home | news l

Pete Postlethwaite inspired to fight for Aboriginal people

By Michael Bodey

Pete Postlethwaite Liyarn Ngarn premiere sydney

23 May 2008 - PETE Postlethwaite is a distinct face from stage and cinema but every fan remembers him for a different role.

Sydney schoolgirls mobbed him this week recounting his role in Romeo + Juliet.

When Aboriginal leader and this week's Sydney Peace Prize winner Patrick Dodson bumped into him in Broome, he couldn't help but shout: "You're the guy from Brassed Off!"

Postlethwaite is now part of a film that is etched on him forever and one that is slowly finding its way to audiences globally.

Liyarn Ngarn, meaning coming together of the spirit in the Yawuru language, is a documentary journey into Australia's desert heart by the English actor, Mr Dodson and singer-songwriter Archie Roach.

It had unlikely beginnings and produced potent results.

One of Postlethwaite's old friends from seminary school, Billy Johnson, found the actor in Perth, where Mr Johnson had long since emigrated. He told Postlethwaite of the murder of his adopted Aboriginal son, Louis St John Johnson, who was beaten to death on a Perth suburban street in 1992 for seemingly no reason other than the colour of his skin.

Postlethwaite, shocked at such a crime and at the prevalence of deaths in custody, decided to act.

He teamed with Mr Dodson and Roach - who wrote the song Looking For Butterboy to celebrate Louis's life - on a tour through both the West Australian outback and Johnson's past to seek and change attitudes towards indigenous Australians.

Postlethwaite realised an Englishman could easily be seen as a naive do-gooder. "Blimey, it's egg-shell time," he said. "You're asking to be shot down."

But Mr Dodson knew Mr Johnson. "And if Pete was a mate of his there was no way he was going to be a fraud or do-gooder, he was going to be someone a bit special," Mr Dodson said.

Besides, Dodson prepared Postlethwaite with something his grandmother had told him. "My grandmother said to me many years ago she hoped I wouldn't be too disappointed with what I found in the landscape of Aboriginal affairs," Dodson said.

"At least he had some apprehension built in but I think the exposure to actual circumstances blew him away in many instances."

Now many others are being blown away by the powerful, privately funded documentary, which screened this week at the Sydney Writers Festival.

The film has been seen by thousands already, without any established distributor or TV screening. Unbeknown to the filmmakers, it was programmed in the upcoming London International Festival of Theatre.

Postlethwaite believes the time is right, particularly after the Rudd Government's apology to the Stolen Generations. "People are ready for this. People want to go along that road, they don't want that acrimony, that division anymore," he said.

Source: The Australian

Further information: social justice issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page