Alternative Law Journal

Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)

Law and Culture In our Law & Culture column, you will find original works of fiction, reviews of a wide range of publications — not just conventional legal texts — as well as broader cultural forms such as films, TV shows, CDs, DVDs, art exhibitions and so on. The column links in with the Alternative Law Journal’s focus on law for the disadvantaged, human rights law and law reform.

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Satellite Boy

Sam Blashki

satellite boy Written and directed by Catriona McKenzie; starring David Gulpilil, Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley; Hopscotch Films, 2013; 90 mins.

Satellite Boy tells the story of Pete (Wallaby), a young Indigenous boy living in the outback town of Wyndham with his grandfather, Jagamarra (Gulpilil). When a mining corporation threatens to take over his home, Pete becomes determined to walk into the city and confront the company responsible, recruiting his friend, Kalmain (Pedley) to join him. When Pete’s idea doesn’t go to plan, the boys find themselves in a dire situation, lost and trying their best to stay alive.

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(2013) 38(2) AltLJ 136

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)

The Intercept

Mike Daly

the intercept by dick wolf Dick Wolf; Sphere Hachette, 2012; 400pp; 29.99 (paperback)

For two decades Law and Order was a must-watch TV for crime aficionados and legal professionals alike. By avoiding sensationalism and focusing instead on the routine of criminal investigation, trial preparation and process, the US series provided unsensational, yet engrossing insights into the work of New York police detectives and the district attorney’s team of prosecutors.

It spawned spinoffs from Los Angeles to the UK, Paris and Russia, plus the superior Law and Order Criminal Intent and voyeuristic Law and Order Special Victims Unit (still running) until finally, series creator and prolific screenwriter Dick Wolf has turned novelist.

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(2013) 38(2) AltLJ 136

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)

Law Of The Jungle

Kate Galloway

law of the jungle michael christoffersen A film by Michael Christoffersen; Radiator Films; Human Rights Arts and Film Festival 2013

The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival 2013 is showing across Australia during May and June. One of the films on offer is Law of the Jungle.

This film charts the progress of a trial of Indigenous Peruvians who have protested against environmental degradation of their land, committed by global oil corporation Pluspetrol. During the peaceful protest on the company’s air strip, the special forces police open fire and in the fracas a police officer is killed. Fifty protesters are arrested, tortured and incarcerated for eight months before being approached by human rights lawyer Jorge Tacuri who has been informed of their plight.

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(2013) 38(2) AltLJ 135

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)

Slow Violence And The Environmentalism Of The Poor

Daniel Reynolds

slow violence and environmentalism of the poor nixon Rob Nixon; Harvard University Press, 2013; 280pp; $65.00 (paperback)

At first glance, the title to Rob Nixon’s latest book may baffle casual window shoppers; ‘what has violence to do with environmentalism?’ one could quite reasonably ask. Yet this popular tendency to treat the two concepts as worlds apart is precisely what Nixon seeks to address, and he does so with great vigour and persuasive force.

The central premise of the text is best put in the author’s own words. In his opening chapter, Nixon laments that:

Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different a kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.

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(2013) 38(2) AltLJ 134

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)

Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal Children And Human Rights

Terri Libesman

our gratest challenge hanna mcglade Hannah McGlade; Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012; 256pp; $39.95 (paperback)

Hannah McGlade brings her experience as a Noongar woman who suffered child sexual abuse, her expertise as a human rights lawyer, compassion and passion to Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal children and human rights. She addresses sexual assault of Aboriginal children with a directness and honesty which is often shied away from because of the taboo, shame and uncomfortable complexity which sexual violence against children generates. Our Greatest Challenge analyses sexual violence against Aboriginal children as a continuity of and in the context of colonial violence, in particular the extensive historical violence against Aboriginal women and girls. McGlade provides an analysis of the intersecting and compounding influences of race, gender and colonial legacies which strip many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children of safety in a routine way. Institutional failings are made more powerful with personal accounts of the adverse impact of the criminal justice system, and more broadly Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal societies’ failure to prioritise the rights of Aboriginal women and children.

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(2013) 38(2) AltLJ 134

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(2)