Island Fettlers

Clip 3: Maintaining tradition

2 min 50 sec

Taken from the documentary Island Fettlers (2006)

Original title classification G – this clip chosen to be G

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Availability of the complete title

Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

A title runs over the image of a lone building: ‘Muralaguah Buai Cultural Centre, Wickham’. The busy preparation of the celebration of ‘The coming of the light’. People coming together, music and dancing. A Torres Strait woman tells how the Torres Strait Islanders are civilized because of the arrival of Christianity to the Islands.

Curator’s notes

The Coming of the Light is an important ceremony to the Torres Strait Islander people, and this clip shows the continuation of that tradition, which was taken to the Torres Strait on 1 July 1871 by the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane of the London Missionary Society.

Romaine Moreton, curator

australian screen