In June, 2006, after we’d returned from the screening of the film Ten Canoes at the Cannes International Film Festival, I rang around Ramingining in remote North Central Arnhem Land to track down my co-director, Peter Djigirr. I wanted to explain that he had won an award, a Deadly, at the National Indigenous Music, Sport, Entertainment and Community Awards, and was expected to go to Sydney to receive it.

When I finally found him, the conversation went something like this: