When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are denying that I am Aboriginal. To deny that I am Aboriginal is to deny that my grandmother was taken by welfare because she was Aboriginal, by the dictates of past government policies. To deny that she was taken because she was Aboriginal is to deny that past policies attempted genocide of Aboriginal people. To deny that the government’s objective was genocide is to deny that the government is responsible for the widespread decimation of Aboriginal language, traditions, land rights and intact family trees today. To deny that there is no widespread crises of identity within Aboriginal individuals, families, communities – and indeed our entire country – is to deny our lived reality. And when you deny our reality, you deny us our humanity. And so when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, it goes much further than just skin-deep.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, it says much to me about your level of misunderstanding and your adherence to the tenets of the obsolete pseudo-science that is biological race theory. Your individual ignorance is however, symptomatic of a widespread pandemic, where these beliefs are not systematically dismantled in the education system from a young age, thereby perpetuating the dominant white-male-heterosexual-Christian-dual binary values that are normalised and exude from the hidden curriculum. And so when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you’re not entirely to blame; the weight of such culpability is much too much for an individual to bear.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are nevertheless still guilty of perpetuating violence control through your embodiment of racist values. You are acting as a vehicle for oppression, an agent of history and part of the framework that continues the legacies of past assimilation policies. Does this come as a shock to you? Are you in denial? This is where the recognition of your privilege must come into play on your part. You must locate your beliefs in the historical and spacial continuum of oppression, and only then will you realise how you are an agent, acting out this culture. Conversely, you will then be responsible to be an agent of change. With knowledge comes responsibility, because education without action does nothing. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you’re not getting off that easily with a seemingly innocuous comment; ignorance does not equal innocence, and I’m going to take this as an opportunity to do my responsibility.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are implicitly perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Prevalent misperceptions and misconceptions of Aboriginal people include that we are lazy, drunk, dole-bludging, violent, sneaky and uneducated [sorry, I couldn’t think of any good ones that I’ve encountered in my whole life; not my fault]. When you compliment me for not embodying any of these negative stereotypes, and upholding me as the paragon of black virtues because of my perceived whiteness, you are reinforcing these stereotypes of what all “real”, “authentic” Aboriginal people are like. By telling me I’m the exception to the rule you are reinforcing the rules. You are promulgating a colonial hangover of media-created deficiencies. You are telling me that I’m inauthentic and you are telling yourself everything that centuries of racist politicians, scientists, missionaries and journalists have told you is the truth. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are deluding yourself with the very tools they created to oppress us.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, and you grill me about the whyfores and how-sos I have the gall to identify as such, you are being invasive and rude. By believing you are entitled to know the minutiae of my family tree, you are presuming that your sense of entitlement takes precedence over my personal boundaries. But not so. When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, and you drill me with your intrusive eyes and prod me with your blunt questions, you are telling me that you do not respect me.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, and add that I ‘mustn’t have much’ in me, or enquiring after my caste and blood percentage, you are attempting to reduce over 40 000 years of deep and vibrant culture to a quantifiable measure; over two hundred years of survival and resilience against colonialism, attempted genocide and ongoing assimilation to a drop of blood; my own nearly thirty years of lived culture in family and community to a miniscule section of mammoth lengths of DNA. You are reducing who I am in flux and flow to an immutable, graspable number for ease of understanding, to further reduce and divide the entirety of me and mine. By continuing to ask how much I have in me, after not getting the hint to drop this line of eugenic economic interrogation, ‘what part?’, ‘what caste?’, you continue to ignore the fact that it just doesn’t work that way. That despite centuries of imposed definitions that sought to variously segregate and assimilate us, to provide a solution as though we were a problem to be solved, that tried to cut us down enough so that we would fit into their constricting frameworks, you do not hear the truth that I just am. Not half of me, nor a quarter, or one seventy-eighth; not my head or my heart or my left arm or right pinkie toe; not my eyes or hair, not tooth or nail. I just am. All of me, all the time. Always was and always will be. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’ you are attempting to reduce the entirety of my identity and relationships and activism to one single moment, now, where you want the answer that I will never give you the satisfaction of giving you. You will never cut me down to size.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, and add that I am too pretty, my features too fine, my height too wonderful, my feminised body too elegant, you are telling me that you believe all other Aboriginal women to be ugly. You are saying that my Mum and my grandmother, my Aunties, my cousins, friends, nieces and my unborn daughter are all ugly. Not just different by the narrow standards of the male gaze of the white beauty industry, but actually unattractive, fullstop, done. How then could you explain all of our non-Indigenous fathers? Lovers? One-night stands? Here I will acknowledge the fact that rape has been a reality for us the last couple of centuries. However, this does not explain the many healthy mixed race relationships, or even the unhealthy fetishisation of black women. You are ignoring the reality that black women have always been desirable to non-Indigenous men and women. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are not only saying that desirable black women are not authentic black women, you are also saying that only non-Indigenous women are allowed to be beautiful.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, that I look more Lebanese, or Italian, or Spanish, or Croatian, or whatever, you are reducing what it means to be Aboriginal in all its gorgeous complexity to an essential list of clinical physical features, to a cold and simple checklist for cookie-cutter authenticity. Not only is this sheerly stupid because of the evidence that Aboriginal people today come in all shapes and sizes, with an astonishing diversity of facial features and skin colours; to discount certain items off the checklist in favour of other items is to racialise our bodies, to racialise our very beings. By subscribing to the Dulux colour-card myth of Aboriginality, you are continuing the work of past welfare and government institutions who held colour swatches up to the skin of black babies before they ripped them from their mothers’ arms. They grouped these babies according to tone, often separating siblings by this completely arbitrary division that could change seasonally with the strength of the sun. Further to this unpredictability, it was an actual division in many cases where sister and brother were physically separated not only from their mother, but also from each other. This was the case with my grandmother, who was taken from her Aboriginal mother at the age of four, along with her seven-month-old brother, never for any of them to see each other ever again. Yes, they took their heartbreak to their graves. So for me and mine, colour is not just an objective judgement of a visual hue, it has a crushing historical weight that has crippled all of my family members, each in their own way. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, this shameful historical legacy reaches to me from the past to haunt me to this very day.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, my deep-running empathy and over-active imagination come into play. I imagine and feel what this would have meant to me if I had been born one hundred, eighty, sixty, or even forty years ago. And I consider myself lucky that I was born in the year of Orwell’s hell, although my Mum still did instil in us her very deep fear of the welfare, so that we knew how to perform for society and never draw attention to ourselves. Because growing up as we did, with a single Aboriginal mother, if we had not performed well and hidden ourselves, if we had been born ten years earlier, there is a statistical probability that we would have been taken too. Do not misunderstand me; we were very much loved and always supported. We weren’t abused and we were never in danger, however we never had any money and poverty is criminal in the eyes of the welfare. Furthermore, traumatic events necessitated that we move far away from our extended family – my Mum’s only support network – and begin to integrate into a completely disconnected community who thankfully very soon took us in. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’ you are telling me how lucky I am to have been born when I was.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, I imagine that you are the welfare with the authority of government policies behind your words, and that you have the power to take me from my mother and my brothers. And in a way, you have, because I step back in time to the known story of my grandmother’s life. My grandmother, who never knew me, walks beside me every day in the only form I’ve ever known her. I look very much like her, and it’s not just her beautiful features that have left their mark on me. Her entire life-story haunts mine, and I continue to try to make sense of myself in the context of her struggles. She walks inside me every day and I have an ongoing relationship with her. I have an obligation to ensure that what she suffered through is known, and also that it stops. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you have taken me away from my family and into her life.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, I feel, viscerally, my grandmother’s pain; I panic in the knowledge that I will never see my mother again, that every letter I write to her will not receive an answer. That instead of the girl’s home guardians telling me the truth that they are not passing her replies on to me, they instead tell me that she has forgotten about me and that she doesn’t love me. I am paralysed by the knowledge that my mother will not be there when I am sick, when I need her to love me. I will never hear her voice again, nor smell her skin, or have her kiss me goodnight. Ever, ever again, forever, never. Never. She will never pass on parenting practises to me, and the adults I have as parent figures are inturn abusive, cold and transient; all unloving. These early role models imprint on me and my first escape from them is straight into the arms and wedlock of a man with an uncanny resemblance to my early caregivers. My mother will not be there when I get married, when I am in labour, when I am sick, and when I die too young. She will not be there for my children, when I need her to love them. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you have taken my mother from me. You have taken my world from me.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, my breath catches, knowing that if not for the grace of my being born when I was, that I would never see my brothers again. As we five, joined to each other through our Mum, and glued to each other through our close upbringing, some of us have different Dads, creating a beautiful diversity within our obvious similarities. But that because we have different skin colours, body types, nose shapes and eye colours, we would not be deemed similar enough in the eyes of the law to remain together as would support our basic human dignity. That some of us would grow up in cold hard institutions, trained for domestic or menial labour according to gender, yet regardless of gender as befits our darker skin. That the others would be adopted into a white family to become their chattel, neglecting to nourish our connection to our true culture; denying us our rightful inheritance, severing who we are from who they want us to be, and therefore butchering our very being. Placed far apart, names changed and changed and changed again, we would never even know where to start looking for each other, and so we would all live out the rest of our lives as only, lonely children. So when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are tearing me from my big and little, but all strong brothers. You are dictating that we have different worth and different levels of usefulness according to your cold and convenient colour-coordinated doctrine.
When you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’, you are alerting me to the fact that if left unchecked and uncorrected, you will repeat this comment to others, maybe others who are less resilient or strong in their identity than I am. Perhaps young children, maybe of my blood or maybe not. Perhaps one day my own daughter. Probably, you will impress upon your own children that this comment is okay, mayhaps they will continue this legacy. I do hope you might leave that in the past where it belongs. I also hope you might get with the times. When you comment, I wonder who you are and what power you wield in the world, and what influence you have on Aboriginal people. Are you a social worker, a teacher, a doctor, a cop? A football coach, a journalist? A shop assistant, an employer? A real estate agent, a model scout? An anthropologist, an art dealer, a miner, a farmer? A magistrate, a screw? Or are you just the average busybody, keeping the hard-to-kill-but-not-yet-obsolete White Australia policy alive and well? Whoever you are, do you have the power to invoke feelings of shyness, shame and inadequacy in our young black kids? Or even our Elders? So, when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’ you make me wonder whether you can change your position, change your course, catalyse reconciliation and continue on as an embodiment of alliance, acceptance, validation, respect and healing that our cultures have so sorely missed from you.
– Defender Of The Faith, 24th March, 2014
I highlight this because I’ve heard it said that recognition and identity is only a “small issue” compared with the health, housing, education, employment, and criminal justice statistics that describe our situation today. I first point this out to demonstrate how imposed definitions blatantly attempted our genocide in the past, and I further point this out because this attempted genocide is absolutely, unequivocally responsible for our fourth-world socio-economic status that we live through today. Finally, I point this out because our current low life expectancy, high infant mortality rate, incarceration and deaths in custody ratio, and child removal rates – that far surpass Stolen Generations rates – tell the tale. These facts and figures speak to a government who still do not care. Although they have changed the terminology and phrasing of their policies, the effects of their actions and interference is ongoing, yet with even worse outcomes than at the times the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths and Custody, and the Bringing Them Home report, were published.
I wrote this for the people who still come up against this, in the hopes that they can more deeply understand why it’s not appropriate, and maybe get some new angles on their reactions. I especially wrote this for the parents of black kids: the Indigenous parents who may also know what it’s like, and the non-Indigenous parents who might not know on a personal level. I wrote it for all the parents who want to defend our black babies, so that they know what to say, but more importantly, so that they can instil the pride in their kids that my Mum instilled in me – pride so that they can be resilient and not buy into out-dated myths.
However, I addressed this to non-Indigenous people who do this, who might be setting a bad example for their own kids to follow in their footsteps. I addressed this to those people who might be making our kids feel angry and hurt and defensive, for all those who have made me and mine feel this way, and for those who still attempt to. So whether you intend to belittle us or not, you can recognise where you are located in the continuum of oppression, and hopefully make the decision that racism stops with you, to become our allies instead of remaining as obstacles in allowing our babies, and even ourselves, to feel as valued and strong as we should. As we must.
Wildflower you are aboriginal!
I am speechless… how did you articulate and explain the heart and feelings of so many levels of aboriginal people? you are a major voice.
Who are you?
Fire and brimstone justifying so, your anonymity respected, you are the quintessence of the first nation people.
Thank you! I’ve been told that I’m not Maori (Indigenous people of New Zealand). I’ve been asked how much Maori blood I have. I described my family tree to my best friends and got scoffed at for believing I’m Maori. I’ve been told that “there’s no full-blooded Maori people left”. Even though situations for first nations people are different in Aus and NZ this article justifies my feelings! And next time someone tells me “you don’t look Maori” I’ve got about a thousand words to say to them!
Beautiful and enlightening I am only just starting to have some inkling of the horrors colonialism has inflicted. Your words are insightful proud respectful – thank you, it’s like rain on parched earth.
I come from the european diaspora- albanian, italian, born here, always always loathed ‘white australia’ policy from the bottom of my heart: but even so, its only after seeing ‘Utopia’ and then reading this that I have any idea of just how terrible- but the graciousness of your ending, leaves me open-mouthed: so good, I quote it again:
“when you tell me ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’ you make me wonder whether you can change your position, change your course, catalyse reconciliation and continue on as an embodiment of alliance, acceptance, validation, respect and healing that our cultures have so sorely missed from you” … Well , I hope they can.
Again, you leave me gobsmacked in your devotion to our First Peoples and your litany through words. Thank you. I have found out that two of my Grandchildren now carry the bloodlines of the Noongar Nation and I am overwhelmed with happiness and pride. My genetics are Polish Gypsy and thus they now have a Land to call Home. I just hope that their bloodline carry no deep dark sorrow, whatever their Story, I will endeavour to make their ancestral beings smile with happiness.
SHIELDS STRONG, NULLA NULLAS ALIVE!!
My husband was often told by Greeks that he was Greek and by Italians that he was Italian. He was mistaken for being Spanish, French and Middle Eastern. He never knew himself as he was adopted as a baby and had no idea of his aboriginal heritage. It wasn’t until as a man in his forties he learned of this. Strangely, he had always had an affinity with indigenous culture. He used to read stories of the dreamtime to our girls when they were very young and in his youth had spent time in the NT and on Thursday Island. He was ecstatic to learn of his aboriginality. It answered a lot of unresolved questions for him. We, his proud family, are very happy that he was able to learn this of himself before he died. Thankyou for that true and stunningly beautiful piece of writing.
Thank you for writing such a beautiful piece….if only I could recite this word for word when it happens each time!
Ah! I feel really close to you! I’m from Middle East though. I always get told that I don’t look like middle easterners. Then when I tell them I indeed am a Middle Eastern, I get asked if I follow the sharia law. I get asked about my husband and if he treats me well, or if he has another wife, or he bought me from my father, if my country wants to make nuclear bomb, if I had to wear hijab back in my country, and why I don’t wear hijab in Australia, that how terrible is that I had to have hijab back in my country.
After responding to all these questions I get told: “Oh, you are really lucky that you are not in your country”
The rest of dialog goes like this:
Me- “I would have loved to be in my own country, but I couldn’t. I still can’t. I left my elderly parents there. I left all my friends and relatives there. I was somebody there. I sold my home to come here, because I had to. But after all, yes, I am happy to be here.”
Them-“Did you come here by boat?”
I respond: “No.”
Them-“How did you get out of your country? Did you come by family reunion or family sponsor visa?”
Me-“No, I came as a skilled migrant.”
And they look at me like they say: “I don’t believe you!”
These dialogues bring back all the pain I have gone through and actually left my country because of them.
They never ask about the interference of the “outsiders” in my country, the war, the coup, the taken oil and minerals, or sanctions.
However, learning about Aboriginal people, I feel guilty for not asking your permission when entering your beautiful land!
That was breathtaking, my skin colour is white and I have bright red hair, but my grandmother was a beautiful aboriginal woman, who was proud to be so my genetic DNA gave me this complexion and I’ve never felt comfortable calling myself aboriginal to anyone if I ever mention my grandmothers heritage people wouldn’t believe me so I stopped telling people I feel ashamed after reading that I’m proud of my heritage I should show it more after all my awesome heritage gave me a complexion unlike most redheads I have an amazing bronze pigmentation and I rock that shit! What an amazing woman you are. Thank you!
[Sentence deleted by Editors] Historicaly inacurate, Passive agressive, self indulgent, [comment deleted]. If you don’t look aboriginal, it’s probably because your not, or you have a very small amount in your genetic profile. Why deny who you really are?
Aboriginality is more than a mere genetic code; it is more complex than that. Aboriginality is more to do with a spiritual connection with country, cultural traditions that is passed down generation-to-generation, it is the Dreaming and all it represents.
As far as you comment about historically inaccurate, what history books have you been reading? Past government assimilation policies attempted to strip us of our identity, traditions, languages, culture and our countries of which included policies of removal, segregation, oppression which is tantamount to genocide. What rock have you been living under Jack that you must not have access to books, television or media that you do not know that ‘White Australia has a BLACK History’?
Brilliant
You should whole heartedly question someone, if they DO NOT look Aboriginal. Aboriginal people having been marrying non-Aboriginal people for the past 50 years; why? Because they’ve fallen in love with one another. It’s the 21st Century for goodness sake. When are couple; both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal have children, the children are part of one parent and half of the other. The child will become half-Aboriginal and half non-Aboriginal. FACT. As an Aboriginal person, I totally understand the past atrocities and the associations of the terms such as “half-caste”, but this is the 21st Century and those terms have been done away with for yonks. How have we become a society where people are so fake that the truth actually bothers them?
Well said and there is so many of us questioned when we say we’re Aboriginal. I have some many ties had times had my say when people I know and people think I know when they start their little rant. I let them go I don’t say a word and when their finished, I look straight at them and just say quietly. I’m Aboriginal and Proud so you never know who your speaking with. We’re of all different shades yet we are one.
Then I hear this you don’t look Aboriginal and I didn’t mean you.. I look at them and say to late then I turn and walk away.
“Yep got told again by a sheila on the train back on Thursday ‘but you don’t look Aboriginal’,sick of using the cup of tea Analogy!”
In hiphopnotic prose you express my angst. Tell my story. My life. My pride. All power and love to you my unknown sister.
thankyou, so eloquently put… Now you will be told you don’t sound like an Aboriginal.. ” oh but you speak so well ” … Hahaha thankyou though, I was lucky that my mother taught me to be proud and stand tall… And I had plenty of Aunties telling me you not half this or quarter that you either are or your not….
Thankyou for reminding me of that picture I have seen before. All I can say is this view is sad, sadder than sad. Sad because the hurt in the heart forother loss can be so big ad fo deaden all feeling, all empathy for another. My heart is sad seeing this reading this hurt, sad and glad my heart is able to know the meaning of mothers love and the liss of it so nig our mother earth is not regarded, not respected not acknowledged. Brave hearts run wild we feel we know the power of humanity.
I am not an Aboriginal person but I feel you are a dearly loved sister because not only have you articulated the circumstances of my son and grandkids and many I regard as family but you have allowed me to have pride in my own identity as an Australian for the first time without guilt. Thank you
If you don’t look Aboriginal then you don’t look Aboriginal. It doesn’t speak so deeply to the oppression your relatives experienced. It is a mere observation that goes against how you chose to identify yourself.
Very well put. You have an excellent grasp of the English language and it is so good to see it being used so well to make a point so irrefutably. Well done.
Over the years I’ve had people make the same comments to me regarding my Aboriginality and it has always annoyed me but after reading your explanation I not only know why I’ve felt so annoyed but I now know what I’m going to say to the next person that says it to me. Thank You for putting this matter into perspective and giving me the confidence to have my ‘proper’ say in the future.
First of all, let me say that I understand how aborigines have been badly treated over the years, and am sympathetic. You make some excellent points, even if the emotive language is a bit overdone. Now, my step-father was dark skinned, and in the 1950s I was always told he was part Indian. I loved him as a father, and his mother was always my “nanna”. Apparently it wasn’t the done thing back then to acknowledge any aboriginal heritage. It wasn’t until much later, when I began to get seriously into genealogy, that the truth started emerging.
My father told me stories about how his white father had abandoned them, and how he was sent to live with his grandfather who was a farmer near Lakes Entrance in Victoria. A bit more research revealed that his grandfather was in fact Indian, and had married an aboriginal woman. My dark skinned nanna resulted from that union, and eventually my father.
Now, 60 years later, I have witnessed a potentially beautiful Indian heritage overwhelmed as all my great grandfather’s descendants choose to “identify” as aboriginal in order to claim special benefits. I grew up and played with many of these cousins, and know that they had no special affinity with the land, nor did they have any lore or folk tales drummed into them. But now they find it convenient to put out their hands for special consideration. They all know how to work the system.
When my father’s brother died, a lot of aborigines sorted out his funeral, and arranged appropriate ceremonies that pleased them. Now I know he wouldn’t have gone along with all that, because I knew him all his life. The most disturbing thing for me was that nothing of his Indian heritage was acknowledged, yet he was as much Indian as aboriginal.
My main point, as someone else commented, is that most modern people who identify as aboriginal are in fact genetic mixes. The big problem from my point of view, is that typically, any other genetic origin is totally ignored as if it didn’t exist. The psychological stance of “identifying as aboriginal” just doesn’t wash with me. On that basis, with my proven DNA origins, I could identify as an Orkney Islander. It’s not good enough to just ignore your true biological make up. You might have been brought up being indoctrinated with aboriginal culture, so feel comfortable in identifying. I have used the example of my own cousins, who were not brought up this way, yet still claim to be “brothers” and “sisters” because it benefits them. They are all just as much Indian as aboriginal, and even more European. Aboriginals need to seriously think about acknowledging that they have evolved, and that they are just as much European now, possibly more so even than many freshly arrived families in multi-cultural Australia. We can all assimilate some of the traditional aboriginal culture if it comes to that. I am about 4th generation English, but definitely have an affinity for the land around the Murray River where I went camping with my father. Incidentally, he also showed me how to tie a turban.