Dancing with the Prime Minister

Abstract

This article reflects on the process of making a preview for a proposed one-hour documentary film about the first national Aboriginal debutante ball, held to celebrate the 1967 referendum. Forty years after the event, an indigenous and non-indigenous cast and crew explore the memories and life stories of those women who debuted in front of the prime minister of Australia in 1968. In doing so the film, and the making of it, moves from the genocidal fantasy of extermination masquerading as assimilation, into the heart of the complexities of survival and identity in contemporary Australia.

Keywords:

• Aboriginal
• debutante
• assimilation
• identity
• cross-cultural
• mimesis