Stan Grant says he has been called a “coconut” by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who feel he does not fit their perception of what an Indigenous person should be, adding that: “Indigenous identity can feel like a straightjacket sometimes.”
Delivering the Narrm oration at the University of Melbourne on Thursday night, Grant said some definitions of Indigenous Australians had become linked to extreme poverty and disadvantage in a way that did not account for the Indigenous middle class.
Grant grew up in relative poverty but said he now had to reconcile what it was to be Aboriginal while also living as a successful professional in a gentrified Sydney suburb.
Fresh from accepting an award as GQ Magazine’s agenda setter of the year, Grant asked: “Can I truly see privilege as white?
“Is it black to suffer disadvantage?” he said. “If privilege is white, then I am assuredly white.”
He added: “Am I a coconut?”
Grant explained that coconut was a derogatory term used by some Indigenous peoples to criticise other Indigenous people for acting “too white” – “black on the outside, white on the inside”.
The Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man rose to prominence as an Indigenous leader in Australia last year after returning from a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent.
His popularity has been critiqued by some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who argue that non-Indigenous Australians listen to Grant because they find his messages more palatable than other, more divisive voices.
Appearing to draw from that criticism, Grant said the Indigenous middle class was “a phenomenon that is met with suspicion, even hostility, by the Indigenous community”.
He cited an essay by the Eualeyai and Kamilaroi woman and academic Larissa Behrendt in Guardian Australia, and the work of the prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, both of which discussed the divisive identity politics of urban versus remote communities.
“How does a community that has partly been defined by its exclusion, disadvantage and poverty redefine itself?” he said. “How can it become more engaged without becoming assimilated?”
Grant said it ought to be possible to be both: you could be an Indigenous person and a successful inner-city professional, respect your Indigenous culture and heritage and still acknowledge the non-Indigenous aspects of your heritage.
“You are not more Aboriginal if you are struggling,” he said, adding: “It is beyond trite to suggest that a university degree and a job means that a person is no longer Indigenous. Identity should not be means tested.”
Langton and Grant have a long history together. In his book Talking to My Country, Grant recounts meeting Langton when he was working in Canberra after finishing high school. She encouraged him to apply for university.
“Were it not for Marcia, I would not be here today,” he said.
Langton, who is the foundation chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University, introduced Grant, saying: “It gives me hope for our country that Stan can go from a shy county boy to national leader.”
Grant argued that there was a long history of economic migration and participation by Indigenous people which had been erased from public debate by the “continuous and persistent romanticisation of Aboriginal people by white people”.
His own family, he said, had moved 300km west from the mission at Condobolin to the fruit-growing town of Griffith, joining waves of Italian and Greek migrants after the second world war.
“The people of my grandfather’s generation saw an open door and they marched through it,” he said. “They didn’t just demand equality, they assumed it … they were alive to the possibilities of life in an Australia whose economy was booming.”
At the same time, he said, there was a “shadow world of overwhelming policy” made up of Indigenous people who did not engage in the economy.
“At a time when government policy was making it easier to sit down, they became embedded,” he said. “There is great community and enduring bonds to be found in [the] embedded community: I know these people, they are my family.”
Australia should be mature enough to accept there are different types of Indigenous people, Grant said.
“Culture is not static, identity is fluid,” Grant said. “Our ancestor’s genius for adaptation and discovery brought them here way back in the deepest mists of time … And yet, today we are reminded that life for far too many Indigenous people is hard, very hard.
“The first peoples are overwhelmingly in prison, doomed to short and impoverished lives.”
He argued that Indigenous cultures could survive and thrive even if people moved off their traditional lands to find work.
“I was a part of the great migration,” he said. “The descendants of these pioneers are now the proud graduates of universities like this one. They run small businesses, they are entrepreneurs, and they are redefining what it is to be an Indigenous person.”
