You Can’t Screen That Here: Why Ethical Storytelling Trumps Festival Deadlines 🛑
“You can’t screen that here.”
That was the first sentence. No hello. Just the sentence that made my stomach sink. It was late May 2025. I was shivering in a Narooma car park on Yuin Country, staring at the rough cut of our projection film for the winter Whale Cove Lights festival, and Aunty L’s voice on the phone was steady in a way that made me shut up and listen.
I’d been so sure we were close. We’d mixed archival hydrophone recordings of humpbacks, layered them with local kids’ drawings, and composited it all into an animation of a mother and calf weaving through moonlit surf. I’d told myself the film “felt right,” right after sharing a new piece on how stories reframe Australian animals. Then, with one sentence, it didn’t.
“Which part?” I asked, already knowing it wasn’t just one part.
“The song you used,” she said. “And the pattern on the waves. That’s not our pattern. And that song isn’t yours to put on a wall.”
It’s a particular kind of cold that hits when you realise you’ve crossed a line you didn’t even see. I thought we were following best practice. We’d met the local Aboriginal corporation, scoped permissions, read the AIATSIS Code of Ethics (2020) and Screen Australia’s guidelines. We got a verbal nod from two Elders to proceed “if it’s respectful.” I’d budgeted consultation fees in line with the NAVA Code of Practice. We were, I told myself, doing it “right.”
But “right” isn’t a checklist. It’s a relationship. And relationships require ongoing attention, genuine reciprocity, and the humility to recognise when you’ve misstepped—even when your intentions were good.
The Project, the Pressure, and the Painful Mistake
The brief was deceptively simple: a 12-minute projection about the winter whale migration—a story “for everyone.” I wanted to centre Yuin knowledge about baleen whales and show how those stories shape behaviour around the ocean today. The council had given us a tight timeline.
The pressure was real. Festival deadlines don’t bend for ethical considerations, or so I told myself. In that environment, it’s easy to convince yourself that “good enough” consultation is actually good enough. It’s a trap.
I took a shortcut. I merged elements I’d heard from different Yuin speakers as if they were a single public story. I used a wave motif that turned out to be a specific pattern from a neighbouring Nation. Worst, I set a scene under a narration I shouldn’t have scripted at all. I blended, generalised, and overstepped.
I was treating cultural elements like open-source code: mix, match, and modify as needed. But Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) doesn’t work that way. It’s held in trust, passed down through specific lineages, and tied to particular places and responsibilities.
“We need to sit down,” Aunty L said. “Not over email.”
So we sat, three days later, at the community centre. “You’re not the first,” Aunty laughed, “but let’s make you the last, at least this month.”
The Messy Middle: Navigating Protocols and a Painful Cut
The meeting started with the question that should have been our first: “Whose story is this to tell?” Not abstractly, but literally—who holds this specific knowledge, for this stretch of sea, this time of year, and for what audience? That’s the heart of ICIP protocols: knowledge belongs to people and places, and it’s carried with responsibilities.
We mapped scenes against those responsibilities. We learned that using a song meant engaging with the spiritual, cultural, and social systems that give it meaning. We found our wave pattern was from Boon Wurrung Country, not Yuin. Someone else raised the issue of totems: “Check those species. Don’t show people eating their own totems.”
We pulled out the standards: the AIATSIS Code, the Australia Council’s Protocols, Terri Janke’s “True Tracks” principles (respect, self-determination, consent, integrity, etc.). We fell short on “consent” (ours wasn’t specific) and “interpretation” (we had collapsed multiple versions).
The “True Tracks” framework became our reconstruction roadmap. “Self-determination” meant shifting from consultation to collaboration. “Interpretation” required us to hold space for multiple versions of stories rather than creating a single “authoritative” narrative.
It got complicated fast. The whales travel across multiple Countries. The story couldn’t just be “Yuin whales”; it needed to acknowledge that other Nations share responsibility. We failed to treat this cross-jurisdictional complexity as normal for story work. I made a note to re-read our team’s own piece on expert cross-jurisdictional conservation in Australia.
We did something hard and necessary: we cut 7 minutes from the 12-minute film. We re-wrote the narration under the guidance of a Yuin cultural lead, who we credited as co-author. We replaced the wave motif with local commissioned artwork. We re-shot the campfire scene with bream and flathead after checking totem lists.
We also changed our permissions architecture. Our original consent forms were the standard “perpetual licence” media template. With advice from First Nations Media Australia colleagues, we added options for time-bound consent, review-before-release, and community-controlled distribution for specific segments. The CARE principles (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) aren’t just for data scientists; they apply to your rushes and ProRes files too.
That week was exhausting. I told the funder we needed to push the premiere by three weeks. To their credit, they backed us. We moved AUD$1,000 from hardware hire into fees for community collaborators. We shot a simpler projection and spent the savings on ethics. That’s a sentence I wish I’d written into the original budget.
Animal Welfare Isn’t Optional Background Noise
Ethics doesn’t stop at people. We’d planned a drone shot over a mother-and-calf pair offshore. I re-read NSW National Parks permits: strict flight distances from marine mammals, no drones near whales without authorisation, period. We sourced existing permitted footage and leaned on CGI. The whales are protected under the EPBC Act—they aren’t props. We added a clear note to our credits: “No footage was captured at distances that could disturb marine mammals.”
This matters for trust. After the premiere, 62% of surveyed audience members said they’d learned a new behaviour for whale season (like slowing vessels or maintaining 100m distance). Stories change norms when the production aligns with the message.
Premiere Night and the Earned Exhale
We finally screened on a cold Friday in August. We projected the moonlit calf onto sandstone. An Elder I didn’t know stood near me, murmuring along to a line about care for Sea Country. At the end, I turned to Aunty L. She didn’t clap. She just nodded. “That’s right,” she said. Not perfect. But right for that place, that night, those people.
Seeing “Cultural Lead and Co-Author” beside a local’s name mattered. We put up a QR code to a donations page that split proceeds between a Yuin youth program and a local wildlife rescue. Quietly, the council changed its commissioning template to require early cultural consultation for any work touching First Nations knowledge. That’s policy change at the most pragmatic level.
What I Learned the Hard Way (So You Don’t Have To)
Our biggest stumbles could have been avoided with a few fundamental shifts in approach. It’s not about following a checklist; it’s about changing how you approach creative collaboration.
1. Challenge Your Assumptions: Start with “Whose Story Is This to Tell?”
Your first job isn’t to map story beats, but to map knowledge custodianship. Don’t assume public domain; verify ownership. Assuming a general “coastal story” led to using culturally specific patterns from a neighbouring Nation.
Try this: Before writing a single treatment, spend a week mapping the cultural geography of your subject matter. Who are the knowledge holders? What are their protocols?
2. Rethink Consent: It’s Specific, Revocable, and Shared—Not Perpetual
Real consent is free, prior, informed, and ongoing. It’s a relationship, not a one-off signature. Replace your standard release form with a modular consent system that allows contributors to specify time-limited use, review rights, and community-controlled distribution. The CARE principles apply to your digital assets.
3. Prioritise People: Pay Properly and Pay Early
Consultation is skilled labour. Set fees in line with the NAVA Code of Practice and pay upfront. Treat cultural consultation as a core production cost, not an add-on. We now allocate at least 15-20% of the overall budget to cultural engagement.
4. Don’t Generalise or Merge Stories Without Guidance
If three Elders tell you three versions, that’s a feature, not a bug. Your job is to hold that plurality or step back, not stitch together a “definitive version.” The nuance is often where the deepest wisdom lies.
5. Respect Secrecy, Sacredness, and Sorry Business
Always ask about restrictions on names, images, and songs. Be prepared to not include something. Sorry Business protocols (mourning practices) can vary widely—be flexible and build in content advisories so you can adapt quickly if a community member passes away.
6. Animal Welfare is Ethical and Strategic
Use permitted footage, remote cameras, or CGI. Credit your non-invasive methods. This isn’t just about compliance; it’s about congruence between your message and your methods.
7. Plan for Where the Work Lives
Archive masters in community-controlled repositories. Agree on future use, including withdrawals if contexts change. Treat digital asset management as a cultural responsibility.
8. Be Ready to Say “I Don’t Know”
That sentence will save you from harm and open doors to learning. It’s a powerful act of humility that fosters trust and genuine collaboration. “I don’t know” followed by “Can you help me understand?” is the most effective tool for building authentic relationships.
The Earned Outcome
Looking back, the phone call that made my stomach sink was actually the beginning of the most meaningful creative collaboration of my career. It led to better work, stronger relationships, and systemic changes at the council level.
What separates ethical storytellers is discipline—the discipline to follow protocols, share power, and accept limits. It’s not neat. It’s not always cinematic. But on that cold August night, with a calf rippling across sandstone and the community standing together, it felt like the right kind of beautiful.
The whales are still migrating past Yuin Country every winter. The stories about them are still being told, but now they’re being told in ways that honour both the whales and the people who have been their custodians for thousands of years.
Tags: #IndigenousStorytelling #CulturalProtocols #EthicsInMedia #AustralianConservation #AnimalWelfare #CommunityCoauthorship #ICIP #CulturalConsultation #EthicalFilmmaking #ConservationStorytelling
