Mat Mullany, 30, is an education researcher from Wellington, New Zealand.
Last year I listened to a talk by the journalist Stan Grant on racism and the Australian dream, and the ongoing issues still affecting those in his Indigenous Australian community. When I saw an article on this topic he had written in the Guardian, it caught my eye, and left me contemplating his words for days.
Grant was responding to the experiences of the Australian Football League player Adam Goodes, who has experienced booing from rival fans, abuse and once called out a 13-year-old girl for a racial taunt that had her ejected from the stadium. He has been the victim of discrimination, marginalisation and vilification faced by many indigenous people around the world.
A quote that stood out to me was:
“To Adam’s ears, the ears of so many Indigenous people, these boos are a howl of humiliation. A howl that echoes across two centuries … How can we see anything else when race is what we have clung to, even as it has been used as a reason to reject us?”
This vividly describes the suffering some indigenous people have experienced and the pain of losing language, culture and identity. The quote acknowledges that standing up for your indigenous identity does not always come without great sacrifice.
I was struck by Grant’s candour in the article, which talks about the Aboriginal experience in Australia from a more personal and frank perspective than we often see in mainstream media. “I can tell you what Adam must be feeling, because I’ve felt it. Because every Indigenous person I know has felt it,” writes Grant. By the end of the article, we understand why.
As a Māori (indigenous New Zealander) myself, this line in particular resonated with me:
“But this is how Australia makes us feel. Estranged in the land of our ancestors, marooned by the tides of history on the fringes of one of the richest and demonstrably most peaceful, secure and cohesive nations on earth.”
Grant discusses the way Aboriginal people feel abandoned by the government; the sense of isolation decades after colonial domination. In New Zealand, Māori people have had rights under the treaty of Waitangi since 1840 — in Australia, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the referendum that allowed Aboriginals to be included in Australian population counts.
My job as a Māori education researcher involves supporting the development of Māori language identity and culture, and making those elements more recognisable in schools. I am aware that statistics show a contrast between the Māori and non-Māori population in health, education and justice. For example, 15% of New Zealanders identify as Māori, yet account for 52% of offenders. It seems the situation in Australia is even worse. Grant says “an Indigenous [Australian] youth has more chance of being locked up than educated.” Indigenous Australians make up 3% of the country’s population according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but account for 27% of the prison population.
Grant reflects on his childhood in Australia. “From childhood I often cringed against my race. To be Aboriginal was to be ashamed … We were the blacks. So easily recognised, not just by the colour of our skin but by the whiff of desperation and danger we cloaked ourselves in.”
Despite the rather gloomy statistics, he ends on an important note – not dwelling too much on the past, and looking to a brighter future, referring to “my children and their friends of all colours and the people of goodwill who don’t have the answers but want to keep asking questions of how we can all be better”. That’s easier said than done when the past has had such profound ramifications.
Even in Australia, the media almost invariably fails to give prominence to the voice of the Aboriginal community. Despite more widespread discussion and reporting on this issue, it seems there is still a lot of work to be done to erode prejudice. It’s great to see articles from articulate writers like Grant helping the cause.
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