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GENOCIDE IN THE WILDFLOWER STATE
Year: 2024
Classification: M
Runtime: 58 min
Produced In: Australia
Directed By: Frank Rijavec
Produced By: Jim Morrison, Tony Hansen and Alan Carter
Language: English
Website: genocidewildflowerstate.org.au/
Representatives of Yokai are available, either on-line or in person, to introduce the film and/or for panel discussions after screenings.
Please contact Yokai directly at genocidewildflowerstate.org.au/
"A perfectly pitched production ... clinically lays out the evidence for the assertion in its title and it does so in disturbingly understated style"
- the Hon Alan Carpenter, former Labor Premier of Western Australia
WINNER of the Human Rights Award at the Tokyo International CInema Awards, 2024.
WINNER! in two categories in the WA Screen Culture Awards, Dec 2024:
Outstanding Achievement in Directing - Frank Rijavec
Outstanding Achievement in Performance - Kelton Pell
and FINALIST in three other categories:
Innovation in Feature Documentary
Outstanding Achievement in Editing
Outstanding Achievement in Writing
Genocide in the Wildflower State describes a violent, state-run system of eugenics, racial absorption, and social assimilation in 20th century Western Australia.
For the more than six decades between 1905 and 1972, thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children in Western Australia were forcibly removed from their families.
Systematically organised by the State, overwhelmingly supported by West Australian society, generation after generation, for over sixty years — the State worked to destroy Aboriginal families, culture, and language, for the purpose of securing white settler dominance.
In 1997 a National Inquiry called this for what it was — Genocide.
In this documentary, 'Stolen Generation' Survivors give vivid and at times heartbreaking testimony of cruel isolation, abuse and humiliation in the system. Their accounts are supported by evidence from state records, public archives and historical scholarship.
Genocide in the Wildflower State is truth-telling and a demand for justice. It holds to account successive parliaments in Western Australia that have failed to make redress. It is about helping to heal the trauma in the Survivor community, and building understanding in broader society.
VIEW TRAILER HERE: vimeo.com/949418363
Executive Producers: Jim Morrison (Chair, Yokai, West Australian Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation), Tony Hansen (Co-Chair Bringing Them Home WA Inc) and Alan Carter (Non-Aboriginal Co-Chair Bringing Them Home WA Inc)
Directed, researched, written and edited by Frank Rijavec
Co-writer, researcher and script editor, Steve Mickler
Narrated by Kelton Pell
© 2024, West Australian Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation
PLEASE NOTE: For any enquiries about use of the film for professional development, community education, awareness-raising across government agencies, in not-for-profit services or for other purposes outside our normal buyer categories, please contact Ronin for a quote: