The Work of Janine Roberts
(She also writes as Janine Farrell-Roberts -(using her family name) - as with "The Seven Days of My Creation" and many of her magazine articles)
Her films on human rights issues won a Nomination for Best Documentaries, various film festival awards, and been on the BBC, the ABC, Channel 4 and WGBH (PBS network) across the Australia, US and Canada. Her human rights work has won support from the World Council of Churches, and organisations of the Methodists, Catholics and Presbyterian churches, and have been sponsored by indigenous organisations in Australia and Canada as well as the ANC in South Africa.She testified on human rights at the US Congress in 2001.
Her Films for sale here
She co- produced and co-directed with Aboriginal Elder Robert Bropho
"Munda Nyuringu: He's Taken the Land, He believes it is his, He won't get it back" - Award Winning Nominated Film - the story of the Kalgoorlie Gold Rush by the Aborigines invaded - including cartoons by Australia's finest, Bruce Petty . If you want to know what land means to Aborigines, or what the gold diggers did after the Californian gold rush - buy this film . What happened here, happened all over Australia. This film also tells how over 400 Aborigines were killed according to Aboriginal elders during the UK atomic bomb tests in 'empty' desert.
Shot in the goldfields of West Australia. Won Best Documentary Nomination - and was featured as the film of the week by the Sydney Morning Herald when on ABC TV.
To the original Munda Nyuringu film release photos, cartoons and leaflet
To the film's Reviews and Awards
This unique award winning film about Aboriginal Australia is available for purchase here. Half of all profits goes to Aboriginal people - the rest into our continuing educational campaign for justice for dispossessed peoples.
____________________________________
"The Diamond Empire" - feature length international investigative film shot in six continents. As shown on US television in 1994 - to praise in the New York Times. The BBC showed it as two episodes in peaktime. The Australian ABC paid for it - but did not show it unfortunately due to threats from diamond company De Beers.
This is the film and the research that first inspired the international conflict diamond campaign
This hard-hitting investigation is here available as shown in North America by WGBH as a feature length special. This unique film after being broadcast in the West, was denied to private video buyers and libraries, and to African TV stations under pressure from De Beers but it was never found to be libellous or inaccurate. It is now at last available here to all on a CD playable on all modern PCs or Macs. Click here to purchase it.
Read a review in Canada and the ABC announcement promoting the film in Australia (issued only days before the ABC cancelled it.) Read the controversy over the film in Canada.
Her Books
"Glitter and Greed: The secrets of the diamond cartel' - a rivetting investigation of human rights, the environment and the diamond trade across five continents.Published Disinfo Incorp. 2003, New York. (launched UK in 2004) This book was reviewed as"enthralling', as the produce of "hair-raising" research and as truly 'brilliant' by the Independent newspaper. It is the Fahrenheit 9/11 of diamonds. The final chapter 'The Dangers of the Hunt' tells of the personal dangers and attacks endured by its author in her hunt of the diamond cartel - as well as how she was smuggled into the giant diamond mines.
To read the Indepentant newpaper's review - click here
"The Seven Days of My Creation: Stories of magic, s
ex and gender' (by Janine Roberts writing under her birth name of Farrell-Roberts) Despite a lifetime of hair-raising investigations, she says 'writing this is the most scary thing I have ever done. I am an investigator - so I investigated myself.'
Hermaphrodite, transexual, there are many words for an initially very unwelcome birth gift - that is now scientifically explained by the discovery that male and female brains are differerently wired - and sometimes babies are born with brain wiring different from genitals. In many cultures such people are seen as having a special gift making them particularly valuable to the community. ~Often they become the shamans or spiritual leaders. It is said by the Siberian nations that their God must have both genders as he/she gave birth without need of a partner to us all - so the child born between the genders has a divine like quality!
Born between the genders the author was highly teased and very asthmatic as a child but went on to be ordained as a Catholic priest, then 16 years later in the early 1970s to change gender roles while working with Aborigines in the Outback. After this, as a bisexual woman, she went on to work as an international investigative journalist, interviewing KGB generals for the BBC's flagship Panorama program, and Mossad agents for the Age newspaper in Melbourne. She now tells with humour the story she kept quiet about during these years until after the 'Sun' exposed her on its page 3 - without a photo of her! Since then she has gone on to testify on human rights at the US Congress and to do possibly her finest investigations. She tells of what kept her going, about her journey into Western Mysticism, and of her growing realisation that we all have male and female sides we need to alchemically integrate. All this is woven with a deep knowledge of gnosticism, indigenous nations, magic and religion - as well as of war, gun smuggling and diamond mines. Published Iuniverse, 2002 - Over 600 pages of fascinating reading! This is available now to be purchased from this website - click here
Another direct link to the book is on
Read first what readers have had to say "The Seven Days" Reviews"
"The Mapoon Books" A trilogy on Australian treatment of Aborigines - edited and co-written by her. Humphrey MacQueen, a leading Australian historian, reviewed this as 'the finest work published in the Whitlam era' (Whitlam being a famouis Prime Minister associated with a cultural revival. Published by I.D.A in 1976, Melbourne. Australia. 6,000 of each printed - and sold out. We hope to have a new edition out. Let us know if you are interested.
These books were the printed outcome of a project that helped the Aboriginal people of Mapoon finally to return to their traditional lands, to a settlement destroyed by government with the people led away in chains, with their land given to the giant mining companies RTZ and Alcan. Today the Mapoon people are once again living there in a thriving settlement. These books tell this story as well as much about their culture and sufferings - and about White attitudes to them.
(A personal note - during this 1970s project, without ever letting on to the outside public, the author changed her gender role. At that time, the only person like herself that she knew was an Aboriginal woman)
"From Massacres to Mining. The Colonization of Aboriginal Australia".
A ground breaking Australian history for people who know nothing about the country. Its first edition was published by War on Want, 1978, London, UK - and used to support a successful Aboriginal speaking tour across Europe with some 81 meeetings in five countires - a campign that succeeded in gaining protection for the land of the Wik Munkan people of Aurukun, at that time endangered by Shell's plans to strip mine 600 square miles of their tropical forest, destroying its sacred places and hunt-gathering.
"Massacres to Mining: the colonization of Aboriginal Australia' a greatly expanded and updated edition of the above book that was published Dove Press, 1981 and reprinted in 1985. Melbourne Australia. This book was launched by Aboriginal spokesman, and gained major TV andpress coverage. It sold out quickly. Then the publisher changed hands and the book regretably went out of print despite its sales not diminishing. Update now underway with support from the World Council of Church's campaign for social justice.
To a wonderful letter and review of the book by the legendry Australian novelist Xavior Herbert
To some other 'Massacres to Mining' reviews - including a fun one about my eating snake and looking distinctly 'haute coulture'!
"Jack of Cape Grim' - written as Melbourne celebrated its 150th aniversary - it tells how a Tasmanian Aboriginal band of three women and two men made a brave last stand outside Melbourne, driving settlers back to town despite three military expeditions sent out against them. Published Greenpeace, 1986, Melbourne, Australia.Sold out currently- if interested in its reprint, please notify us. We are determined to get one done. It is a unique account of Aboriginal resistance drawn from sources of that time as well as from Aboriginal oral history. One of the women involved was the famed beauty, Truganini, wrongly said to be the last of the Tasmanians.
To Jack of Cape Grim Reviews
Major Medical Investigations..
Polio: A Hundred Year Goose Chase? Published in May 2004 issue of the Ecologist it is effectively a small book at 13,500 words..It is available as two pdf files, a references file and as a research libray for free download from this website. You can find it here.
It tells how polio is associated with pesiticides, and is still epidemic in developing nations. This has been hidden by the renaming of the disease as Acute Flaccid Paralysis. As the 'poliovirus' is extremely rarely present in these cases, it cannot be the cause. But - one cannot sue a virus - but could sue a pesticide manufacturer, so it is the easier answer.
Coming in the next few weeks - a very major investigation into HIV and AIDS - watch out for sensational discoveries!
Articles and Newstories.
She has contributed over thiry years to the following newspapers (not a complete list): In the UK to the Independent, Independent on Sunday, Financial Times, and in Australia - The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Adelaide Advertise, Canberra Times; and to numerous magazines including - The Ecologist, Corporate Examiner, Retrieval, New Internationalist.
A selection of these features and news stories is coming.
More of her Films.
"Monkey Business" a powerful investigation produced for Channel 4 in 1998. the story of the contamination of the polio vaccine with a cancer-linked monkey virus. Co-produced with Rosie Thomas for the Dispatches series on the UK's Channel Four TV, also shown as a Four Corners by the ABC in Australia. Write to Jan if a copy is wanted.
Other films that she initiated, and for which she wrote and researched the original script..
"Strangers in their Own Land' Directed by Chris Curling - for World in Action Granada. An investigation of RTZ and the Bauxite mines on Aboriginal reserve land in Queensland, Australia.This was seen around the world - but in Australia, the ABC were sued by Comalco (owned in part by RTZ) because they believed it was libellous to say they had "stolen" Aboriginal land. (they had taken mining rights over a thousand square miles, including much of the largest Aboriginal Reserve in Eastern Australia,)
"A plain and Sacred Rite" A BBC Everyman program on Aborigial spirituality and diamond mining - shot in NW. Australia - much in it about Aborigines and Argyle diamond mine.
Direct Actions. These include -
1967-9 organiser of soup runs and action for homeless people in London. (working with the Simon Community)
1968 Elected sociology student representative - involved re lock-out at LSE.
1971-3 Publishing on Apartheid, on colonism in Niugini and Fiji, and on Vietnam war - one of the many co-editors of antiwar journal 'Retrieval".-Involved in support of draft resistance movment. - working closely with Australian aid agencies.
1974 Asssited the Mapoon Aboriginal communty to return to their tribal and - from whcih they had been removed in irons.
1975 Working with the Aurukun Aboriginal communtiy - and the North Queensland Aboriginal Land Council - succeed in stopping Shell from strip mining500 sq miles of the monsoonal forest that is the home of the Aurukun Aboriginal people.- many other similar actions over the next ten years.
1982 Took key role in stopping RTZs plan to use cynanide to mine underground rivers for gold in Northern Victoria, Australia.
1995-6 Lyminge Forest protest in Kent, Uk - take part in long action with local village people and with many eco-warriors that was successful in protecting this forest from destruction. (It is a forest she knew as a child)
Would you want to know more about her motivation? Read her Personal Resume available here. It tells the story of her struggle from her childhood to find her identity - and the assaults she later had to endure during her investigative work. This story is also told in much more detail and with humor and much weaving of history in her memoir-investigation. "The Seven Days of My Creation" - see above.
