| RATIONS
Commentary by Frances Rings "Rations is set in colonial outback Australia and explores issues of dependency and assimilation, station and domestic labour -I haven't really gone into the stolen generation because that deserves its own moment, you wouldn't be able to scratch the surface doing a ten minute piece on it. All the pieces in Rations flow into each other - they are all pretty much the one songline. In my research I focused on South Australia, where my family is from, and the influence of the ration system there. The traditional walkabout ceased once we got rations. I want to look at the reasons why it stopped and the songlines didn't continue. I want to ask the question -what makes us stop doing what we've always done? How did the culture disintegrate? We went from a fully mobile lifestyle - travelling, hunting, moving with the seasons and the food supply to all of a sudden being stationery, sedentary and dependent. Rations were used by white colonists to lure, entice and blackmail. For the Aboriginal people at first, there was the novelty of it all - the novelty of clothing, tobacco, flour and sugar but also the deceptive ease of it. Not having to hunt for your food every day to survive. There were also traditional counterparts for each ration which made it more enticing -there was native tobacco ('piturukiri') and a type of flour made from wild seeds. Initially the rations were accepted and welcomed because it was seen as a giving gesture, it was sharing -a big part of Indigenous culture is sharing amongst each other so when these other people came in offering these things, it was welcomed. "These fellas are good to us, they are helping us" - it was embraced.
"Father Abraham" from Rations.
Photo: Danielle Lyonne
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A lot of it may have been well intentioned but the settlers didn't truly want to share. The settlers wanted to give the rations but not share the land. They took advantage of the Indigenous peoples' naivety I guess and had them work for them or took priceless artefacts in return for flour, water, sugar. Aboriginal people would come in from the bush and be given the rations and then the settlers would say "You have to stay here now, you can't go beyond those boundaries, you can't go back out bush, you have to leave that and live in town and be like us". These people had ceremonies and rituals they had to perform and as soon as they were prevented from doing so, it caused conflict. They couldn't go onto their land to hunt because all the land was being taken up, the wildlife was being driven further out. They couldn't hunt the sheep. They were trapped. They could apply to the Protector of Aborigines for a certificate of exemption but that would prohibit them from going to see their family and they'd be stuck in this white world where they weren't accepted. They couldn't go into a pub let alone a child go into a school. They weren't allowed to partake in any of their own rituals either. They were in this limbo zone, like a dead person walking between two worlds. The whole ration system had an addictive quality, the addiction suffocated everyone and kept them there as well. And the diet, it was a big difference in what they were used to eating -the heaviness and the weighing down, the addictiveness of sugar. But also the flour was poisoned with strychnine and arsenic, the blankets were laced with smallpox. There was that other sinister level which always exists in Australian history. Researching Rations has been an intense experience for me -it's great because I'm learning all this history but I also feel bad because I'm finding out all these things I feel I should have known. It makes me understand my mother, my aunties and uncles so much more. It makes me understand the way they are and why we are what we are today. It makes it so much clearer, the transition they had to go through -it's like the walkabout, you have to walk through it, you can't jump over it, you have to acknowledge all those things that have happened so you can move on and cleanse it. The next generation that comes after us - they can achieve more greatness. We're just here to pave the way for them. They're the ones that are going to be the prime ministers and going to make the changes. Our parents have given us the inspiration through their strength and ability to survive. I want to recognise that this is what happened, it is a tribute to them. It's often up to the next generation to tell the story of the one before, there's too much pain for them to do it, it's up the next generation to cleanse it for them." 
RUSH
Commentary by Stephen Page "There is a myriad of issues I explore in Rush but at the core of it is a statement about the strength and spirit of our culture, it is too powerful to be crushed. Rush is very sparse and abstract - it's a beautiful contrast to Rations. You get given the history lesson in Rations and then in Rush you get the Bladerunner version. It touches on religion, it touches on substances and poisons, confinement, the stolen generation - but the themes are universal - they apply to any culture in the world. How do we live in both worlds? How do we survive and move forward? How do we cleanse the pain of the past? We have to take our cultural values with us. These tracks and songlines, the cyclical patterns of the walkabout, they all come from such ancient and powerful myths - you can get pulled off those tracks and you get influenced, but there's something in your gut, there's something calling to put you back on that track. It's the stories and the culture that is your grounding, your medicine. In that way Rush is like a spiritual wake up call. Walkabout is the call and response of two generations.
"Walls" from Rush.
Photo: Danielle Lyonne
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When you look at Rations and Rush you have to ask whether things have really changed? There's many examples of kids coming down to the city and getting caught up in that corruption - it becomes their priority rather than maintaining culture. A lot of kids don't want to do culture anymore or they are ashamed of it - they're into hip hop and pop culture as well as a lot of the social dilemmas like drugs and alcohol and violence. That's what is so great about Bangarra and works like this - we are this young, sassy, urban company who can hip hop with the best of them but are so proud of culture. Bangarra is the foundation that inspires us. It allows us to work with people like Djakapurra and now Ningali who bring so much knowledge. We can still live in the city, we can still wear deadly clothes - but there's always that wanting - wanting knowledge, wanting language, wanting to learn about and express our culture. We take the audience on that journey with us. In that way it is also important for us not to spoon feed the Bangarra audience - we want them to bring their own dreaming to our shows, everyone has their own emotional reaction to the journey. Walkabout is about reclaiming identity, culture, and language - in white society the word 'walkabout' has always been derogatory but it has this ancient spiritual significance. It's like Aboriginal art - it's not just for museums and tea towels, it has a life. Western culture focuses on the external - pigeonholes, institutions, fences, confinement, half caste, quarter caste, clean, unclean - who defines what is civilised and what isn't? I explore all these issues in Rush against a stark white set and lights that either look sharp, soft, cold, wet. It's abstract, poetic and philosophical. " back to top 
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