taken from their Indigenous roots, in an attempt to assimilate them into mainstream white Australian Culture; The separation of children from their land, their family and their belief system in order to make them “civilised”. In the film Bob Randall describes being severed from 5 roots in this civilisation process. He describes these roots as connecting him to his sense life, his sense of belonging – this is Kanyini:
– Belief
– Land
– Family
– Psyche
– Spirituality
To become civilised, he had to be severed from these primal sources of connection.
The painful, and ugly, uncomfortable reality of the film Kanyini is part of the shadow that we have to both acknowledge a take responsibility for, and to feel and identify with, in order to move more freely through space and time.
