Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. It shares borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, Queensland to the east. To the north, the territory looks out to the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, including Western New Guinea and other Indonesian islands; the NT covers 1,349,129 square kilometres, making it the third-largest Australian federal division, the 11th-largest country subdivision in the world. It is sparsely populated, with a population of only 246,700, making it the least-populous of Australia's eight states and major territories, with fewer than half as many people as Tasmania; the archaeological history of the Northern Territory begins over 40,000 years ago when Indigenous Australians settled the region. Makassan traders began trading with the indigenous people of the Northern Territory for trepang from at least the 18th century onwards; the coast of the territory was first seen by Europeans in the 17th century.
The British were the first Europeans to attempt to settle the coastal regions. After three failed attempts to establish a settlement, success was achieved in 1869 with the establishment of a settlement at Port Darwin. Today the economy is based on tourism Kakadu National Park in the Top End and the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park in central Australia, mining; the capital and largest city is Darwin. The population is concentrated along the Stuart Highway; the other major settlements are Palmerston, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek. Residents of the Northern Territory are known as "Territorians" and as "Northern Territorians", or more informally as "Top Enders" and "Centralians". Indigenous Australians have lived in the present area of the Northern Territory for an estimated 40,000 years, extensive seasonal trade links existed between them and the peoples of what is now Indonesia for at least five centuries. With the coming of the British, there were four early attempts to settle the harsh environment of the northern coast, of which three failed in starvation and despair.
The Northern Territory was part of colonial New South Wales from 1825 to 1863, except for a brief time from February to December 1846, when it was part of the short-lived colony of North Australia. It was part of South Australia from 1863 to 1911. Under the administration of colonial South Australia, the overland telegraph was constructed between 1870 and 1872. From its establishment in 1869 the Port of Darwin was the major Territory supply for many decades. A railway was built between Palmerston and Pine Creek between 1883 and 1889; the economic pattern of cattle raising and mining was established so that by 1911 there were 513,000 cattle. Victoria River Downs was at one time the largest cattle station in the world. Gold was found at Grove Hill in 1872 and at Pine Creek, Brocks Creek and copper was found at Daly River. On 1 January 1911, a decade after federation, the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia and transferred to federal control. Alfred Deakin opined at this time "To me the question has been not so much commercial as national, second and last.
Either we must accomplish the peopling of the northern territory or submit to its transfer to some other nation." In late 1912 there was growing sentiment. The names "Kingsland", "Centralia" and "Territoria" were proposed with Kingsland becoming the preferred choice in 1913. However, the name change never went ahead. For a brief time between 1927 and 1931 the Northern Territory was divided into North Australia and Central Australia at the 20th parallel of South latitude. Soon after this time, parts of the Northern Territory were considered in the Kimberley Plan as a possible site for the establishment of a Jewish Homeland, understandably considered the "Unpromised Land". During World War II, most of the Top End was placed under military government; this is the only time since Federation that part of an Australian state or territory has been under military control. After the war, control for the entire area was handed back to the Commonwealth; the Bombing of Darwin occurred on 19 February 1942. It was the largest single attack mounted by a foreign power on Australia.
Evidence of Darwin's World War II history is found at a variety of preserved sites in and around the city, including ammunition bunkers, oil tunnels and museums. The port was damaged in the 1942 Japanese air raids, it was subsequently restored. In the late 1960s improved roads in adjoining States linking with the territory, port delays and rapid economic development led to uncertainty in port and regional infrastructure development; as a result of the Commission of Enquiry established by the Administrator, port working arrangements were changed, berth investment deferred and a port masterplan prepared. Extension of rail transport was not considered because of low freight volumes. Indigenous Australians had struggled for rights to fair wages and land. An important event in this struggle was the strike and walk off by the Gurindji people at Wave Hill Cattle Station in 1966; the federal government of Gough Whitlam set up the Woodward Royal Commission in February 1973, which set to enquire into how land rights might be achieved in the Northern Territory.
Justice Woodward's first report in July 1973 recommended that a Central Land Council and a Northern Land Council be established to present to him the views of
Northern Territory National Emergency Response
The Northern Territory National Emergency Response was a package of changes to welfare provision, law enforcement, land tenure and other measures, introduced by the Australian federal government under John Howard in 2007 to address allegations of rampant child sexual abuse and neglect in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Operation Outreach, the intervention's main logistical operation, conducted by a force of 600 soldiers and detachments from the ADF, concluded on 21 October 2008. In the seven years since the initiation of the Emergency Response there has not been one prosecution for child abuse come from the exercise; the package was the Federal government's response to the Territory government's publication of Little Children are Sacred, but implemented only two out of ninety-seven of the report's recommendations. The response has been criticised, but received bipartisan parliamentary support. Successive governments have supported the response, with adjustments in its implementation initiated by Kevin Rudd and continued by Julia Gillard in 2010.
The Emergency Response has since been replaced by the similar Stronger Futures Policy. The response was introduced during the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, at which the incumbent Coalition government led by John Howard, in office since 1996, was defeated. Paul Toohey, writing for The Bulletin wrote that the policy was poll-driven, although it gained the broad support of the Rudd Labor opposition and some Aboriginal leaders. Analysis of the political arguments in support of the Response identified three key factors allowing for the easy passage of the legislation which included the use of the Little Children are Sacred report, the failure to sufficiently detail the links between the response and the measures combating child sexual abuse and the failure to recognise Aboriginal agency and need for consultation; the response came at a time of increasing debate over the future of federalism in Australia, in particular the proper extent of federal power into areas of government traditionally managed by the states and territories.
It was one of a number of federal interventions enacted in 2007. Other state responsibilities targeted by the Australian Government at the time included seaports, workplace relations, the Murray-Darling river system and public hospitals; the policy was insulated from criticism because of the sensitive nature of the issue and the fact that the national Parliament faces no constitutional barriers to overruling the Northern Territory government, unlike the governments of Australia's states, which have some constitutionally preserved areas of legislative power. The legislation introduced as part of the package included: the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007. Notably, Clause 132 of the first Bill stated that the provisions of it are classified as'special measures' under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and therefore exempt from Part II of the Act. While the main elements of the intervention were otherwise kept in place, this exemption from provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act was brought to an end in 2010.
The $587 million package came into effect with the passage of the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 by the Australian Parliament in August 2007. The nine measures contained therein were as follows: Deployment of additional police to affected communities. New restrictions on alcohol and kava Pornography filters on publicly funded computers Compulsory acquisition of townships held under the title provisions of the Native Title Act 1993 through five year leases with compensation on a basis other than just terms. Commonwealth funding for provision of community services Removal of customary law and cultural practice considerations from bail applications and sentencing within criminal proceedings Suspension of the permit system controlling access to Aboriginal communities Quarantining of a proportion of welfare benefits to all recipients in the designated communities and of all benefits of those who are judged to have neglected their children The abolition of the Community Development Employment Projects.
The Northern Territory Intervention was drafted by the Howard Government, with Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough being the chief architect. The Rudd Government took office in 2007 and pledged to continue the policy, though Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin ended the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act in 2010; the Labor Party replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard in 2010 and the Gillard Government pledged to continue the Intervention. By February 2011, the original architect of the policy, former minister Mal Brough was arguing that the Intervention Policy had become stagnant and wasn't going to work unless it was revitalised. In April 2011, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott proposed consultation with Indigenous people over a bipartisan Federal Government intervention in Northern Territory towns like Alice Springs and Tennant Creek which would cover such areas as police numbers and school attendance in an effort to address what he described as a "failed state" situation developing in areas of the Northern Territory.
Prime Minister Gillard toured Northern Territory Communities in June 2011 and told the media "I believe the interven
Yirrkala
Yirrkala is an indigenous community in East Arnhem Shire, Northern Territory of Australia. It is 18 km South-East from the large mining town of Nhulunbuy in Arnhem Land. In the 2016 census, Yirrkala had a population of 809 people. At the 2006 census, Yirrkala had a population of 687. There has been an indigenous community at Yirrkala throughout recorded history, but the community increased enormously in size when Yirrkala mission was founded in 1935. Local governance and planning are now the responsibility of the Yolngu-led Dhanbul, equivalent to a Shire Council in non-indigenous communities. At the 2006 census, Yirrkala had a population of 687. Yirrkala is home to a number of Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots and engineers based in Arnhem Land providing air transport services. Yirrkala is home to a number of leading indigenous artists, whose traditional Aboriginal art bark painting, can be found in art galleries around the world, whose work wins awards such as the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.
Their work is available to the public from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre and Museum and from the YBE art centre. It is a traditional home of the Yidaki, some of the world's finest didgeridoos are still made at Yirrkala. Yirrkala played a pivotal role in the development of the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians when the document Bark Petition was created at Yirrkala in 1963 and sent to the Federal Government to protest at the Prime Minister's announcement that a parcel of their land was to be sold to a bauxite mining company. Although the petition itself was unsuccessful in the sense that the bauxite mining at Nhulunbuy went ahead as planned, it alerted non-indigenous Australians to the need for indigenous representation in such decisions, prompted a government report recommending payment of compensation, protection of sacred sites, creation of a permanent parliamentary standing committee to scrutinise developments at Yirrkala, acknowledged the indigenous people's moral right to their lands.
The Bark Petition is on display in the Parliament House in Canberra. Yirrkala has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: Wurrwurrwuy stone arrangements Roy Marika and artist Galarrwuy Yunupingu, land rights activist and Chair, Northern Land Council Gatjil Djerrkura, ceremonial leader Mandawuy Yunupingu and educator Raymattja Marika, educator and cultural advocate Yothu Yindi, rock band Nathan Djerrkura, Australian rules footballer Maminydjama Maymuru, model Timmy Burarrwanga and cultural leader
Geography
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography is defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Physical geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere; the four historical traditions in geographical research are: spatial analyses of natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relationships, the Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences".
Geography is a systematic study of its features. Traditionally, geography has been associated with place names. Although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the space and the temporal database distribution of phenomena and features as well as the interaction of humans and their environment; because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, climate and animals, geography is interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the geographical approach depends on an attentiveness to the relationship between physical and human phenomena and its spatial patterns. Names of places...are not geography...know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena, to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man.
This is ` a description of the world' --. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause and effect. Just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they exist in space and have a geography. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main subsidiary fields: human geography and physical geography; the former focuses on the built environment and how humans create, view and influence space. The latter examines the natural environment, how organisms, soil and landforms produce and interact; the difference between these approaches led to a third field, environmental geography, which combines physical and human geography and concerns the interactions between the environment and humans. Physical geography focuses on geography as an Earth science, it aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, atmosphere and global flora and fauna patterns. Physical geography can be divided into many broad categories, including: Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape the human society.
It encompasses the human, cultural and economic aspects. Human geography can be divided into many broad categories, such as: Various approaches to the study of human geography have arisen through time and include: Behavioral geography Feminist geography Culture theory Geosophy Environmental geography is concerned with the description of the spatial interactions between humans and the natural world, it requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. Environmental geography has emerged as a bridge between the human and the physical geography, as a result of the increasing specialisation of the two sub-fields. Furthermore, as human relationship with the environment has changed as a result of globalization and technological change, a new approach was needed to understand the changing and dynamic relationship. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography include: emergency management, environmental management and political ecology.
Geomatics is concerned with the application of computers to the traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography. Geomatics emerged from the quantitative revolution in geography in the mid-1950s. Today, geomatics methods include spatial analysis, geographic information systems, remote sensing, global positioning systems. Geomatics has led to a revitalization of some geography departments in Northern America where the subject had a declining status during the 1950s. Regional geography is concerned with the description of the unique characteristics of a particular region such as its natural or human elements; the main aim is to understand, or define the uniqueness, or character of a particular region that consists of natural as well as human elements. Attention is paid to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions. Urban planning, regional planning, spatial planning: Use the science of geography to assist in determining how to develop the land to meet particular criteria, such as safety, economic opportunities, the preservation of the built or natural heritage, so on.
The planning of towns, c
Cockatoo, Victoria
Cockatoo is a town in Victoria, Australia, 48 km south-east of the Melbourne central business district, located within the Shire of Cardinia local government area. Cockatoo recorded a population of 4,256 at the 2016 Census. Cockatoo is named after Cockatoo Creek, which runs through the town, which the town was named. Cockatoo was named after Cockatoo Creek, it was first settled in the 1870s but progress was tardy as the land was difficult to clear. A Post Office was not opened until 1 November 1901 when the railway arrived and was known as Cockatoo Creek until 1917. Shortly after the end of the World War I, a large number of immigrants went to live in Cockatoo while working in Melbourne; the most significant wave was made by Italians. Timbergetting was the major source of employment and this industry received a considerable boost when the narrow-gauge railway from Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook was completed in 1900. Moreover, the railway brought leisure-seeking Melburnians into the area and a market for subdivision arose.
The railway is operated today as the Puffing Billy Railway. Cockatoo is best known as one of the worst-hit townships during the disastrous 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires, where over 300 buildings were destroyed and 6 lives lost. Cockatoo has a community shopping centre which includes supermarket, hairdressing salon, boutique chocolatier, yoga studio, opportunity shop,cafés and various takeaway stores. Cockatoo has built a town centre garden square with the assistance of local government; the Cardinia Shire Council provides a mobile library service at the McBride Street carpark on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. The town has received a state government grant to start a community garden site on the Pakenham Road reserve growing various fruit and vegetables. Cockatoo Primary School, near the town centre celebrated its centenary. Other services in the town include: Kindergartens Youth & Health Centres Bendigo Bank Branch Licensed Post Office Church Charity Store Country Fire Authority Station RSL Club Child Care Centre Cockatoo Neighbourhood House Hills Community Gardens Men's shed Cockatoo has two main sporting areas: Mountain Road reserve, which has a football oval, netball courts, indoor YMCA Stadium and Little Athletics Course.
The Josie Bysouth reserve is a smaller ground used for equestrian events and pony club. The main sport of the town is Australian Rules Football with the Gembrook-Cockatoo Football Club or "Brookers" representing the town in both the local senior and junior leagues in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League; the town's other sporting teams include netball, tennis, basketball and soccer. Cockatoo has a committee that lobbies local and state governments for funding and local recognition of the town; the area is served by bus route 695 operated from Belgrave by Ventura Bus Lines. This service is extended to Westfield Fountain Gate shopping centre on Friday/Saturday and to Dandenong Market on Tuesdays; this route is about to undergo an extensive overhaul including operating to a 40-minute frequency on weekdays until 10 pm. Other improvements include a new Sunday timetable and a Saturday timetable operating from 6 am to 10 pm. Cockatoo is indirectly served by route 838 provided by Cardinia Transit, which connects with route 695 at Emerald.
Cockatoo has a railway station on the Puffing Billy Railway. The Puffing Billy service runs once or twice daily and continues from Cockatoo to Gembrook. Cockatoo station consists only of a platform with a small station building, un-manned. Wright Forest, a 161-hectare reserve to the northwest of the town, is managed by Parks Victoria and is a fauna sanctuary; the forest has scars of the Ash Wednesday fires that swept through the area in 1983 with some trees still showing charred bark. The forest is home to many animal species such as the brushtail possums and many bird species; the forest has many tracks for the main one being the Emerald to Gembrook trail. This came under fire for its title as a beginners walking trail. Other trails are colour-coded. Shire of Pakenham - Cockatoo was within this former local government area. Cockatoo railway station Wright Forest Australian Places - Cockatoo Cockatoo Primary School
Kava
Kava or kava kava or Piper methysticum is a crop of the Pacific Islands. The name kava is from Tongan and Marquesan, meaning "bitter". Kava is consumed throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia, including Hawaii and Vanuatu, Melanesia and some parts of Micronesia for its sedating effects; the root of the plant is used to produce a drink with sedative and euphoriant properties. Its active ingredients are called kavalactones. A Cochrane systematic review concluded it was to be more effective than placebo at treating short-term anxiety. Moderate consumption of kava has been deemed as presenting an "acceptably low level of health risk" by the World Health Organization. However, consumption of kava extracts produced with organic solvents or excessive amounts of poor quality kava products may be linked to an increased risk of adverse health outcomes. Kava is believed to have been domesticated in either Vanuatu by Papuans, it is believed to be a domesticated variety of Piper subbullatum, native to New Guinea and the Philippines.
It was spread by the Austronesian Lapita culture after contact eastward into the rest of Polynesia. It is not found in other Austronesian groups. Kava reached Hawaii. Consumption of kava is believed to be the reason why betel chewing, ubiquitous elsewhere, was lost for Austronesians in Oceania. According to Lynch, the reconstructed Proto-Polynesian term for the plant, *kava, was derived from the Proto-Oceanic term *kawaRi in the sense of a "bitter root" or "potent root ", it referred to Zingiber zerumbet, used to make a similar mildly psychoactive bitter drink in Austronesian rituals. Cognates for *kava include Pohnpeian sa-kau. In some languages, most notably Māori kawa, the cognates have come to mean "bitter", "sour", or "acrid" to the taste. In the Cook Islands, the reduplicated forms of kawakawa or kavakava are applied to the unrelated members of the genus Pittosporum, and in other languages like in Futunan, compound terms like kavakava atua refer to other species belonging to the genus Piper.
The reduplication of the base form is indicative of falsehood or likeness, in the sense of "false kava". In Aotearoa, it was applied to the kawakawa, endemic to Aotearoa and nearby Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, the Rangitāhua Islands, it was exploited by the Māori based on previous knowledge of the kava, as the latter could not survive in the colder climates of Aotearoa. The Māori name for the plant, reduplicated, it is a sacred tree among the Māori people. It is seen as a symbol of death, corresponding to the rangiora, the symbol of life. However, kawakawa has no psychoactive properties, its connection to kava is limited purely on similarity in appearance. Kava was grown only in the Pacific islands of Hawaii, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, the Samoas and Tonga. An inventory of P. methysticum distribution showed it was cultivated on numerous islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Hawaii, whereas specimens of P. wichmannii were all from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu. The kava shrub thrives in well-drained soils where plenty of air reaches the roots.
It grows where rainfall is plentiful. Ideal growing conditions are 70–95 °F and 70–100% relative humidity. Too much sunlight is harmful in early growth, so kava is an understory crop. Kava cannot reproduce sexually. Female flowers are rare and do not produce fruit when hand-pollinated, its cultivation is by propagation from stem cuttings. Traditionally, plants are harvested around four years of age, as older plants have higher concentrations of kavalactones. After reaching about 2 m height, plants grow a wider stalk and additional stalks, but not much taller; the roots can reach a depth of 60 cm. Kava consists of sterile cultivars cloned from Piper wichmanii. Today it comprises hundreds of different cultivars grown across the Pacific; each cultivar has not only different requirements for successful cultivation, but displays unique characteristics both in terms of its appearance, in terms of its psychoactive properties. Scholars make a distinction between the so-called "noble" and non-noble kava; the latter category comprises medicinal kavas and wild kava.
Traditionally, only noble kavas have been used for regular consumption due to their more favourable composition of kavalactones and other compounds that produce more pleasant effects and have lower potential for causing negative side-effects, such as nausea or "kava hangover". The perceived benefits of noble cultivars explain why only these cultivars were spread around the Pacific by Polynesian and Melanesian migrants, with presence of non-noble cultivars limited to the islands of Vanuatu from which they originated. More it has been suggested that the widespread use of tudei cultivars in the manufacturing of several kava products might have been the key factor contributing to the rare reports of adverse reactions to kava observed among the consumers of kava-based products in Europe. Tudei v
Ten Canoes
Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australian drama film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starring Crusoe Kurddal. The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer and David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in 1936, it is the first movie filmed in Australian Aboriginal languages. The film is in colour and in black and white, it is in docu-drama style with a narrator explaining the story; the overall format is that of a moral tale. The film is set in Arnhem Land, in a time separate of Western influence, tells the story of a group of ten men in a traditional hunting context; the leader of the group, tells the young Dayindi a story about another young man further back in time who, like Dayindi, coveted his elder brother's youngest wife. The sequences featuring Dayindi and the hunt are in black and white, while shots set in distant past are in colour. All protagonists speak with subtitles; the film is narrated in English by David Gulpilil, although versions of the film without narration, featuring narration in Yolŋu Matha, are available.
Minygululu tells a story of the great warrior Ridjimiraril, who suspects a visiting stranger of kidnapping his second wife. In a case of mistaken identity, Ridjimiraril kills a member of a neighbouring tribe. To prevent all-out war, tribal laws dictate that the offending tribe allow the offender to be speared from a distance by individuals of the tribe of the slain man; the offender is allowed to be accompanied by a companion, in this instance he takes his younger brother, Yeeralparil. Whenever one of the two is hit, the spear-throwers will stop, justice will have been served. Ridjimiraril is hit and mortally wounded but survives long enough to return to his camp, where he is tended to by his eldest wife; when he knows he is dying he performs a ritual dance and once dead his hair is cut and his body is painted to enable the ancestral spirits to guide him to the next world. The elder brother's kidnapped second wife finds her way back to the camp, she reveals that she had been kidnapped by a different tribe, much farther away and had taken this long to return.
She mourns her lost husband, who had attacked the wrong tribe, though now she and the elder wife take his younger brother as their new husband. The younger brother, only interested in the youngest of the three wives, now has to care for all of them, satisfying their many demands is going to be much more than he wished. Minygululu tells this story in the hope that Dayindi learns of the added responsibilities of a husband and elder statesman in the tribe, in the end we see Dayindi withdrawing from his pursuit of Minygululu's young wife. Crusoe Kurddal is from speaks Gunwinggu. Other actors and actresses from Ramingining speak various dialects of the Yolngu Matha language family. Crusoe Kurddal – Ridjimiraril Jamie Gulpilil – Dayindi/Yeeralparil Richard Birrinbirrin – Birrinbirrin Peter Minygululu – Minygululu Frances Djulibing – Banalandju David Gulpilil – The Storyteller Sonia Djarrabalminym – Nowalingu Cassandra Malangarri Baker – Munandjarra Philip Gudthaykudthay – The Sorcerer Peter Djigirr – Canoeist/The Victim/Warrior Michael Dawu – Canoeist/The Stranger Bobby Bunungurr – Canoeist/Uncle Johnny Buniyira – Canoeist/Warrior Gil Birmingham – Canoeist/Warrior Steven Wilinydjanu Maliburr – Canoeist/Warrior Ten Canoes won the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
De Heer rejected claims he is a white director making an indigenous story: "People talk about, what is a white director doing making an indigenous story? They're telling the story and I'm the mechanism by which they can." Ten Canoes was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2006 and was released nationally on 29 June 2006. In October 2006 Ten Canoes was chosen as Australia's official entry into the Best Foreign Language Film category for the 2007 Academy Awards, thus becoming the third Australian film to be considered for the award. Following Floating Life in 1996 and La Spagnola in 2001. Ten Canoes was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute awards; the movie won the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay - Original, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound. It was nominated for Best Production Design, it won three awards from the Film Critics Circle of Australia: Best Film, Best Editing, Best Cinematography. The film was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
The Balanda and the Bark Canoes—a documentary that aired on Australian network SBS and which detailed de Heer's experiences making the film—won Best Australian Short Documentary for de Heer, Tania Nehme, Molly Reynolds. The documentary explores the interplay between cultures in a film project immersing a Balanda into the intricacies of kinship systems impacting the casting of the film as well as giving some voice to the inner conflicts of indigenous peoples today caught between the world of their heritage and that of modern life; this aspect has been explored by academic D. Bruno Starrs with regard to the "authentic Aboriginal voice". At the end of 2006, the film stood as one of the highest grossing Australian films of that year. By October it had made just over $3,000,000 from a budget of $2,200,000; the film ranked #72 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films
