Coming right way

Three of us journeyed in my car. Two Davids and me. I nicknamed them front-seat David and back-seat David for the purpose of telling them apart. As we shared stories and snacks on the trip, front-seat David kept referring to my "dilly bag" whenever I asked him to retrieve an item for me, and I enjoyed that gesture of inclusion. We were headed for the third workshop held by Quakers and First Nations People to explore connections, racism and sovereignty. When the three of us tumbled, late, into the first session, the smiles around the room welcomed us. There were some people I hadn't seen in two years, some I had kept in touch with, and new faces.

my dilly bag

And as we fell into a rhythm of discussion sessions punctuated by meal times and sleep, it became clear that my role was to listen. I listened to stories of youth suicide, stolen children, rape, racism,  hopelessness, incarceration, deaths in custody, mental health, the white man's poison, anger, addiction, activism, hope, resilience, unconditional love, support, and forgiveness. As always, I had to guard myself against the strong emotions that always well up at these types of occasions, knowing that even being able to take care of myself is a privilege afforded those of us for whom the personal is less political.

When I think of the suicides I think of my friends who took their lives. I think maybe I can empathise somehow. Because I've received the phone call, tried to make sense of it, felt overwhelmed and angry and unsure. I've said goodbye to that beautiful, gentle soul: somebody who, in that moment, didn't think life was worth it any more. But I know it's different. To see suicide touch so many young people in the same community is not the same thing at all. What is happening for them is collective hopelessness; the collateral damage caused by decades and centuries of structural violence and racism.

When I think of the children taken away, I think of my brother, who was taken from his mother at birth. And again I think maybe I can empathise somehow. The lost years that you never really get back, the what ifs that go through your head. And how you know he is always trying to catch up on a family that he wasn't part of as a child. But again I know it's different - for them it was a deliberate attempt to deny children their heritage, to breed out the black. And it continues - now it's called "The Intervention", or "stronger futures" or "concern for little children". People shared stories from all corners of the country of children taken away and it became clear to me that they never stopped taking the children away. But some, like front-seat David, came back, determined to reconnect and reclaim their lost heritage.

"What are you Quakers going to do?" they ask us, and we are eager, but unsure. They want concrete action. Sometimes it feels as if we are very much "the other", "the enemy", and I am aware that I benefit daily from the structures that hold them back, but there are moments of solidarity. When we talk of collective action it feels like progress. I know that there is more that the women would like to say, and I could have done more to listen to their stories over meals, or during the times when I selfishly chose to spend snatching up missed sleep.

Halfway through the second day, back-seat David and I took a walk up the mountain behind the centre and looked out over Lake George, letting the strong feelings settle. I am aware that, while friends and colleagues continue to campaign against apartheid around the world, we are the oppressors in a similar scenario here in Australia. We are complicit in and benefit from two centuries of genocide. Will we have the courage to stand up and be counted among those who see and name the racism that exists in our own country and in our own hearts?

Silver Wattle Quaker Centre, Bungendore

At one point, somebody made a distinction between Quakers and other Wadjula, and I felt a sense that we were beginning to come right way, a concept introduced to me by a very wise Quaker many years ago. The idea is that, by listening and hearing stories of what has happened, we can start to build a relationship with the First Australians, and eventually start to right the wrongs of the past. When we first came to Australia, we came wrong way. Now we are being given the chance to come right way.

We gather at the tree to say goodbye to the Kooma mob who are heading home. They have fifteen hours of driving ahead of them just to get to Brisbane. Then another couple of days due West. Suddenly Koko realises that I never got one of the sovereignty t-shirts. He looks me up and down, mumbles something about needing to find a large one, and produces an XXL and thrusts it into my hands. Gratitude prevails over indignation.

One man, a gentle, thoughtful soul who I felt I connected with over the weekend, was standing  beside me. "When are you coming back to Cunnamulla?" he asks me. "Oh, when front-seat David invites me again" I reply, because we'd already established that I'd visited back in 2008. "I'll invite you", he says. "I'll show you around". I try not to let the wetness in my eyes show. After two days of listening to how my people have wronged another, I can't believe that I might have made another friend. I feel I am another small step closer to "coming right way".

Utopia

The other night I saw John Pilger's film "Utopia" at The Block in Redfern. Arriving late, I was wondering whether I'd find anyone to sit with or whether I would miss the beginning, but I needn't have worried. It seemed that Sydney's entire progressive community had turned out to see the film. The movie itself didn't get started until I was well and truly settled into my picnic spot surrounded by people I knew.

Photo taken by my friend Costa

At the beginning of the documentary we learn of the price people are willing to pay to stay one night in a luxury apartment by Sydney's breathtakingly beautiful harbour. This opulence is then juxtaposed with Utopia, a remote desert community just a few hundred kilometres north of Alice Springs, where a health worker describes the appalling conditions that people live in. In one particular house, the only toilet doesn't work most of the time meaning that raw sewage collects in the back yard, and they don't have the basic medical supplies for immunisations or to prevent diseases that are non-existent in the rest of Australia. Oh, and cockroaches have been found in children's ears.

The description reminded me of an incident in Balgo, another desert community set on the intersection of Warlpiri, Kukatja, and Ngarti lands a couple of hundred kilometres further north, where I journeyed in 2009 to attend The Kapulalungu Aboriginal Women's Association Law Camp. Arriving in town, I remember one of my travelling companions commenting loudly about the state of the sleeping quarters, citing cockroaches, dog poo and unwashed dishes scattered about the place as unacceptable, perhaps unaware that while our new room-mates might have been too shy to speak English with us, they understood the gist only too well. We were perpetrating again the shame we place on First Nations people because they are not like us, or because they don't have access to the basic sanitation facilities that we take for granted.

In that community I formed a bond early on with one lady who had recently lost her son to suicide. He was the third young person to die that way in the space of 12 months. As we shared snippets of our very different lives, I marvelled at her resilience. Some of her older female relatives remembered a time pre-invasion, before the middle generation had been raised in a Catholic mission school away from their families and prevented from speaking their language. These women were now teaching their traditional laws and customs to the younger and middle generations with the hope that re-connecting to culture would make a difference to self-confidence, cultural pride and a sense of healing for the community as a whole. Even after sixty short years, "settlement" had clearly been very destructive to the mental health of young people, evidenced in the high rates of suicide.

One of the buildings used for health and community work, Balgo

Rates of youth suicide amongst First Nations people was highlighted in the movie, with Robert and Selina Eggington from the Nyoongar Nation speaking about their own experience of grief losing a son to suicide, and then talking about a space of remembrance that they created for other grieving parents in the Perth area. I wished the movie had included more positive stories like this, and perhaps more from urban and rural experiences as well as remote. But I did find it valuable to hear about successful strikes and union activities that had led to increases in wages, improved standards of living and safety for workers. Stories of resistance movements and urban survivors could have been more prominent.

The irony in the connection between the Northern Territory Intervention and the Stolen Generation was explored. John Pilger reminded us that the Intervention was supposedly implemented because of John Howard's concern about rape of children by Aboriginal men in Northern Territory communities following the "Little Children are Sacred" report. Yet, such allegations were a complete misrepresentation of the report. Even more frustrating is the irony that it was the rape of Aboriginal women and girls by white men that resulted in the "half-caste" children who were stolen as part of a racist policies to breed out the black. Some of the books that tell the stories of the stolen children are so powerful, and I remember tears streaming down my face as I learnt of each person's unique but similar heartbreak. Since I was aware that my grandparents had fostered an Aboriginal girl in the 1960s, believing they were doing a good thing, I imagined with some discomfort every story taking place in their house.

The racism of newcomer Australians is evident in interviews with former politicians, people celebrating Australia Day, and countless stories of unnecessary deaths in custody and massacres that have gone un-noticed in history books. I am also disappointed by how this country has handled Australia Day, almost completely oblivious that our day of pride represents nothing less than invasion day for First Nations people. My sister-in-law tells me that she was shocked by the racism she noticed amongst settler Australians when she first moved here. As I continue to struggle with my own racism and privilege, I am filled with love for the First Nations people in my life who have opened their hearts to me over the years. I have a number of "uncles" who continually forgive me as I stumble and offend. They gently nudge me in the right direction.This movie is another step on my journey. I hope it is seen by those who need to see it, rather than only those of us who are "the converted" -  those of us well-intentioned lefties who want to be supportive, but still need a great deal more educating, mind you! And I hope this story will spark vigorous discussions. I reckon it's okay if we don't all like the style of journalism or the choice of content, as long as it gets us talking about our embarrassing history, the change we want to see in the future, and maybe even taking action in our own lives to be that change.

Footprints and songlines

'I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song; and that these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African savannah, where the First Man shouted the opening stanza to the World Song, "I am!"'  - Bruce Chatwin

The songlines, as Bruce Chatwin describes them in his book, are the pathways trodden by the ancestors in ancient Australia. They represent the perimeters of land navigated by different tribes as well as being a means of passing dreamtime stories to the younger generations to explain the existence of certain mountains and rivers and to give colour to the history of those lands and journeys. It is possible to recognise exactly where a person is from in Australia by the song they sing. Inflections within the song represent mountains or rivers.

Bruce Chatwin is an English man who travels through the Australian outback seeing connections between Aboriginal dreamtime songs and stories and his own thesis about song as the origin of language. He explores the paths trodden by humanity's ancestors as they migrated from south eastern Africa to Australia. He intersperses anecdotes from his encounters with memorable outback characters with quotes from his hundreds of notebooks on related topics including enjoyment of walking, nomadic travel, the origin of our species, and human migratory practices and songs.

I've been thinking about the songlines of my own ancestors. My family are newcomers to Australia. Four generations ago we began treading on this land. Before that our footprints mark pathways in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Our songs and stories are of challenging journeys by boat, establishing themselves in a new land, and time spent in country Australia as farmers or church ministers. My grandfather used to tell of getting up at dawn to milk cows, and walking barefoot to school, insisting the journey was uphill both ways. Dad has tales of spiders in the outdoor dunny, playing tricks on teachers, and other Tom Sawyer-like adventures in country New South Wales. He  remembers the Aboriginal People living in settlements outside of town in the 1950's, pushed out from what was once their place. It is a reminder that we are literally and metaphorically treading all over other people's songlines.

As I walk the streets of Newtown, my current home, there are more family footprints that were trodden before. My parents owned a house in the next street, and it seemed like we visited almost every  second weekend to do repairs when I was a kid. And my older cousin Ben lived in Newtown up until his death in 2000. While I was too young at the time to understand his illness or have a meaningful relationship with him, I feel strangely connected to him now. I picture him walking the same pathways, perhaps sipping coffee in some of my favourite cafes, and finding inspiration for his art in the interesting characters and colours of the neighbourhood. It's comforting to think that wherever I might go, other people have trodden before, and now it's time for me to mark out my own path, treading lightly so as not to trample upon the ancient songlines, and probably singing my own verses about walking, nomadic travel and migratory practices, as well as continuing the chorus of "I am".

Samson and Delilah

I finally got around to watching Samson and Delilah a little while ago and I'm not sorry I did. The movie follows a young couple on their journey from a remote town to the city and back again as they face death, homelessness, addiction and disability. Having spent time in remote Australia, I felt that the film accurately captured everyday life in a sleepy town not far from Alice Springs.

I liked that the characters were true to life and that the film just explored the circumstances and decisions of two young people without judgement. If you're looking for dot paintings, traditional language and "going walkabout" they are there, but alongside the harsh reality of being ripped off by art dealers, dealing with health problems in a remote area, and the petrol sniffing and violence that comes from having absolutely nothing to do and no sense of hope for the future.

You would think that a movie about a town where nothing happens and not much is said would be boring to watch, but it's not. I was captivated. A lot is said without words, both in terms of communication between characters, and also in terms of social commentary. If you want a warts and all glimpse into one person's portrayal of the Aboriginal experience, I recommend you watch this film.

Southern loss

I've always had mixed feelings about Australia Day. I already feel ashamed that while non-Indigenous Australians celebrate our ability to conquer new horizons and set up camp in an unforgiving land, our Indigenous brothers and sisters mourn the loss of their land, language and traditions and celebrate their survival for more than 200 years in the face of great adversity.

This year there is another reason to feel ashamed. Ever since the Cronulla riots, displaying the Australian flag has come to represent white supremacy - a symbol of blatent racism tattooed on the arms of anglo-Australians who believe they have more right to be here that more recent immigrants or first Australians. I fear we have become too familiar with these expressions of violence. When I saw a car the other day with the Australian flag flying from its roof, my immediate reaction was "racist".

Sadly, I'm not the only one. Warwick Thornton, who made the film Samson and Delilah, was quoted on AdelaideNow as saying that "Aboriginal people have used the Southern Cross for the last 40,000 years as a beacon guiding them to travel through country for survival, and I'm starting to see that star system symbol being used as a very racist nationalistic emblem - and that is seriously worrying me.''

What to do? Some of my recent migrant friends are immensely proud to be new Australians and to call this beautiful country home. They know how lucky they are. Yet, many of us who grew up in this great southern land seem to take it all for granted. Is there no way for all Australians be proud of our country and flag without excluding others or inciting violence, anger or hatred?