Yolngu Boy Film Analysis

Despite living in a time of formal equality, Indigenous Australian youth still face many challenges growing up in contemporary Australian society. This essay examines challenges the Stolen Generation and todays Indigenous youth face, shaping their identities and the main cultural influences, specifically exploring the ways in which Indigenous youth today are interdependent to both white culture and indigenous culture. In addition, the reasoning behind continuous marginalisation and stereotyping of Indigenous youth while growing up will be explored. Examples are used from the film ‘Yolngu Boy’ to support this topic.

Marginalisation of Australia’s Indigenous people is predominantly a social phenomenon by which a minority or sub-group is excluded,

The teenagers of indigenous cultures find it difficult to cope with the discrimination and stereotyping that they receive daily. Some common stereotypes include Aboriginals being drunk, violent, lazy, uneducated and are all criminals. These discriminative stereotypes are what leads Aboriginal youth to unhealthy thoughts and in most cases, mental illnesses and disruptive behaviour (Jens Korff, 2018). In ‘Yolngu Boy’, Botj struggled with being kicked out of home because his mother said he looked too much like his dad (who had set the house on fire), so he resorted to alcohol and sniffing petrol to cope with his feelings of rejection, anger and loneliness. In 2008, almost one-third of young Indigenous people (aged 16–24 years) had very high levels of psychological distress, which is more than twice the rate of young non-Indigenous Australians. This lead to a suicide increase from 10% of total Australian suicide in 1991 to 80% in 2010 (Australianstogether.org.au, 2018). For the other 20% of indigenous Australians a wide majority could not cope with the stereotypical people that discriminated and marginalised against the youth, which lead to them struggling with their identity and culture affecting many