RE: Rebel Ridge And Home Made Potato

It's refreshing that the entertainment industry takes on controversial issues such as this and offers them up for consideration. I'm old, middle class and white, so I'm probably pretty safe from being incarcerated. But you never know.

I was looking up prison rates in Australia. It turns out, Australia has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, when Indigenous people are separated out. Do the artists in your country explore this theme? As a whole Australia has a relatively low imprisonment rate, but when indigenous people are considered this shoots up dramatically. In NT, for example, First Nations People constitute 88% of those imprisoned, although they comprise only 26% of the population.

Oh man yes. It's absolutely an issue here. They are more likely to die in custody, have a parent in prison, be incarcerated for stealing a chocolate bar. It's very much in the news and there are efforts to address it. Poor housing, unemployment, intergenerational trauma leading to dysfunctional families, dispossession, education levels - this is why 'celebrating' Australia day is such an issue. Australia always sweeps it under the carpet. It's a complex issue that many people are trying to address.

My flippant 'America!' was not just because of this law in the film but also things we read over here about student and medical debt, war on drugs, obesity, gun crime, school shootings and a litany of other crazy things we don't have here. We are absolutely not without our own flaws though.... For eg, domestic violence.