Premiering in Australia, Infractions is a feature-length video addressing frontline Indigenous cultural workers’ struggles against threats to more than 50% of the Northern Territory from shale gas fracking. As Australia becomes the leading global exporter of fossil fuels, and Asia and the EU plan to increase fracked gas imports, pressure on this region has intensified, threatening hard-won Aboriginal land rights and homelands.

Plans to ‘develop the North’ of Australia have been resurrected at different moments since the nineteenth century, but abandoned just as quickly for being built on fantasies that related little to the actual behaviour of monsoonal-desert water systems. With the lifting of a state moratorium in 2018, British, US, and homegrown mining companies seek to roll out toxic drilling rigs over vast underground flows, which are key connecting sites of culture, law, and food for First Nations.

Refuting capitalist and colonial models of land and water in the driest continent on earth, Infractions features musician and community leader Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra); two-time Telstra Award finalist Jack Green, also winner of the the 2015 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award (Garawa, Gudanji); musician and community leader Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa); ranger Robert O’Keefe (Wambaya); educators Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng); Ntaria community worker and law student Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta); musician Cassie Williams (Western Arrarnta); the Sandridge Band from Borroloola; and Professor Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj), a contributor to the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1990–4).

As the camera connects incommensurable legal geographies, extractive industry, and labour history to ongoing Indigenous-led resistance and movement, defenders of culture and water from Ntaria (Hermannsburg), Marlinja (Newcastle Waters), Borroloola in Gulf Country, and Yallarm (Gladstone, Queensland) warn of stories of manufactured consent, and Indigenous legal theorist Irene Watson explains the limits of the Western international legal system for planetary survival and justice.

Upcoming Conversations:

Panel Discussion: Art in an Age of Gas Destruction
Thursday 15 October, 6.3opm
Institute of Modern Art

This conversation addresses the relationship between gas-fired futures and matters of cultural responsibility, survival, and refusal. Join Vernon Ah Kee, Phillip Marrii Winzer, Que Kenny, and Infractions director Rachel O’Reilly to discuss the work of doing things otherwise, hosted by Warraba Weatherall.

Panel Discussion: Arts of the Frontline [online]

Since filming Infractions, the Federal Government has doubled down on planet-warming gas projects as the solution to pandemic ‘recovery’. This panel updates on the current state of play for gas frontiers. Dan Robins, an organiser against unconventional gas across Australia for more than a decade, is currently working with the NT Protect Country Alliance. Before that, he was Sydney Coordinator for Lock the Gate Alliance, working on the Our Land Our Water Our Future campaign to stop invasive coal and gas projects across New South Wales. Robins has also assisted with anti-fracking campaigns in Queensland’s Scenic Rim area and in Western Australia. In 2015, he presented at the International Anti Fracking Conference in Paris during the COP21 UN Climate Change Conference. Neola Savage and Juliri Ingra are descendants of Dot and Hector Johnson, who were active in the struggle for rights for Aboriginal and South Sea Islander peoples rights in Gladstone. The Johnsons were part of the first generation of Aboriginal teachers’ aids in Central Queensland, training in Melbourne at Deakin and in Brisbane in mid-life. Juliri Ingra is an artist, while Neola Savage continues Indigenous education and liaison work in Woorabinda.