I was advised that the theme for the upcoming edition of Insights Magazine is on the lines of “quiet heros”. I thought long and hard about the theme. Should I write about the Aboriginal community workers who turn up day in, day out, to try to make a positive difference in their communities? Or perhaps about the Aboriginal social workers who similarly turn up every day, working with people to try to and assist them to address issues impacting their lives? Or maybe about the Aboriginal health workers, or Aboriginal nurses, or Aboriginal doctors, or Aboriginal lawyers, who work with and for their communities every day? Such quiet heroes exist, but are usually unseen by wider Australian society.
When talking about “closing the Gap”, for example, what often irritates me are the non-Aboriginal people, who don’t even know an Aboriginal person, who say “Well why don’t they do something about their own problems!”.
For roughly the first 150 years of colonisation (probably longer), Aboriginal peoples and communities were subjected to racism, discrimination, dispossession, child removals, slavery, and prohibited from gaining employment and education. Racism and discrimination, sadly, remain evident today. (I’m not blaming anyone, just stating facts.)
The legacies of colonisation and the related treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are what we see in the socio-economic inequity that is acknowledged when we speak of the need to “close the gap”. The “gap” in socio-economic statistics did not arise because Aboriginal people are lazy, or unintelligent, or because we don’t care about the wellbeing of our families and communities. It exists because of the harm caused by systemic, institutionalised, and entrenched racism and discrimination over at least 150 years – impacting at least 6 generations of Aboriginal people and families.
Since colonisation began, thousands of Aboriginal people have spent their lives working quietly to try to make a difference, to try to help their communities overcome the impacts of colonial oppression. People who have come from nothing, and who have had to overcome many challenges and barriers to obtain an education. People who were told at school they would never amount to anything. People who, like my father, were told by their school principle: “You’ll never amount to anything and will spend your life in the gutter.” People who have overcome significant adversity, not only to achieve tertiary qualifications, but to then focus their knowledge and skills on working with communities to try to lift our people up. To try to break the cycles of poverty, trauma, grief, and chronic health issues that impact our communities. To “do something”.
I know hundreds of “quiet heros”. And there are thousands more. Aboriginal people who devote every day, every week, every year of their lives to trying to make a positive difference for their families and communities. People who have been told they will never amount to anything. People who have overcome significant odds, accumulated HECS debts, faced racism throughout their educational journey, and yet still graduated.
Most non-Aboriginal people see university qualifications as a pathway to earn more money in various professions. Most Aboriginal people I’ve met who are studying or who have completed their studies, see obtaining university qualifications as a means of being able to help make a difference for their families and communities. They work hard, overcome adversity, overcome the barrier of low expectation, overcome the financial challenges, overcome the racism they experience in their everyday lives, to be able to help make a positive difference.
Sadly, some people disparagingly refer to Aboriginal people with tertiary qualifications as the “Elites from the cities” and similar, and claim these Aboriginal people don’t understand issues of “real Aboriginal communities” etc. However we must understand that up until recently, it was not possible to get a University qualification online, so Aboriginal people had no choice but to move to cities to gain a university qualification. Our Elders and ancestors fought for the right of Aboriginal people to attend educational institutions… and now that we are finally seeing hundreds of Aboriginal graduates each year, the racists (and politicians with ulterior motives) want non-Aboriginal people to believe that those graduates are somehow not really Aboriginal people anymore. They apparently prefer Australians to see Aboriginal people as uneducated, disadvantaged, hopeless, and in need of paternalism. Smart, educated Aboriginal people don’t fit into their racist narratives, and confront the ideologies of white supremacy that underpin their bigotry. Let me be clear, every Aboriginal person that graduates is from an Aboriginal community, and they remain part of their families and communities. You do not somehow lose your heritage, culture, family and community ties by getting a tertiary qualification.
So when non-Aboriginal people, who do not properly understand Australia’s colonial history, who don’t actually know any Aboriginal people, who want to pretend Australia was peacefully “settled” and that Aboriginal people should just be “grateful” we weren’t colonised by the Dutch or the Japanese, say “Why don’t you just stop asking for handouts and help yourselves”, I get a bit annoyed. We ARE helping ourselves. We have thousands of “quiet heros” doing the hard slog every day. We have Elders and community leaders working 24/7 -dealing with crisis, trauma, critical incidents, domestic violence, suicide, and mental health related incidents. We have professionals working alongside Elders and community leaders as social workers, community development workers, teachers, health workers, nurses, doctors, police, lawyers, and so on – all dedicated to working to improve outcomes for Aboriginal families and communities. We have young people working hard to get a good education so they can help their communities. Thousands of quiet heros. For the most part, unseen and unacknowledged heroes.
You know who aren’t helping? The racists, the bigots, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, the groups promoting hate, the wilfully ignorant, and those who try to deny Australia’s colonial history. The politicians who promote division in the community by stoking racism and bigotry are also not helping – in my opinion some politicians (and others) are intentionally making things worse. For example, those who say Aboriginal people just want to make non-Aboriginal people feel guilty, and that non-Aboriginal people shouldn’t feel guilty about things that happened hundreds of years ago.
In my experience, having spoken with hundreds of Aboriginal people about justice issues over the decades, nobody wants non-Aboriginal people to feel “guilty”. What we seek is for non-Aboriginal people to be honest about Australia’s colonial history, to be honest about the significant negative impact that this history has had on the lives of Aboriginal peoples, families and communities, and to be decent human beings who will help to remedy the injustices of the past and support genuine reconciliation, so that we can heal and move forward as a nation.
The quiet heroes who work with and support our communities know that their focus has nothing to do with making anyone feel guilty, and that the issues they deal with are real and current, not relegated to some point in history. Our quiet heroes want to address the disadvantage, discrimination and injustice that continues to impact Aboriginal people, families and communities. They want better education, employment and health outcomes. They want safer, happier families. The want well-resourced communities focused on culture, employment, education and economic development. They simply want for our people, what most Australians take for granted.
Our quiet heroes do not want their families and communities living in chronic disadvantage. They do not want our children committing suicide because they can’t see a future for themselves in this country. They do not want our families and communities impacted by the scourge of substance abuse and domestic violence. They do not want their loved ones dying in custody from preventable causes.
So the next time somebody you know says “Aboriginal people should stop whinging and just help themselves”, or similar, please know that that person does not understand what they are talking about. Know that the person is, perhaps inadvertently, contributing to the whitewashing of colonial history and denying the reality of Aboriginal experience. Know that that person is actually making it harder for positive change to occur, not helping.
Only when this country stands behind our quiet heroes, our Aboriginal Elders, Community leaders, and others working on the front-line in various capacities, and listens to them, resources them, and supports them, will we see “the Gap” closed.
As long as our politicians see Aboriginal peoples and communities as opportunities for political point scoring, rather than as human beings in need of care and support, our quiet heros are left to struggle against a nation that has yet to effectively overcome its colonial legacies of Eurocentrism and ideologies of white supremacy.
In closing, I recognise the difficult, exhausting, and ongoing work of our “quiet heroes” – those wonderful people who are often unseen and rarely acknowledged. I thank them for all they have done, and all they will do. I hope wider Australia will at some point stop trying to pretend the brutal colonisation of this country didn’t happen, stop trying to sweep colonisation under the carpet as “something that happened 200 years ago”, and work constructively with our quiet heroes to help those who are already dedicated to making a positive difference for our people, families and communities.
Nathan Tyson is the Head of First Peoples Strategy and Engagement for the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT
