Random thoughts on a gathering with aboriginal women

[sqbr]

Today I went to "Western Australia Community Gathering - How non-Aboriginal women can stand in solidarity with Aboriginal women and communities".

I might unpack it a bit later, and callistra was taking notes so probably has more detailed stuff she can say. But before I forget, here's some general impressions.

The overall ideas I took from it was even more cynicism towards international "human rights" etc groups like Amnesty International, and not thinking of aboriginal australians and Torres Strait islanders(*) as victims who need to be saved. Its funny, I remember years ago finding out about the English in the 19th century hand wringing about the "Irish problem", as if the irish were just this pathetic group of lazy drunks in need of aid rather than determined and capable but stymied by a clearly unjust and continuing pattern of conquest and injustice, with the english as kind hearted benefactors rather than genocidal oppressors, and thinking "You idiots! Just stop actively oppressing them and give them self determination!". Yet it wasn't until today that it really occurred to me to think the same way about the "aboriginal problem". Also while I have for a while been in favour in theory of aboriginal australians etc having the space to do things their own way rather than us only being willing to "help" them if they're willing to become just like us, until today I hadn't really encountered any examples of self confident, successful aboriginal australians and Torres Strait islanders living (as much as they can) "their way" in our society, and articulating what "their way" is. (More in tune with the land, connected to family, less materialistic are the things I picked up, but I'm pretty sure it's more complex than that)

(*)From what I can tell they don't like being referred to as "indigenous" since it's an external term coined by the government. As seaya (an american! How embarrassing!) reminded me, "aborigine" is still bad, and that's not the term they used.

It was also interesting to note how similar the language and ideas were to the ones I've seen in online (american dominated) race discussions, ie "people of colour" "white privilige" etc. There was also some mention of disability and GLBT issues and their intersection with gender and race (including from a disabled woman) but I'm not sure enough was said to make much difference since I'm pretty sure we were all the sort to be in favour of that sort of inclusivity in principle.

I find myself feeling like I really should know more about aboriginal history, and the Noongar people in particular. Hmm.


So, I really wasn't sure what to expect from the information I'd been given.

I walked into the town hall and it looked like a quiz night: LOTS of big round tables, a podium, and a powerpoint presentation (images of NAIDOC week, I think) on the stage. A whole lotta women (over 200!), mostly but not all white.

I ended up sitting with maharetr, and then later also callistra (who runs femmeconne), plus a woman from the Women's electoral council, a woman who teaches/taught (I'm not sure if she still does) aboriginal bridging courses, and a woman who helps run R♀AR. So I felt a bit outclassed and random, but everyone was very nice so it was ok :) (Aslo, I suppose I should make explicit, all white)

I was a bit worried it was going to be a bunch of white women controlling everything, but afaict it wasn't, even for things like announcing morning tea or calling for quiet.

This is the second time I've seen a "Welcome to Country", and they really do give a good context and beginning for these sorts of discussions. Several aboriginal women then talked about why they were there, their experiences, and their opinions on what can be done.

This quite possibly isn't coming from a very good place, but I found the aboriginal women often had the same pragmatic wry implacable-strength-despite-adversity vibe I remember from the women I knew growing up in a working class area.

A new zealander (plausibly Māori but I don't want to make assumptions) woman (Tracy Pollett) talked about how angry she is about the crazy treatment she gets here for looking aboriginal (to white people), and learning not to spend too long "loitering" anywhere if she didn't want to dragged out of her car by police.

There was a nice performance by the Madjitil Moorna choir.

A number of white women spoke about their experiences confronting their own predjudice, and how much racism there is even in feminist and human rights organisations. It turns out the event was organised by WomenSpeak after they had a very difficult process of dealing with their endemically white perspective (which is a big deal given how much control they have over government policy wrt women)

There was a pretty good spread of food for a free event, including tasty stew and bread rolls. Mmm. Also I got to look after callistra's youngest for quite a while, which was great. I got him to stop crying a couple of times, and then go to sleep, yay me! I love babies :)

We then had to talk in our groups about questions like "What are the essential qualities for someone to work with aboriginal women" and " What are you personally doing to work with aboriginal women".

For this latter one the aboriginal women in the audience (who had largely been sitting in groups with their friends) were prompted to move around the other groups, and the teacher grabbed one for us. This was all a bit weird, I think everyone but her felt very awkward about forcing this woman to be our "token aboriginal woman", especially since she was obviously a bit self conscious and shy. Still, she was a nice woman and we did have an interesting conversation about the issues her family has had both with not being paid for their work (I was disturbingly old before I discovered that aboriginal workers were legally barred from being paid with money up until so recently), and then having issues with loans from ATSIC.

Then some of the white women from Madjitil Moorna ran a sing song, and then did a "healing ritual" for the aboriginal women (and also some white women when there turned out to be extra chairs) where we hummed with our eyes closed. This was both kind of cool and kind of...wierd.

Then one of the aboriginal organisers (Dot Henry, I think) got us to hold hands and pass a squeezing of hands as fast as we could around the circle, which was just cool. We got it down to 23 seconds :)

And then I went home, happy.

Comments

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I think I remember fire_fly saying that the term people like is Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Like that the term "aborigines" is still not liked. But what do I know! I'm not from there!

This sounds like an...interesting event.

Be sure to share widely your news that people are using the same terminology as in the states ;).

[alias_sqbr]

*headesk*

You're absolutely right, it went from "aborigine" when I was a kid to "Aboriginal australian/Torres strait islander" to "indigenous australian", I wrote the post pretty quickly and was jumping back too many steps. How sad that I needed an american to remind me, especially since I was there and heard what they said! *edits post*

Yeah, I'm glad I went and it was overall good but also...interesting. Illustrative of the problems it was addressing.

Be sure to share widely your news that people are using the same terminology as in the states ;)

Yeah, it does somewhat undercut all those online discussions where aussies/brits etc are all "Stop using your american terminology! It makes no sense in our context!". Of course, they could just see it as proof of american cultural imperialism :)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Well, Americans may have originated some of it, but we didn't originate all of it. It's kind of a global thing.

The particular local dynamics vary, natch, but the terminology, not so much.

I mean heck, Asian Dub Foundation sings about it even!

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Yes... I think the argument (not here, branching out now) that "We shouldn't say 'people of colour', we don't need that term, they're Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people" overlooks a huge spectrum of Australian race differences and issues. Asian immigrants/descendants of, refugees, people with Middle Eastern or African heritage or origin, we have very large populations here of not-white people who aren't Indigenous/ATSI (I've seen both terms used by the people concerned, I don't think there's a 'consensus' as such?)

So if we do need a term to talk about race in general, and in particular the different between being white and not being white in Australia, it's not surprising we use an American borrowing to fill the gap.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not aware of their being a concensus either.

AA & TSI is the government term but met several people with mixed heritages -including various Aboriginal ones -who won't use it because they're tired of whites wanting to neatly identify people as white OR POC migrants OR Aboriginal.

Not that they object to plain Aboriginal, mixed heritage etc., more that they reject expectations that we'll all take speaker roles in anti-racist debate where they're expected to do the the colonialism & racism part, POC migrants to do the post-colonialism anti-racism part, and I get ... well ally work, not having to think about my heritage and maybe a cookie for not being Klan.

Or just they aren't really into activism, and are tired of Australians who are and are doing our de-colonialisation 101 expecting them to share our interest by default of having any connection to Aboriginal heritage.

[alias_sqbr]

I got the feeling this was a consensus decision by a group of aboriginal delegates at some conference (I was distracted by the baby at this point, but I think it was the 2020 summit)

But of course they can't speak for everyone, self identity is a complex thing and very much an issue of individual choice.

Something I have trouble with is finding the right term for a group of people with conflicting opinions on what the right term is, and, often, differing opinions on where the boundaries lie as well. (And this is true of pretty much every large group of people)

[alias_sqbr]

So if we do need a term to talk about race in general, and in particular the different between being white and not being white in Australia, it's not surprising we use an American borrowing to fill the gap.

Oh, absolutely. There are common experiences of racism had by all non-white people in this country, and we need terminology and ideas to deal with that.

I was discussing it with nico_wolfwood (who moved here for a while from Singapore, so has a different perspective on this to me), her theory is that the sheer insane terribleness of how bad "the aboriginal problem" is overshadows other, possibly more subtle issues of race in this country. I don't know.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying they'd be right. It might have been better to have said "they would probably dismiss it as proof of american cultural imperialism".

I mean I think there are times when discussions about racism get dominated by american perspectives, but in my experience it's usually just minor communication problems and assumptions i.e. sometimes it just doesn't occur to people that there might be non-americans in the conversation but they'll happily amend their argument when you point it out.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

Agreed that the online usa/uk lingo face offs do seem to be about the cultural imperialism. What valid reason could Anglo English speakers have for wanting to play at being the subaltern over online semantics?

I am wary of AU liberals who uncritically assume that USA theory and lingo are best though - but not for those reasons!

More because I think there can be intra-Australian stances about colonialism being made in a strong preference for either, if it overshadows attention given to regional post-colonial and Aboriginal generated theory. That's the funny thing about being a rich but cultural cringe nation - it's easy to draw on other nations work [yay!] sometimes so easy that people don't foster contextual local work [woe!].

I wonder whether the reason so many Australians will declare that "we're less racist than the USA!', despite that being really untrue and a senseless benchmark; is because they're getting information from images from USA media taken out of context - rather than looking at POC anti-racist opinion about how this plays out here.


OT / I just read Angela Carters The Magic Toyshop, which really utilizes those old English vs. Irish attitudes. It was unsettling to read for the "this is still how Aboriginal people are spoken of here!" element to.

[alias_sqbr]

What valid reason could Anglo English speakers have for wanting to play at being the subaltern over online semantics?

*stares at this sentence for a while*
*reads "subaltern" page on wikipedia*
*comprehension dawns. Kinda*

I agree (I think :)): I think there are issues with the america=default attitude that predominates online (although I don't think it affects us as much as it does, say, people from non english speaking backgrounds) but there's nothing to be gained by martyred, petty complaints about terminology.

I'm not very connected to wider australian dialogues about race so I don't feel qualified to comment on their dynamics. What you're saying sounds like what I'd expect, though.

I wonder whether the reason so many Australians will declare that "we're less racist than the USA!', despite that being really untrue and a senseless benchmark; is because they're getting information from images from USA media taken out of context - rather than looking at POC anti-racist opinion about how this plays out here.

Yes, I think saying "Clearly we have less racism because our POC never complain about it" misses the possibility that (a) Maybe they do and we ignore it and (b) Letting POC have a (sometimes critical) voice is a good thing, and the fact we don't have it so much is a bug not a feature.

And of course, it doesn't really matter how we "compare" anyway (if such a comparison even makes sense), any more than going "We're less sexist than Saudi Arabia!" removes the need for feminism.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

That was so interesting - thank you for posting.

I like Indigenous because it's faster than ATSI and more accurate than POC.

[alias_sqbr]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was really curious to know what such a workshop would entail myself, and I assumed some of the rest of you would feel the same way.

[ardhra]

Incoming from debunkingwhite.

The use of "Aboriginal" rather than "Indigenous" is because of meaning. Aboriginal means "inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists", while Indigenous means "originating or occurring naturally in a particular place" (according to the OED), which suggests that anyone born in a place is Indigenous to it. Aboriginal connotates the social and historical connection that Aboriginal people have, through community and cultural ties, to the land. Hence, a preference for the latter, because it's actually more accurate for what we're talking about.

[alias_sqbr]

That makes perfect sense, and I'm sorry if I came across as thinking the choice of terminology was arbitrary. Thinking back, I think they said something along those lines but I didn't quite grok it at the time.

Although, I mean, I don't think me grokking it is necessary anyway, they should be able to call themselves whatever they like even if another name "makes more sense" to other people. (I've seen lots of people rail against various ethnic (also gender, sexuality, etc) groups for "illogical" name changes, as if those outside the group were better qualified to decide what they should be called)

Also from debunkingwhite

[mal3ficent.livejournal.com]

Kia ora. I read your links from the dw community with interest. I live in New Zealand, am a Māori woman and used to participate on the Fight Dem Back! forum.

I thought I would answer your spelling question - Maori is spelt M-a-o-r-i.
The a usually has a little macron (potae or hat as we call it) like this ā.
So Māori is the correct spelling if you can do macrons on your keyboard (I just figured out how so I'm sharing).

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Mel

Re: Also from debunkingwhite

[alias_sqbr]

*cough*

Actually, I put it in brackets with a question mark because she didn't state her ethnicity and I didn't want to make assumptions, I didn't realise I'd misspelled it (I am a terrible speller). So, thanks :)
*edits post, cutting and pasting in the correctly spelled and potae-ed "Māori" you conveniently provided*

Re: Also from debunkingwhite

[mal3ficent.livejournal.com]

haha! i love the avatar, i rofl'd over that.
It's also funny I mistook your questioning for spelling... but then I didn't want to come off as a spelling know it all.
Thank you for correcting it.

Cheers

Mel

Re: Also from debunkingwhite

[alias_sqbr]

It's hard not to look like a spelling know-it-all next to me! I try to make up for my many errors by taking other people's advice, in the long run it makes me look smarter :D