Redfern Now: Racism And The Australian Dream

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Both Rachel Perkins and Stan Grant highlight the ongoing challenges faced by Indigenous Australians. They both explore issues like identity, discrimination, justice and the pursuit of equality. Racism and the Australian Dream by Stan Grant is a speech that was delivered in 2016 and details the struggles he and many other Aboriginal Australians have faced ever since colonisation. He also includes personal experiences throughout the speech. Redfern Now: Stand Up follows the story of an Aboriginal Australian boy named Joel who earns a scholarship to a prestigious school. A cultural issue ensues when he cannot sing the National Anthem at school every day and eventually gets expelled for it and this sparks cultural debate. Both texts have similarities …show more content…

Examples of Stan Grant’s persuasive language and acknowledgment of country are shown at the start of his speech with his introduction and thanking everyone for coming along to his speech. Examples of tone and acknowledgement to country are shown in this section with “Thank you so much for coming along this evening” and “I would also like to extend my respects to my Gadigal brothers and sisters” respectfully. The effect is that it acknowledges Stan Grant is related to the people he is talking about within his speech. This adds weight to the atrocities mentioned against his people later in the speech. An example from Redfern Now: Stand Up is the use of film techniques to convey the Australian dream. These are shown using characterisation and setting where Joel doesn’t feel like the national anthem belongs to him. He then searches up Australia on Google and comes up with an “idea” including meat pies, the Big Banana and Union Jacks. The setting shown here demonstrates a certain idea of the “Australian Dream” that Joel can’t relate to. This highlights the alienation between Aboriginal and European Australians. Both texts show examples of the Australian dream, indifference to different audiences and the perspective of First Nations people through language features and

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