From her carrying the Olympic torch to the stadium, to her crossing the finish line to claim gold in the 400m, Australia’s hero is local athlete Cathy Freeman. Contrary to the wishes of many still oppressed, she became a symbol, if only superficially, of reconciliation between white Australia and Aboriginal people. But the frenzy of flames and fireworks surrounding the race kept the rest of the world from seeing the dark side of the land.
In 1999, John Pilger returned to his hometown to discover that the elaborate preparations for the Olympic Games had masked a hidden world where Aboriginal people continued to live in Third World conditions. He revealed that some of the greatest athletes in the world are actually Indigenous. Many of them, like black South Africans during apartheid, were until recently denied access to their country’s Olympic team.
He also found that the Australian government was in the process of repealing landmark 1992 legislation that finally recognized the common law rights of Aboriginal people before the British colonized the country. Welcome to Australia: The Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics is Pilger’s third film about Aboriginal struggles with fellow Australian Ellen Lowery.
