The Stories of Our Town project has released its new documentary, Biraban and Threlkeld.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Director Glenn Dormand said it was about "Australia's first civil rights activists".
The activists, Biraban and Threlkeld, "became mates" almost 200 years ago when Newcastle was "Australia's most brutal colonial outpost", said Glenn, also known by his alias Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab.
Biraban was a bilingual Aboriginal man and leader of Newcastle/Lake Macquarie's First Nations people. The Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld was a British missionary, brought to Australia to "convert these people to the word of God".
Over 20 years, these two men captured songs, poems, ceremonies and dreaming stories. They represented in court Aboriginal people whose testimony could not be accepted because they could not swear an oath on the Bible.
"Together, they undertook the first systematic study of an Aboriginal language anywhere in the country and created the first ever translation of the Bible into an Aboriginal language," Glenn said.
"It's also the first time an Aboriginal language was printed. Their work was so thorough that it is still being used to this day to reconstruct language."
Threlkeld advocated for Aboriginal land rights and demanded protection for First Nations people under British law.
"He even referred to Europeans as invaders as early as 1828," Glenn said.
Threlkeld set up the first mission for Aboriginal people in Australia.
"Instead of enslaving them, as was the norm at the time, he paid them wages for their work. He also provided education and allocated plots of land so they could farm and provide for themselves, as their own land had been taken away."
Glenn said the film took two years to make.
"It uses decades of research and is told using both First Nation and European historians, academic and linguists. If these two men could find the 'third space' between the Aboriginal and European worlds 200 years ago, surely this should be a shining example for what could be achieved today."
