Alyawarr elder, Banjo Morton forced the owners of the Lake Nash cattle station in the Northern Territory to pay him and other Aboriginal stockmen £1 a month when he  led a walk-off from there in 1942.

Sixty-eight years later, Banjo has led another walk-off, this time from Ampilatwatja, a settlement in central Australia’s red desert country, where his people say they have  been treated as outcasts and isolated from white man’s decision-making under the 2007 federal indigenous intervention. They are carving a new community from mulga  scrub three kilometres from Ampilatwatja - just outside an area prescribed under the intervention - at a place called Honeymoon Bore, 350 kilometres north-east of Alice  Springs. *

And I’m now following their story for a new feature documentary called “Banjo’s War”.

Working with photojournalist/filmmaker (and twice winner of the Provincial Press Photographer of the year Award for Northern Ireland) Rusty Stewart who has extensive experience working with remote Indigenous communities in Australia, we’ll be following the story of the Alyawarr People in their struggle to be heard by the Government. This is a powerful story. It’s a story of freedom, dignity, culture, history, human rights and about how our Government is trying to sweep Indigenous issues under the carpet.

Check out the 2 minute teaser trailer here.

I’m now looking for investors interested in helping to make this documentary a reality. If you’d like to know more, please email lara@thinkfilms.com.au for more information. “Banjo’s War” is an approved project under the Documentary Australia Foundation program, providing tax incentives for investors.

Photo courtesy of Rusty Stewart. Check out more photo’s from the Honeymoon Bore walk-off campsite here

The Moustache Brothers are not just a traditional a-nyeint pwe (vaudeville folk opera with dance, music, and jokes)…they are artists brave enough to speak out in a country where a joke against the government can get you jailed. Lu Paw, the English speaker of the three, provides some tongue-in-cheek humour about Burma and gave permission for this footage to be made public. Lu Paw’s brother, Par Par Lay was spoken about in the Hugh Grant film “About A Boy”. In 1996, he and cousin Lu Zaw were sentenced to seven years hard labour for telling jokes about Burma’s generals at an Independence Day celebration at Aung San Suu Kyi’s compound in Yangon.

Happiness and peace from a part of the world where people have little but are very rich..

And it never ceases to amaze me how people can continue to go there as tourists and not open their eyes to the oppression and corruption. If you travel in Burma, travel with a social conscience and when you come home, do what you can to help.

How can we just stand by and let the military junta of Burma continue to do what they do ?