Sometime between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day this week, I watched a film called Ten Canoes. The film was made in 2006 among an Aboriginal people of the Northern Territories of Australia. It tells two stories, one of which – the story within the story – is presented as a very old, true story from the time of the ancestors. In its content and the way it was told, it made me feel conscious once again of the power and effects of storytelling.:

In Ten Canoes, a young Aboriginal man fancies a beautiful young woman. Unfortunately, she is already one of the three wives of the young man’s brother. To alert the young man to the dangers and folly of what his fancy could unleash, he is told the story – and this becomes the story within the story – that comes from the ancient time of the ancestors. Of course, the story that he is told is one that exactly matches the situation he is in. It shows how the similar desires of the young man in the earlier story resulted in suspicion, warfare and death. I found all of this quite fascinating – and for several different reasons, not least that storytellers so often try to find a story to tell that has relevance to now.

The storytelling:

The first fascinating thing about Ten Canoes for me was the slowness and stillness of the storytelling. The ancestral story within the more recent story was compared by its narrator with a small tree which slowly reveals itself as it grows and as more and more branches are seen. As this happens, it is pointed out, everything becomes more complex. You want to understand exactly what happens, you want to follow every branch. This feeling struck a chord witme. I too believe that storytelling has a slowness and inner stillness to it from which comes its power. And that’s not all … 

The landscape:

A second fascination was the feeling for landscape the film revealed. In a very true, deep way, the people who take part in Ten Canoes feel they are part of the landscape in which they live, part of the multifold life of that landscape, part of the same universe. This also resonated with me. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we humans are all a part of the landscape or landscapes within which we live. Perhaps this week, with all the flooding there’s been, some of the consequences of what we’re doing to our world have become more apparent to us.

The participants:

Fascinating too, and very moving, was the track on the Ten Canoes DVD we watched which described how the film  was made. Evidently, the process proved very hard but also uplifting. The director, Rolf de Heer, revealed himself as a man of extraordinary patience and understanding. Subtle and long-winded negotiations had to be held with the Aboriginal people with whom the film was made. They succeeded because, thanks to de Heer and his Aboriginal colleagues, David Gulpilil and Peter Djgirr, the people slowly began to realise how important, indeed how vital, this film could be to them. They’d been in low spirits feeling they’d lost touch with their culture. Making the film gave them pride. It made them feel part of their world again and also gave them a new sense of its value, enabling them to feel they could hold up  their heads among the white people who kept coming into their world with very different values from theirs.

My conclusions:

Storytelling has to have patience both on the part of the teller and the listener. Yet in its slowness it succeeds because it grips emotions and attention and gives a real sense of value. Ten Canoes reminded me of its potential in our world today.

And on that note, I’ll finish by wishing anyone who comes across this blog, as well as my regular readers a very happy new year together with the wish and hope that whatever happens during the year, you are supported by confidence in the pleasure and power of stories.

PS: My three photos this week are all from the North Pembrokeshire landscape of which I feel most a part. They are of my beloved Whitesands Beach and  all were taken during the week, each of the beach in a different mood. 

Tags: Australian Aboriginal story, film, Ten Canoes

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