Ngarda TV
The vision for Ngarda Community Television and Radio is to broadcast locally produced free-to-air Indigenous television and radio services to all the Pilbara populations, whether they are in Marble Bar, Jigalong, Punmu, Onslow, Hedland, Wakathuni, Strelley, Karratha, Tom Price and all the communities in between. This is a new media industry, owned by Ngardangarli, broadcasting the stories, songs and intellectual property that belong to the people. It will involve media hubs in each community involved owning and operating their own media equipment used to film and record their programs which will be broadcast to air on Ngarda Community Television and Radio.
This revolution has the potential to enable local Aboriginal people to professionally research, document, archive and protect their unique knowledge. They are creating an Indigenous Knowledge Industry by recognising that, as individuals and as a group, they hold a special perception that informs a knowledge network, which, when appropriately valued, has the capacity to maintain economic independence, protect the environment, overcome recurrent social disadvantage, and strengthen personal and community identity.
5 minute promotion for Ngarda TV
The development of the Ngarda Community Television and Radio Station
Juluwarlu Group Aboriginal Corporation currently holds a community television broadcast licence to broadcast into Roebourne and the surrounding areas, which was granted to the organisation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority on 30/06/05. Therefore, people who reside in Roebourne, Wickham and Point Samson have access to five free-to-air television stations – SBS, ABC, WIN, GWN, and the 24 hour Indigenous community station NgardaTV34, owned, operated and broadcast by the employees of Juluwarlu Group Aboriginal Corporation.
The television station assists with the organisation’s ongoing mission of preserving collecting, recording, cataloging, archiving, preserving, re-producing, exhibiting and broadcasting the language, culture and history of the Pilbara’s Indigenous peoples – as a resource for our own population, especially the children; to provide the foundation to drive and nurture cultural and economic futures; to share with all Australians.
The long-term benefits of this project lie in its ability to combine Indigenous identity with positive public dissemination. The interaction between the collection and storage of unique Indigenous archival language materials, filmed biographies and documentation, which is Juluwarlu’s core business, and the public broadcasting of this information, has created the potential to develop a new industry in the Pilbara, whereby remote location, Ngarda Intellectual Knowledge Systems and Indigenous identity, become a comparative and competitive advantage.
The operation of Ngarda TV34, is part of a wider strategy to implement, encourage and promote positive policy initiatives into the Pilbara community that effectively deal with issues including child abuse, family violence, alcoholism, health, deaths in custody (the death of John Pat, which occurred outside Roebourne's Victoria Hotel in 1983, instigated the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody), and create the ability for Indigenous people to investigate, hold, manage, interpret and understand their own personal and collective language and histories. The notion of claiming and reclaiming Australian Indigenous personal and collective identity is put succinctly by Dodson (1994: 11) when he states, “the repossession of our past is the repossession of ourselves”. By enabling Indigenous people to own their past, and to personally express themselves, while gainfully employed within their local community, as well as working on, maintaining and re-establishing their language and cultural heritage, Aboriginal Australians can move forward into a healthier, more positive future.
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Juluwarlu Group Aboriginal Corporation is an organisation dedicated to changing the lives of the Pilbara’s Indigenous community. We respect the right for all Australians to have a choice in the way they live their lives by embracing and understanding their culture, their community, and their history; all of which informs individual and community identity. We are working towards personal strength, justice, humanity, and reconciliation for all Australians.