Amid global racial unrest and heightened attention on Indigenous incarceration rates and police violence in Australia, a podcast about debutante balls might seem like a non sequitur. But in the hands of playwright and actor Nakkiah Lui and actor and writer Miranda Tapsell, it becomes almost symbolic.
“As we’re tearing down statues of white supremacists and slave masters across the world, I love the idea of [reframing] something like the original debutante ball, which was a beacon of white colonial supremacy and patriarchy,” says Lui of their new Audible podcast, Debutante: Race, Resistance and Girl Power.
“The fact that now it’s run by Aboriginal aunties at, like, a band club in western Sydney – it’s almost like hey, we’ve ruined it for you!”
Lui and Tapsell’s last podcast, Pretty for an Aboriginal, featured frank and fearless conversations between the two women about race, sex, politics and culture. Their latest project dives into the world of the deb ball: the old-fashioned, archaic event that originated in England, where young women in white dresses are presented to society and paraded around to potential suitors.
It’s a tradition that most feminists can’t abide, and definitely not one regularly associated with Indigenous Australia – and yet, as Lui and Tapsell uncover over nine episodes, debutante balls have a long history with First Nations communities around the world.
Lui has a personal connection: she has helped her mother Jenny Beale organise the Butucarbin Aboriginal Corporation’s annual debutante ball in Mount Druitt for years. But all she knew about their history was that the first one was held in the late 60s, after the referendum on Indigenous rights.
Once she started scratching the surface, a whole new world emerged, and through the podcast Lui and Tapsell uncover a unique relationship between the colonial tradition and the empowerment of First Nations people and other oppressed minorities across the world.
“It was a wild ride,” Lui says. “I went in super-uneducated, and came out, and I reckon I could probably do a TED talk on it now.”
The idea that a debutante ball could be empowering seems at odds with modern feminism, particularly in relation to First Nations women. Don’t the balls just reinforce a sense of beauty that’s grounded in whiteness?
But as Lui and Tapsell show, dismantling the tradition has made way for a celebration of young First Nations women, and their family, culture and community. In Australia, for instance, Aboriginal debutantes are introduced not by their family name and rank in society, but by their mob, their land, and their people. And while Aboriginal women are presented to a local elder, the English debutantes Nakkiah interviews – attending the Queen Charlotte’s Ball – are now presented to, and curtsey before … a large cake. When Nakkiah tells her mother this in the final episode of Debutante, Jenny laughs out loud.
In episode three, Tapsell interviews former Indigenous debutantes in Liverpool and Mount Druitt in Sydney, who tell of astounding experiences of everyday racism and alienation. It is rare to be able to hear directly from young Indigenous Australians women; giving them a platform was a goal for both podcast hosts.
“I think in Australia, Aboriginal women quite often fall through the cracks of things,” Lui says. “When we think of a person we think white, when we think of a woman, we think white, when we think of an Aboriginal, we think male. To then find your space as an Aboriginal woman is really tricky.”
The Debutante: Race, Resistance and Girl Power podcast doesn’t just tell the stories of Indigenous Australian women: it creates an environment of solidarity between First Nations women in America and Australia, leading to some warm, enlightening and nuanced conversations which – while centred on the balls – ultimately explore racial oppression and cultural genocide. Being segregated from society, forced to live on missions or reserves, having their children taken away – these are all horrific and shared experiences that are rarely discussed in public with this kind of authenticity and vulnerability.
“Whenever Nakkiah and I are asked to discuss race and gender from our perspective, we’re always brought into the arena, like it’s never on our terms,” Tapsell says. “So it’s almost as if they’ve shaped the conversation in a way where you’re already the antagonist of the story.”
Ojibwe and Dakota women in America speak of their families’ dispossession and oppression by colonial forces; African American women talk about the dehumanising experiences of segregation; and First Nations Australians share heart-wrenching experiences of being taken from their families, or suffering discrimination at the hands of police and employers.
Listening to their stories you feel as though you have entered a private space, where women of colour feel safe to explore traumatic and difficult aspects of their lives and identities. And behind the white dresses and dancing and sashes, a more radical message is lingering, one that is really about dismantling colonial traditions through joy, celebration and community building.
As Lui says: “We’ve taken everything that you thought was special about [debutante balls] – that it’s exclusive, that it’s so classist, and racist and sexist, and white – and just completely hijacked this thing you held so dear. So in a way, maybe it’s kind of like tearing down another statue.”
• Debutante: Race, Resistance and Girl Power is out now via Audible Original, and you can listen to it free for the first month
