YURLU COUNTRY is an intimate and inspiring portrait of a Banjima Elder’s fight for his ancestral land, exploring the resilience of First Nations people in the face of ongoing dispossession.

Banjima Elder Maitland Parker lives with a terminal mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer resulting from exposure to the asbestos that’s infected his yurlu (homeland). This occurred six decades prior, when the Wittenoom mines turned 46,840 hectares of Banjima Country – an area 17 times the size of Sydney – into a toxic exclusion zone after leaving behind waste laced with asbestos. But Maitland isn’t alone. Aboriginal communities in Western Australia face the highest mortality rates from mesothelioma in the world.

YURLU COUNTRY explores the corporate and government factions surrounding this epidemic, as Maitland seeks to reconnect with his yurlu, and allow other displaced First Nations people to do the same and try to heal their ancestral lands.