About this Short Film
Lest Truth Be Buried returns to the Pinjarra Massacre through the personal testimony of Corina Abraham, a Bibbulmun Noongar woman whose ancestor survived the attack as a child. The film traces how colonial violence continues to reverberate through families and Country in the form of intergenerational trauma, ill health, unmarked graves and the continuing struggle to return ancestors to Country for proper cultural burial. Against this history, Corina's friendship with Sandra Roe, a descendant of John Septimus Roe, shows that forgiveness and reconciliation are possible when the truth is faced honestly. Their relationship does not erase the past; it creates a space where grief, responsibility, respect and unity can stand together.
Film Details
Country:
Australia
State:
Western Australia
Category:
Open Entrant Documentaries
Genre:
Informational
Festival Year:
2026
Filmmaker:
Leon Rakai
Film Transcript
So this here is where it all happened along this river. You can feel my old people's spirits. You can sense them. You can close your eyes and go back to the early days, the ways they lived, and just picture how peaceful, how things were back then, prior to being massacred in our own backyard.
In 1834, colonial forces led by Governor Sterling and John Septimus Row attacked a group of Bibbleman people on these banks in the southwest of Western Australia, a group that included women and children. For generations, this atrocity was softened by language, called a battle and folded into silence. But the descendants know what it really was.
They called it a battle back in the days. A battle. It was never a battle. Never a battle. They had guns. They had ammunition. Some survived only by chance. And survival did not mean safety. It meant carrying the memory forward. So the truth would not disappear with the dead.
My great-great-grandfather Dong, he was an elder that lived over 100. And then he talked about how he survived, how his mother threw him into the rushes. He hid under the water. They killed many kids and women and they didn't care. But survival did not bring justice. The dead were not properly mourned. Many still lie where they fell in mass graves across Pinara and beyond without the dignity of being brought home.
We have a mass grave registered on the corner of Thomas Road as well as the mass graves that lie down in Pinera. It's no use calling for reconciliation when we have no repatriation laws in our country. We can go to other countries to gather our ancestors and bring them back to country and give them proper respectable burials. But yet we can't do it in our own backyard.
This is how violence lives on. Not only in memory but in families, in illness, in grief, in what is passed down when pain is never properly acknowledged. Intergenerational trauma is not just a theory. It is lived. The trauma which is distilled within our families, the death that runs through the Murray River, the death of my old people, the death of my ancestors. We need to respect and acknowledge the true history of our country, the true history here in Western Australia.
And still what is asked for is not revenge. It is truth. It is dignity. It is respect. But we need to unite to make change. But I don't hold no grudges. All I want is respect to my old ancestors. That's all.
For descendants on the other side of this history, truth carries its own burden. To inherit a name tied to violence is to face a difficult reckoning. It's not easy to know that your great-great-grandfather participated in a massacre, uh, even if he—he—he wasn't armed, he didn't actually kill anyone, but he supported it. When descendants from opposite sides meet honestly, grief and responsibility can stand together without forgetting.
Karina and I have a wonderful friendship. It's—it's—it's very, I think for both of us, it's very healing. She no longer has hatred for the name Row. And I was sitting there and I was very moved. It was just a wonderful moment.
Reconciliation is not a word. It is a practice. It lives in listening, in honesty, in the courage to meet across the wound. I was introduced as the great-great-granddaughter of John Septus Row. I started to say, "I'm sorry." I was going to say how sorry I was about this whole event. She had a glass of wine and I had a glass of wine. She clinked her glass with mine and, with a big smile, said, "We meet in unity." And like I said, if we want a better future for all of us, a better future for everyone, no matter who you are, where you come from, your cultural background, we need to unite and we need to recognise my old people, the fight that they fought.
No mercy in their eyes. The ghosts of the land whisper tales of pain of Aboriginal warriors lost in the rain.
Filmmaker
Leon Rakai is the filmmaker behind this entry. See every Focus on Ability entry from Leon Rakai.
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