The global premiere of Kumarangk: Sacred Women's Business, a feature documentary about the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair and the Ngarrindjeri women who fought to protect their sacred knowledge, will take place on Saturday at the Adelaide film festival.
The bridge and the women's fight
In South Australia, a bridge of about 300 metres of concrete and steel sparked a decades-long saga involving millionaire developers, academics, state and federal governments, the media and the courts. At the heart of the story are the Ngarrindjeri women of the Coorong, the Lower Lakes and the Murray River, and their sacred knowledge, which became known as the "secret women's business".
In 1989, developers Tom and Wendy Chapman proposed a bridge connecting mainland Goolwa, near where the Murray empties into the sea, to Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island). The Chapmans wanted to funnel more people towards the marina they were building on the island, "so yachties could come", as anthropologist Dr Deane Fergie notes. But the island was the Ngarrindjeri women's place for birth, burial and women's business.
Sacred knowledge and political battles
Writer and director Tracey Rigney, a Ngarringdjeri/Wotjobaluk woman, was a teenager as the affair played out. In the film, she travels to Kumarangk with her daughter and her aunties, saying: "Because we hate that bridge. That bridge almost broke our mob."
The film includes flashback footage of then prime minister Paul Keating discussing the Mabo decision, and Robert Tickner, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs minister at the time, summing up how native title became fodder for a scare campaign: "Some politicians in this country alleged that the native title claims were going to take people's back yards."
The women describe the day more than 150 women converged on Goolwa to discuss what to do about the bridge. "We talked it through and we worked out that every woman had a piece of the puzzle," Aunty Eunice Aston says. They discussed tales about Kumarangk's part in the Seven Sisters' songline, about growing up and womanhood, how the bridge would cross sacred waters, and how in the old ways when people died they were "smoked" on nearby Mundoo Island, with preserved bones taken and buried on Kumarangk.
Betrayal and vindication
Tickner had the power to ban the bridge for 25 years but needed more information. Ngarrindjeri elder, historian and genealogist Dr Doreen Kartinyeri ultimately put the information in an envelope for Tickner, but not for him to read. In historical footage, Kartinyeri says: "I did what I shouldn't have done, maybe. That was my biggest mistake, putting black history on white paper."
The ban was put in place, but the film shows South Australian Liberal MP Ian McLachlan bringing Tickner's documents into parliament. Former Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement head, Ngarrindjeri/Boandik elder Sandra Saunders, says she and Kartinyeri rang McLachlan and asked if he had circulated the documents. "And he said 'yes,' he did," Saunders says. "Doreen, oh, it was tragic. She fell on the ground, holding her guts and just rocking backwards and forwards and crying to her ancestors, telling them how sorry she was."
The documents had been addressed to Tickner's adviser, Sean McLaughlin, but went to the wrong office, to McLachlan's office. They were photocopied and shared. Then "dissident women" came forward and said there was no such thing as the sacred women's business. Ten News journalist Chris Kenny aired claims from Ngarrindjeri man Doug Milera that the sacred business was a fabrication.
In 1995, a state royal commission determined the "secret women's business" claims were fabricated, and in 1997, under John Howard but with the support of Labor, the federal government overturned Tickner's ban. In Rigney's film, the Chapmans pop champagne and pose for photographs. Later, Milera recanted, saying he was drunk. In 2001, the bridge opened.
Court ruling and legacy
The Chapmans went to court for $20m compensation over the bridge's delay, challenging those who supported the women's claims. "The joy is that the Chapmans sued us [Saunders, Tickner and Fergie] and that gave us an appeal," Fergie says. Justice John von Doussa found against the Chapmans and overturned the royal commission's finding that the women's business was fabricated. The courtroom erupted in cheers. Von Doussa's finding was accepted and endorsed by the state government in 2010.
Rigney says she remembers the story unfolding because her grandfather told her that her father's people were "fighting to protect something significant". In her 20s, she moved to Adelaide to reconnect with her dad's community and ruwe (country), and as part of her work she visited remote communities. "And I got to dance with the Seven Sisters dreaming, with that songline," she says. A couple of years ago, she got involved with the Kumarangk project, which includes an exhibition and a play as well as the film, her first feature documentary.
Rigney says she hopes people walk out of Kumarangk having learned more about what the Hindmarsh Bridge affair was, and more about the women who were only trying to protect country and culture. "It's truth-telling, yeah?" she says.
