Freda Glynn

‘We were going to make our mob proud of themselves…’

Refers to film: vimeo.com/525726992

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00:10 The founding of CAAMA, & 8kin

Freda Glynn:

Well, I don't know what the spark was. It was Johnny Macumba’s idea… his idea was to make weekly news cassettes to give to people around the camps in Aboriginal languages. And that's what we started off as. That's what we started doing.

[Freda radio commentating] I used to do the voiceover, right, and explain what was the next news will be read by so-and-so in Warlpiri language or in Arrente. I was just filling in, thinking I'm going to go and do something else later, you know? Go back to cleaning or something, that was just …I didn't ever think that I was going to be the Director…

[Freda as Director on archive film] For me, it was …the set up of a media organization, it was frowned upon, right?. We didn't need media because we needed health, housing, education. But at the beginning, to me, it was important for making another different kind of employment opportunities for Aboriginal people, as well as getting the news and information … in their own language, telling them what the government, what decisions they were making about… Being able to provide them with information to where you go to and what you needed, in say health …Creating community service announcements so that they could …you know if there’s whooping cough going, you could talk about that, if there was measles going on, you could talk about that.

Erica Glynn:

Vital information…

Freda Glynn:

…vital information in their own language, that was really what our first thinking was …Our first radio station was 8kin…people used to come in and out to record their things, that we had in four languages. [Freda on archive film: ‘Well, I don't know if you know, but we're going to air in three Aboriginal communities in Alice Springs right at this moment’, followed by Johnny Macumba] Johnny, didn't hang around that long, because he was always busy doing something, you know, I started out as sort of just with Philip [Batty] developing it, you know, and it was just …Philip and my role, it really was to find money, see what grants were going on and get money to get the place together. And Philip and I'd just got on and started finding money for different things. And it just grew and it grew and it grew.

Philip Batty:

[Introduces himself on archive film]…By ’81, in one year, this organisation has gone from pretty much nothing much, bit of an idea, through to a point where we were sitting in the ABC, no we were sitting in a …CAAMA was sitting in its own studios on Gap Road. It was producing programmes for three outlets, for the ABC, for 8HA the commercial station and 8CCC, the public section. At that point there was no organisation in Australia that was producing radio programming from the commercial end through to the community.

Freda Glynn:

And that's when we started recording too. We were really struggling to get music because we didn't have anything.

Philip Batty:

Yeah, that's right. We got around to a lot of the town camps recording local artists. Some were fantastic singers.

Freda Glynn:

It was the music in the beginning that made 8kin really popular every …you know, people say that those taxis have got 8kin on, somebody else would say ‘…I was at a tyre place the other day and they had 8kin on’, and somebody said ‘Oh yeah, I know so and so, they wouldn't go without listening to 8kin, you know’, and it was, it was very popular, really popular.

05:44 Setting up the video unit

[TV Commentary] ‘Unfortunately, Alice Springs has a name for drunken aboriginals in the street. They're on public display and it's not a pretty sight.’

Erica Glynn:

So besides radio, our mob, we're not seeing themselves represented on screen either, that unless it was a story about them, not for them

Freda Glynn:

Yeah, you know, long lenses…fights in the creek and all that sort of stuff. That's right.

Erica Glynn:

So obviously, then you decided that the next step, you set up the video unit…

Freda Glynn:

[Freda on archive film introducing CAAMA’s new video cassette]

Erica Glynn:

And right at that time, news in the country, Aboriginal stuff was being bloody ignored. People were feeling shit, they were hiding stuff and CAAMA put value on anything black.

Freda Glynn:

That was part of what was in our heads…at the beginning, Johnny Macumba said, Phillip and I: ‘Aboriginal culture is …dance, singing, storytelling’, and that's what I wanted CAAMA to continue in the radio station and in the production - so Aboriginal people could see themselves on television, could see themselves as vital for …Australia for keeping that all strong, not being ashamed of it: it just needed this little bit of pride.

And we were going to look after our mob. We were going to make our mob proud of themselves, you know, and it was for us, it wasn't for the whole country. And that's what it was all about.

Erica Glynn:

And then CAAMA’s Video Productions really took off, eh?

Freda Glynn:

Oh, God, absolutely. And that's where all you kids got the bug. You, Rachel, David, Tricia, Warwick, Jason, you’re all still working in the industry now.

Philip Batty:

And we also hooked in with AFTRS, Australian Film and Television School – that, in my view, there was probably one of the greatest achievements of CAAMA because it provided the seedbed for what we see today - you know, thriving Aboriginal film and television sector, you know, with people employed, probably hundreds of people employed in that area now.

08:36 AUSSAT, and creating Imparja

Freda Glynn [on archive film]:

Most communities around the centre don't have access to Radio. One community of a thousand people just outside of Alice Springs, about 300 kilometres away, has one radio telephone. And now video’s become very, very popular in these communities, but they still don't have access to any other communications