Despite living in a time of formal equality respecting all forms of cultures, religions and genders, Indigenous Australian youth are still confronted by multitudinous challenges growing up in contemporary Australian society. This essay explores the film, ‘Yolngu Boy’ to gain an understanding of some of the issues and challenges Indigenous Australian youth face today. The reasons investigated are why the Australian Indigenous Australian youth are continuously being affected, connected and interdependent to both a dominate White culture and Indigenous Australian culture. Long histories of colonisation and discrimination have resulted in marginalisation of Indigenous Australians and Torres Straight Islanders from dominant societies (GrantCraft, …show more content…
The way Indigenous Australian youths in the film are connected to their ancestors and Indigenous Australians culture and history is through Lorrpu, who is traditional and wants to follow in the paths of his ancestors of becoming a man. Lorrpu is exceedingly connected to his traditional routes within his tribe, and he looks forward to becoming a man from his forthcoming ceremony by having approval from the most powerful elder, Darwu, just like his previous ancestors and generations did. Lorrpu is more of the traditional youth in the film and does not have much aspiration for the Western culture. Through the film, Lorrpu is seen as the leaders of his friends, Botj and Milika since they were children. Lorrpu always dreamed of him and his friends becoming the best spear fisherman, lurking slowly through the water, and always catching the biggest and finest fish. This shows how Indigenous Australian youths are still connected to their cultural influences by their traditions, previous ancestors and generations and discovering their identity. Also, this discovers that the boys are following their traditional tribal rituals by spear fishing and …show more content…
This has occurred in harsh stereotypes, marginalisation, racism and colonisation which still greatly affect the Indigenous Australian youth of today. Currently, both Western and Indigenous Australian cultures are interdependent by society’s law, media and education. However, the Indigenous Australians are connected to their culture by being influenced by their family and elders of their community and their culture beliefs and traditions. Although the two cultures are interdependent by law, media and education, and more actions need to be taken in order to ensure that racism, colonisation, discrimination, marginalisation and stereotypes in social change is greatly needed before the Indigenous Australians lose their identity and