Viewers interested in modern cinema often explore We Were Lost in Our Country because of its cast, story direction, and audience popularity.
The Ngurrara Canvas II is many things to many people. But to the Ngurrara people it is a map, made from memory, of a place where their ancestors lived for over 60,000 years. It is a direct connection to their land - a country where kartiya (non-Aboriginal people) could not live in, because the desert is an impossible environment without knowledge of how to hunt, gather, and find water. The canvas is a strong symbol of solidarity, and of resistance to the colonial project that attempted to decimate the Ngurrara’s connection to their land - now known generically as the Great Sandy Desert. We Were Lost in Our Country explores questions of personal agency, inherited trauma, and intergenerational transmission, through a conversation among ancestors and descendants. As the voices of the young find their bearings and make their mark on the words of their ancestors, Tuan Andrew Nguyen accesses a past-and-present history of the canvas - a history of displaced memory and of its recreation.
