Reclaiming My Story: The Power of Truth, Solidarity, and Sovereignty in Storytelling and Film

An introduction to my process and journey as a half indigenous Kalbeliya half Australian 25 year old:

After three long years of carrying the weight of an unfinished documentary project, I am finally going to share a deeply personal and complex story. It’s a story rooted in love, loss, resilience, and the moral questions surrounding the power of storytelling and the roads we end up on.

My journey begins when I was just 2.5 years old, separated from my mother as my father took me to Australia in search of a better life. Their relationship deteriorated. The cultural nuances and difference were to extreme, and rather than leaving me in the camps with my Kalbeliya Family, my father took me. A defining choice which has shaped my whole life.

For years, I lived without my mother, meeting her again only when I was 10. During those painful years of separation, an English woman filmed my mother and family, capturing moments of profound vulnerability: my mother’s struggle with survival prostitution, ostracism, and poverty as a low-caste Indigenous gypsy woman. Her descent into alcoholism and eventual imprisonment were all laid bare on in this scripted film, without context or compassion for the intricate cultural and societal pressures she faced and the nuances of a layered story.

I first discovered this documentary in the most unexpected way. A former boyfriend ( he claimed to be) of my mother reached out to me on Facebook, revealing that he had stumbled upon it. He sent me a link to the trailer – a public YouTube video of my mother’s pain and my family’s story, shared without our consent. Before blocking me, his parting words were simply put “No matter what people say, your mother has a good heart. She was just a woman crushed by society.”.

In the trailer, I saw my mother’s tears, her desperate search for the child taken from her, and the shame she endured within our Kalbeliya community. There, too, were images of my baby photos and family, shared carelessly for the world to see. My mother, illiterate and unaware, had opened up her heart to a filmmaker who, instead of advocating for her, had taken ownership of her pain.

Maybe she was good intentioned to a degree, but her true colours were revealed slowly over the years we had been in contact. I was drawn in a determined to be able to make this a positive and I’m afraid my positive hopeful outlook blinded me.

So, I had reached out to this filmmaker. Her profile picture was her and my mother, a stranger who had more access to my family’s past than I did.

Despite her closeness to my mother’s story, she had never attempted to contact me or even my mother in the years that followed her last footage of my mother. She never tried to contact my father who she was painting an unfair vindictive picture of publicly without understanding his experience. Everyone makes mistakes, but for a stranger to portray our family story in the most unprofessional way is not acceptable.

Still I was desperate to connect to my mother. So, I hang on to communications with the filmmaker in hope that I would have access to the footage at some point. I have had rare fleeting moments with my mother since meeting her again, where I could really see and feel her affection. It was after those years of the filmmaker never returned that my mothered faded into an abyss.

I asked to see the documentary in full. Her hesitation to show me the content was revealing – it raised questions about what was in the footage and why she had captured it. Yet, she eventually relented, on the condition that I not share it with my father. This further divided my family and left me isolated in processing unravelling the story and period she had captured during her years coming and going filming my mother.

When I finally saw the footage, it was devastating. I witnessed my mother’s anguish, her heartache over losing me, and the unraveling of her life. My whole wider family too, who have been a huge part of my life when my mother was absent minded. This wasn’t just a documentary – it was a raw portrayal of trauma that left my family exposed, without any of the protections or care such a sensitive narrative deserved.

The filmmaker claimed she was grappling with “ethical concerns” about how to proceed, and this was why it never took its next steps, but her actions told a different story. She was eager to involve high-profile producers and organizations to finish the film, selling me grandiose ideals of the significance of what she had created from my mother’s story. Among those she mentioned was Andre Singer, a notable filmmaker who had worked on Desert Queen starring Nicole Kidman. She spoke of him as if his interest validated her project, yet her reluctance to genuinely collaborate with me or respect the complexity of my family’s truth exposed her priorities. It was about building her artistic portfolio, not honoring the story she claimed to advocate for.

The question of ownership weighed heavily on me. Who has the right to tell this story? The footage belonged to my family, to my community.

Yet, here was a privileged outsider wielding it as her own. There’s a world of difference between living a story and observing it from the outside. My mother’s pain, my father’s hard choices, and my own experience of navigating between these two worlds were not hers to frame as she pleased.

As the project progressed, she dangled opportunities before me – collaborations with filmmakers, NGOs, and entrepreneurs – insisting that my voice could be the bridge to completing her work. But her reluctance to make meaningful changes to the documentary or acknowledge the harm it had caused revealed her true priorities. This was her project, her perspective, her survival – not the story of my family who I have since returning to meet them have been a huge part of my life even when in Australia.

I have just returned from traveling to England to confront her in person, hoping to salvage something meaningful from this collaboration. But it became clear that she lacked the sensitivity and understanding to handle such a delicate story. Her directorship and ability to move the project failed and left me amidst the bleeding of deep wounds in my heart. I was able to go through some footage on her accord and through photos on her accord, this withholding affected me deeply because it had been 3 years of waiting to see extended footage behind what she had pieced together in her 90 minute formal docoumentary.

She had no idea about how to safe guard vulnerable people in my family, whose videos she advocated to still expose without protection in her new cut. My role in her documentary was constantly shifting, and I was extremely censored by her whenever I had something to say about pieces of “ her footage” of my family.

She was exploitative and self-serving, advocating to place biased narratives into the public. This is something I couldn’t not fight against anymore. Why didn’t she just respond to my father’s communications?Why did she not want to have any other people involved on my behalf? She would get angry at me, frustrated, cut me off, and go on tangents about how “ her “ experience was with the Kalbeliya and how much she loved my mother, that she was like a Marilyn Monroe of Rajasthan and she wished she could have brought her to England. And that my grandmother was her grandmother. To put her straight, I said this triggered me, I’m processing this for the first time, seeing your extended footage. But ofcourse she is in control of “Her” footage and when/ what I get to see it. When at last we would be able to go through some…She would blurt out all her opinions and emotions whilst censoring mine, the daughter of the whole story and woman she who she had capture in front of her lens.

This isn’t just about my family – it’s about the ethics of storytelling. When you have the power to tell someone else’s story, you also have the responsibility to do so with integrity, compassion, and care. Anything less is exploitation.

I am speaking up now because it’s time for Indigenous people, for marginalized communities, to reclaim their narratives. This is my story, my mother’s story, and unquestionably my father’s story.

I will not let this story be twisted to fit someone else’s lens. My mother’s strength, my father’s choices, and my journey deserve to be told with honesty and nuance – not as a means to an outsider’s end.

I am ending the year by speaking up and releasing everything I’ve been holding inside. For too long, I tried to carry the weight in silence, but suppressing my truth came at a great cost. Now, I am choosing honesty – not just to share my story, but to break down the walls I’ve built around myself and protect my well-being. This is an act of self-love and a commitment to healing. I am so grateful for those who have supported me along this journey; your encouragement has been my strength and a reminder that I don’t have to face this alone.

To anyone who finds themselves in a similar position, I urge you: speak up. Claim your story. The truth has many sides, and no one has the right to silence yours