Must-See Films and Documentaries

The Arrernte and Kalkadoon filmmaker's landmark series on the frontier wars, including the Queensland frontier, argued from archives, archaeology, and descendants on both sides. If the viewing list begins anywhere, it begins here.

The foundational documentary history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia from 1788 forward, told through remarkable individual lives. Long, and worth every episode; many viewers take it one Sunday at a time.

Five Aboriginal women, taken from their families and put into unpaid domestic service, tell their own history in their own words: the same stolen-wages system that Not Just Black and White and Is That You, Ruthie? describe from inside Cherbourg. Award-winning for its cinematography and score, and hard to watch for the right reasons.

A Guugu Yimithirr director draws the straight line from colonisation and policy to today's imprisonment rates, the very line the Charter names. Confronting, and made with the families who live it.

A Muruwari and Gomeroi journalist examines Dark Emu, the national argument it started, and what First Nations knowledge holders themselves say. Watch it with or after the book.

The gentlest door into hard history on this list: comedian Steven Oliver retells Cook's arrival through story and original music from First Nations artists. Proof that truth-telling and a good time share a room.

Bill Onus's grandson, the opera singer and academic Tiriki Onus, tracks down a lost 1946 film reel and uncovers his grandfather's forgotten work as one of Australia's first Aboriginal filmmakers and a leading mid-century civil rights campaigner. A direct, personal thread into the activist history on which the Charter draws, told and co-directed by the family who hold it. Also free on ABC iview.

The life and late-blooming genius of Emily Kam Kngwarray, the Anmatyerr artist from Utopia in the Northern Territory whose paintings, begun in her late seventies, reshaped Australian and international art. Told through rare archival material and the artist's own words.

A dramatised documentary history of the Torres Strait Islands, told by Torres Strait Islander storytellers. Essential companion context for the Islander histories heard at these sessions. It has moved on and off iview since broadcast; if it's not there, search ABC's library partners or streaming aggregators.

The Adam Goodes story: a champion's booing, the racism it exposed, and the national conversation it forced. Availability moves between ABC iview and SBS On Demand; search either.

Four grandmothers fight to bring their grandchildren home, in the era after the national apology, when removals rose instead of falling. The documentary behind the statistic the Charter cites.

The same director's telemovie of Eddie Koiki Mabo's ten-year fight to overturn terra nullius, made to mark the 20th anniversary of the Torres Strait Islander High Court case that created native title law. It resurfaces on iview and in library catalogues around Mabo Day, 3 June, and is worth the search.

The same director behind After the Apology turns to the Maralinga people's forced removal from their country to make way for British nuclear testing in the 1950s, and their decades-long fight for clean-up, compensation, and the 2009 handback of their land. A frontier history most Australians were never taught, told by the people who lived it.

The director is not First Nations, but the film is built entirely from David Gulpilil's own voice: dying of lung cancer, the Yolngu actor tells his own story, on his own terms, with no other narrator framing it. Included on the leading-it-on-screen basis this list allows, because the film hands the whole thing to its subject rather than its director.

The Wave Hill Walk-Off and Vincent Lingiari's victory, in the song Kev Carmody, a Queensland Murri songwriter, built with Paul Kelly. Four minutes, and the whole shape of the land rights story; several live performances stream free.

The deeper version behind the song listed above. Gurindji, Mudburra, and Warlpiri people tell, in their own words, the Killing Times that came before the walk-off, the walk-off itself, and Freedom Day, the festival that now celebrates it. Commissioned and released by the Gurindji people's own corporation, for anyone who wants the fuller story.

Australia's longest-running Indigenous current-affairs program, running more than twenty years, made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander journalists about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives. Current seasons sit on SBS On Demand; NITV's own YouTube channel holds a free archive of full older episodes, including on the 1965 Freedom Ride and the fight for land rights. A habit worth building, more than a single title to be ticked off a list.

Short films in which the Statement's authors read and explain the invitation in their own voices, including Professor Megan Davis reading the finished text on the floor of the First Nations National Constitutional Convention at Mutitjulu on 26 May 2017, the first reading in the document's history. The primary document, spoken. The full text now heads the reading list, and the recording opens the history section of the listening list.