The Habits of New Norcia

Streaming video - 2000

Now a popular tourist destination north of Perth, the Benedictine Aboriginal Mission at New Norcia in Western Australia, holds harsh memories for former Aboriginal "inmates" who were placed there during the 1920s through to the 1960s. In recent decades the New Norcia Monastery has been packaged as one of the State's leading cultural tourist attractions. "A unique blend of Spanish architecture, European art treasures and pioneer history," "Monks, Music & Mystery," "New Norcia, Australia's only monastic town," the brochures announce. Aboriginal testimony in the film challenges this revised and sanitised history. The documentary provides damming evidence of the continuing violence of the Mi...ssion against its victims by deliberate omission of their experience in the New Norcia museum, guided tours, art gallery and promotions — an omission that represents a cruel and wounding cover-up. Noongars who give their testimonies in this film want to put the record straight about the New Norcia Mission. more