It is one of the world's most shocking genocidal crusades. A century-long wave of brutish colonial violence that swept across a continent, in defiance of the invading nation's own laws, leaving 10,000s of slaughtered men, women and children and a gutted indigenous culture.
This is Australia.
Rachel Perkins has chronicled the Aboriginal experience in such landmark works as FIRST AUSTRALIAN (2008), MABO (2012) and FIRST CONTACT (2016). In THE AUSTRALIAN WARS, she has crafted her most important work to date; an account of white Australia's shameful, silent history, told both in vast societal terms and in intensely personal revelations from her own family's past.
Rachel Perkins spoke with SCREEN WATCHING's Simon Foster about the 3-part series and what she hopes to achieve by documenting the horrors of the past for generations in the future.
THE AUSTRALIAN WARS is currently screening on SBS and NITV and available on SBS On Demand.
