by Wadjularbinna
from the Melbourne Anglican

Mine is a painful story, but I'm sharing it with non-indigenous people because I want them to understand where indigenous people are coming from and how much pain they've gone through.

I don't want anyone to feel hurt or guilty, because you are not responsible for what your ancestors did. But you should understand how we are different. We all need to move on now and try to work together in making positive change in this country.

My name is Wadjularbinna, and that means child of warmth and sunshine. I was born in a tribal camp in the Gulf of Carpentaria, very close to the Northern Territory/Queensland border. I'm part white, because my mother was raped by settlers when they came to chase people off their lands.

My grandmother told us stories about how, when she was a little girl, adults were shot and the children were picked up as they fell out of the coolibah trees (where they were hiding) and bashed against rocks and trees.

The missionaries came and took children off their parents. They took away both black and part-black and put them into dormitories that were run by the mission. Our parents couldn't come to us, and we couldn't go to them.

My sister and I couldn't speak a word of English, so we had our mouths washed out with soap every day. After a while we were even scared to talk to each other because we didn't like this treatment. It was really, really bad. They sat us in the corner, and we weren't allowed to go out and play with the other kids. That was how they made us stop talking our language.

The missionaries said our parents, were heathen, and they'd be preaching the love of Jesus Christ to us. I'd go to bed at night and cry for my parents and wonder why I was taken away from them. It was terribly sad and it confused us no end.

Missionaries have treated us so badly. They've tied people to trees and flogged them, simply for trying to run away and find their parents. But I've forgiven the missionaries for what they have done, because if we don't forgive, we destroy ourselves.

I don't understand why it all happened, but because I am a Christian, I know that there was a purpose in it all. I just say to myself: I was given a second chance, and I have to go out and do what I can.

They taught us a lot of things. I'm thankful that I learned to read and write, cook, sew and do all the things that young girls like to do. But then they married me off. They chose my partner and married me off into a white family. I went from humble beginnings straight into a world of snobbery and class distinctions.

I soon found out that in white society you measure worth by position, money, ownership of land and all of this stuff. I thought, what a screwy bunch. It was a completely different world to what I came from.

I was a station manager's wife for 18 years. I did the job to the best of my ability, but had to pretend I was someone else. I couldn't behave like a black person. I was very, very unhappy.

Then the government changed the policy and made Aboriginal people citizens in their own land. We'd been here for thousands of years and suddenly somebody had given us the right to be citizens!

After that policy was changed, my parents came to the station looking for me, and I took them fishing and hunting and swimming in the front paddock with the water lilies.

I broke every rule that day. I just said: "I've been a station manager's wife for far too long. I've been living a lie, playing a game of 'let's pretend I'm white.'"

When my husband came back and saw the cattle on the fence, he galloped down to us and asked "What the ... do you think you are doing?" I said, "We're swimming for lilies" He answered, "I can see that. You look like a black gin." And I said, "I am one, have you only just noticed?"

I think they thought that by this time they'd have changed me. But, you can take the Aboriginal out of the community, but you can't take the Aboriginality out of the person.

That night I thought and thought and thought. I said to myself: "I've got to go home, I've got to get back to where I come from. These are my parents and they're not accepted here. They don't belong here, and I don't belong here."

When I told my mother that I planned to leave she was so upset. She didn't like my husband, but when you take someone for a partner in Aboriginal culture, it's for life, especially when there are children in the situation. We are taught as young black women that we have been entrusted with young lives and we create the future.

Mumma said, "Don't, don't don't do it, you'll break Aboriginal law now." I said, "Mumma, I can't help it." She said, "In our law, you stay with that man. I could hear what my mother was saying and I was torn like I was never torn before.

I decided I would go back home and leave my children. It was a very, very painful decision on account of the children. We still have problems because of that. But I went home, because I was damned if I did and I was damned if I didn't.

My mother soon forgave me, but it was very difficult for her to accept. Aboriginal laws, rules and regulations are full of discipline.

Despair

Although it's lovely to be at home, it is a very sad place. Only last night I had a phone call. A 3l-year-old man climbed up on to the water tower and jumped down, killing himself. I was very close to his mother - a lovely lady.

We have huge problems and we can't fix them. These people just cannot cope living in two worlds. They know they belong to this country, yet they can't practise their law, their culture and their religion freely.

I say to some of these people "What's the matter? Don't drink, don't lie down. We've got so much to live for. We've got a history that goes back thousands of years. Get up and start doing something; help our children, give them a future."

And this old gentleman looked up at me and said, "My girl, I'm surprised you ask me that question. You grew up here, you're born in the same situation as us. You know why we are lying down drinking." He said, "I can't cope. You might be able to cope, but I can't. Like all of us here, we can't cope. We're better off to die."

My mother was a very strong person. She taught me to be strong, to stand up and speak out - as long as I do it respectfully, I should be able to put our point across. But just before she died she just said to me, "Bubba, it's better white man comes and shoots us all. Put us out of our misery. Nothing's more humiliating than to be in your own land and have your culture, your laws, your religion taken from you. We are nothing and a nobody in this country. We are oppressed people."

I said, "Mumma, don't talk like that. We've just got to move on and keep going and while I've got breath in my body I'll try to educate white Australia." Mumma was giving up.

That's the situation. Our people just can't cope. There's a lot of people just giving up, but we mustn't allow that to happen.

Racism

People like Pauline Hanson have created a whole lot of trouble for our people. They are despairing as it is! There were very few indigenous people who got up and said anything about the situation. I've spoken to so many of them and they just looked at me and said: "What can we do? What's going on?"

A young boy in Redfern said to me, "Don't worry Aunty, we'll do something. They'll get the shock of their lives one day. We'll burn. We'll start a riot and they won't know how to stop it."

I just looked at him and said "You can't, that's not the answer to this problem." He said, "We're starting to despair. We're starting to despair."

We really had no idea how deep racism ran in this country. We thought attitudes had changed, but we've found out that nothing has changed, it's just been under the carpet.

It was good that it was brought out into the open. Now we have something we must deal with, we can discuss it with each other and try to put things straight. I hope something good comes out of this evil stuff that's been going on.

Compensation and forgiveness

I heard the other day that they weren't going to give compensation to the stolen children. Yet they are going to compensate all the people who handed in their guns. Millions of dollars of compensation is going out to them, while here are others, dispossessed in their own land and feeling worthless. I think it's discriminating against indigenous people. You can see where their priorities lie.

And another thing: they were going to give the stolen children counsellors - white counsellors. You know, the very descendants of the people who did this to us. Indigenous people are wondering: "What are they going to do? How are they going to help us? They'll probably come along and screw our thinking completely and then we'll all finish up in the madhouse." Everyone must realise that this is a very, very serious situation. I can't see that we'll ever reconcile in this country while people have that attitude.

I tell you what: if we all got back to the way we were brought up, in the traditional ways, it won't cost the tax payers, black or white (black people pay taxes too), half as much as the government has been pouring into our communities with nothing happening. We're still going backwards.

The government can't repay everything. We can't put right everything. But we can at least make some effort to right some of the wrongs. This could mean compensation for people who want compensation. But for myself, no amount of money can compensate for loss of spirituality, for spiritual connection, for losing one's own identity and one's own land. No amount of money that can put that right.

The land

This land was occupied by our people for many thousands of years. We had a way of life: customs, laws, religions. It is a system we still know and abide by as best we can, but a lot of the rules conflict with white laws and systems. It is so complex that I believe it's beyond non-indigenous people's comprehension. After 208 years they still don't know about us! I think this is partly because they don't want to know, and partly because it is very complex. If who they are in their own land, to live by their own laws, all these people who have been fiddling the funds and everything else, would be stopped quick smart.

These people need to get back to base and get back their spirituality. They need to get back to the land. They need to abide by their laws and rules, which is a very disciplined way-and a spiritual way.

When the land was taken, they didn't realise that we had a spiritual and religious connection to it. The missionaries preached from the Bible that man was made from the dust of the earth and he was going back to it. When my mother heard a missionary preaching that she said, "Bubba, that white man got our culture."

We believe that we are of the land, we've come from it and we're going to go back to it. That's our culture. The land means that much to us. Yet non-indigenous Australians see land as a commodity to be bought and sold. There's got to be education about our differences. We have to find a middle road.

Many Aboriginal people have stories to tell, but they're not the same as mine. Give us the opportunity to tell our story about our connection to land, creation, what our spirituality is, and everything else. We can share that with white Australia, and white Australia can share what it has with us. We can move together in this country and live in harmony.

Wadjularbinna is a member of the Gungalidda tribe of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This edited version of a talk she gave in Melbourne last year first appeared in On Being magazine.