Stories

I sat on this one for a while, not sure whether I could bring myself to write about it one more time, or if there was even anything left to say. It’s racist.

Trigger Warning: This article contains personal stories of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. My story of ongoing survivorship of mental health issues is not unique. There is no triumphant victory at the end of this article. My personal history which I have chosen to share has no miraculous breakthroughs, no Hollywood ending of a woman having a road to Damascus moment, there is no phoenix rising from the ashes in this intimate account.

We are co-hosting @IndigenousX this week to highlight how much is going on around suicide prevention, families and communities in Indigenous Australia. On 5-6 May, the Inaugural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Conference took place in Alice Springs, and 12 May is #IHMayDay16 – a day devoted to discussing Indigenous health. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and knowledge are fundamental to our wellbeing. It is important for individuals to be happy and healthy for their families and communities to be healthy as well. The strength and dynamic of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture is a big part of what makes a healthy community.

I was just 11 years old when the cousin that I loved and adored spent what would be his last night in Tenterfield at our home, laughing and telling jokes and stories, just being everything you could ever want to be when you got older.

My name is Kelrick Martin, and my family are from the north west of Western Australia, but we call Broome our home. My mother is the second eldest sibling in a family of nine children, and I am the eldest grandchild. Mum’s parents – my grandparents – knew the value of education from a very early age, and worked incredibly hard to provide for their children. When my grandfather, the patriarch of our family, passed away when I was 15-years-old, it was a huge blow to us all.
Starting out as a radio trainee at Goolarri Media in Broome, an Indigenous owned and operated media organisation in Western Australia in 1997, I was incredibly shy. It took me six weeks before I went anywhere near the studio. Part of my job however was to document Indigenous voices and broadcast them to our local audience, effectively preserving these stories for future generations. I had to get over being shame pretty quickly. Having already lost the stories of my grandfather, I realised how vital it was to retain the stories of our elders and culture before they too were lost forever. I also learned that media technologies like radio, film and television were the key to promoting this. It was a calling for me, and one I was keen to pursue as far as I could.

The Treaty vs Recognition debate is an interesting one, although it probably still hasn’t received the attention and scrutiny that it deserves. The push for Treaty is older than any of us, but it has risen to prominence again largely from the frustration felt by many with how the Recognise campaign has been rolled out.

Yow, NT elections are on this year in August 2016. Yolŋu from Arnhem Land have electorate areas: Arafura, Arnhem and Nhulunbuy. Since the first NT legislative council in 1947, we Yolŋu have been voting for ALP and CLP politicians to speak on our behalf, but their policy is governed according to the Monarch of the Commonwealth of England, created by a King 800 years ago, or more. That’s why our voices through politicians, (both Yolŋu and Balanda) have never been listened to, because that law is not ours. It operates according to the (foreign) Westminster system of law.

Australian likes to see itself as the Lucky Country, the land of the fair go, home of the ‘Aussie battler’, but does it live up to the hype?

How come there is an 'Indigenous youth parliament' for kids but no actual Indigenous parliament for adults?

Most people have that one teacher. Like Sidney Poitier’s Mark Thackeray in To Sir, With Love or Robin Williams’s John Keating in Dead Poets Society. The one who inspired, opened our eyes to our own abilities and ultimately helped take us out of our adolescent angst so we saw – for the first time – the much bigger world around us. Mine was Mr Coburn. He was my English teacher from Mossman State High School in Far North Queensland.

Last week a number of major national and international media outlets were outraged at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for “re-writing history.” Although this claim was completely unfounded, it did spark a much-needed dialogue about the true identity of Australia.

By now everyone is or should be aware that RDH left Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu to die from a chronic illness he has suffered since childhood. He had vomited blood, had internal bleeding and required immediate surgery and yet he was forced to wait 8 hours before he was attended to in which time he could have quite easily died. There are allegations that he was either racially profiled or that the hospital is completely incompetent.

Sorry white peeps, this isn’t a useful ‘How to’, as the heading suggests, but don’t worry because most white people are already experts at this. Racism isn’t just the overt hatred of other races, and it isn’t always blind hatred either, but if you were raised in Australia then you have probably been far more regularly exposed to racist attitudes than you have been to almost anything else.

It has been 21 years since the launch of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and 17 years since the release of the inquiry’s final report –now commonly known as the Bringing Them Home report– which concluded with the troubling finding that a generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders “endured gross violations of their human rights. These violations continue to affect Indigenous people’s daily lives. They were an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out Indigenous families, communities, and cultures”.

The recent shenanigans around the use of “invasion” instead of “settlement” was annoying on so many levels. Not least of which was the stark reminder of how many Australians just require an inciting “green light” from media to let loose a tirade of hatred and ignorance aimed at Indigenous people. It can happen at the drop of a hat, over the most insignificant of events.

The invasion of Australia started 200 years ago, but it never ended.

While holding her iPod my 10-year old daughter takes a break from her social media platform, she looks up and asks me “Dad, what did you have when you were my age”. Me: “Baby, I had a pair of shorts, a haircut and a download called mum that uploaded real quick through clenched teeth, usually saying, ‘go outside’, and if I didn’t take note she would become louder with an extra word put in.”

That slogan is decades old, and its meaning hints at white Australia's long standing reluctance to reconcile with the truth.