In addition to these insistent, unsystematic images of Aboriginality, some parts of Australian television feature a greater amount of indigenous representation. This is true both in Aboriginal-produced and- circulated programming and in the arena of the broadcast mainstream.

In “mainstream” free-to-air broadcast television, there is a fairly consistent representation of indigenous Australians and issues on Australia’s news and other non fiction forms of programming (documentaries and current affairs). The greatest number of television news stories focus on issues of governance and the relations between imported and indigenous forms of social and political organization. In the early 1990s, many stories were about land rights and native title, indigenous attempts to gain some recognition that they owned the land of Australia before it was stolen by European invaders. In the second half of the 1990s, most public debate took place around the “Stolen Generations”: that group of indigenous Australians who were removed from their families during the 20th century (up to the 1970s) as part of official and deliberate government policy aimed at “breeding out” indigenous Australians. The fact that, even after this policy had been subjected to public scrutiny, the prime minister at the time (John Howard) refused even to say “sorry” to these people (many of whom now testified to having severe emotional difficulties due to the abuse associated with this process) became a matter of public concern. Most recently, media debate has focused upon the continuing poor health of indigenous communities, and the forms of governance best suited to addressing this problem.

There have also been avowedly indigenous programs on mainstream broadcast television. First in Line (Special Broadcasting Services [SBS], 1989) and Blackout (Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ABC], 1989) were both Aboriginal-produced and -presented magazine-style programs. From Sand to Celluloid (1995) was a series of short films by indigenous filmmakers, co-funded and broadcast by TV station SBS. Bush Mechanics (1998), a four part “whimsical” documentary, was produced by the Warlpiri Media Association and broadcast on the ABC. Perhaps most revolutionary in form was The Mary G Show (2001), which eschewed the magazine and art formats to produce “banal” indigenous Australian culture: a chat show presented by an indigenous drag queen. Despite their historical importance, none of these programs have been ratings successes.

The ABC miniseries Heartland (1994) retains its importance in the history of Australian television and remains worthy of a category of its own. This 13-hour-long drama presented a series of Aboriginal communities, rural and urban, and a wide range of characters, all contributing to a vastly increased range of available discourses on Aborigines. An entertaining, watchable piece of television, Heartland is truly distinctive in the history of Australian programming.

Ernie Dingo is a key figure in the history of indigenous televisual representation in Australia. He was responsible for a large amount of the Aboriginal representation on Australian television in the early 1990s. In addition to starring in Heartland and presenting The Great Outdoors, he has appeared on programs such as Dolphin Cove, Clowning Around, Wheel of Fortune, GP, The Flying Doctors, Heartbreak High, and many others. Recently, however, Dingo seems to have settled into his lifestyle work, while Aaron Pedersen—who first came to public attention as a host of the game show Gladiators—has become more visible. Deborah Mailman (star of the youth series The Secret Life of Us) is becoming a popular indigenous female presence on television.

Any consideration of indigenous programming must also cover the material that is made and distributed by Aboriginal groups and communities. Anybody interested in finding out about indigenous broadcasting is encouraged to visit, in the first instance, the website of the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (www.nimaa.org.au), which represents most indigenous broadcasting groups.

Broadcasting for Remote Areas Community Scheme (BRACS) is one of a series of projects set up by Australia’s federal government to ensure that Aboriginal communities at a distance from the continent’s urban centers can have access to broadcast television. BRACS is the successor of such projects as Remote Area Television Scheme (RATS), Self-Help Television Reception Scheme (STRS), Remote and Underserved Communities Scheme (RUCS), and the Self-Help Broadcasting Reception Scheme (SHBRS). Initially funded by the 1987–88 budget of the (then) Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the purpose of BRACS was slightly different from that which had gone before. Rather than simply ensuring reception of broadcast television, BRACS would provide rebroadcasting and production facilities to allow Aboriginal communities to decide for themselves how much of the material received should actually be shown in their communities and to make their own material to replace that which they did not want. In order to make this possible, BRACS supplies the community with satellite reception equipment, a domestic quality video camera, two domestic video recorders (to allow for basic editing), and the equipment to rebroadcast to the community. The initial idea was that this would allow broadcast in little-used languages (some Aboriginal languages have less than 100 speakers) and allow deletion of offensive material.

The scheme has had varying degrees of success. Difficulties have included the lack of well-trained personnel to look after the equipment, the built-in obsolescence of domestic equipment, and equipment incompatibility with desert settings; a lack of consultation with Aboriginal communities as to whether they wanted the equipment; the limited-range capability of the rebroadcast equipment; and, underlying many of these other problems, the lack of recurrent national funding for the project. However, it seems that the scheme (available to over 110 indigenous communities by 2001) has at least taken into consideration the ways in which communities might want to use television.

Perhaps the most active examples of such local television production have been the indigenous communities in Ernabella and Yuendumu. Both of these towns preempted the government’s BRACS scheme, establishing their own pirate television broadcasting well before BRACS legitimized the idea of Aboriginal TV production. In the latter community, the Warlpiri Media Association has produced hundreds of hours of programming: records of community life, travel tapes, the Bush Mechanics documentary noted previously, and Manyu Wana, an indigenous version of Sesame Street designed to teach local children the Warlpiri language. This community also takes part in the Tanami Network, which offers a state-of-the-art video conferencing facility privately run by four Aboriginal communities.

Aboriginal video and radio programs are also produced by some indigenous media groups, including Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Townsville and Aboriginal Islander Media Association (TAIMA), Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association (TEABBA), Western Australian Aboriginal Media Association (WAAMA), Mount Isa Aboriginal Media Association (MIAMA), and Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal Media Association (TSIAMA). The radio programs are often carried on the networks of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Larger organizations than the media producers in the BRACS communities, these groups make material that is less locally oriented and that has an address wider than a single community.

Remote and rural areas of Australia receive their commercial television broadcasts on the AUSSAT satellite. Several Remote Commercial Television Service (RCTS) licenses were sold on this satellite; one is held by the CAAMA group. All of the bidders for these satellites were required to guarantee that their services would include material specifically commissioned for the Aboriginal people, who formed a relatively high proportion of their audiences (up to 27 percent in some cases). All did so, but none has done particularly well in keeping to those promises. The Golden West Network has one Aboriginal magazine program, Milbindi. Queensland Satellite Television broadcasts material provided by the governmental Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Queensland State government—programs that present carefully positive images of Aboriginality.

Imparja, the station owned by CAAMA, has found constraints of economy have made it difficult to produce broadcast-quality Aboriginal material. The amount of indigenous programming on the channel has varied. When it started broadcasting in 1988, Imparja featured an Aboriginal magazine-style program, Nganampa Anwernekenhe. By contrast, by the 1990s, the station’s Aboriginal broadcasting consisted only of community service announcements.

In Australia there is a vast range of material encompassed by the term “indigenous broadcasting”: mainstream television on indigenous issues; indigenous programs broadcast on the mainstream; and indigenousproduced and -controlled broadcasting, which allows Aboriginal groups in Australia to interact assertively with new technologies, negotiating the places these will hold in their communities.