On racism, listening and change – Iftar with the Australian Intercultural Society

4 April 2023

‘As is our custom as First Nations people, and as a proud Yawuru woman from Broome, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Wurundjeri people, and pay my respects to their elders past and present and all other Aboriginal members of our community.

I also want to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and that this is, was and always will be Aboriginal land.

I have lived here on Naarm for the past 20 years, but my country is Yawuru Buru – the place we call Rubibi. It is where I was born – where my ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years or, as we say, since Bugarrigarr – the time before time, now and into the future.

The Yarawu people live by the sea and across about five-and-a-half thousand square kilometres of savannah country in Australia’s north – but best known perhaps to you all as Broome and the Kimberley.

The liarn of Yarawu people – our health and wellbeing – throughout our history has been deeply connected to the gathering and sharing in the abundance of food available on country, on our land and in our seas.

For us, Yawuru – the gathering and sharing of food together – is significant.

It is an expression of ongoing cultural practice and rights as people and our relationship to land. This is what defines me. As a family, we gather at Crab Creek, we light a fire on the beach as a signal to our ancestors that we have arrived on country. Our family fish and gather crabs from the sea. My Nan yells out – fishing line in hand – ‘Come on the Walga Walga’. We gather, we share in the gifts from the sea. We are sharing practices of many before us, amongst us, for those who are yet to come.

And on this occasion at the Iftar Dinner, I acknowledge that the act of preparing and sharing food – whether at the beach, around a kitchen table, for your own mob, or to bring different mobs together – these are acts of cultural connection, social interaction and even, like this evening, an act of solidarity.

The sharing of food marks the ordinary and the momentous in our lives and in our communities. Food helps us celebrate at weddings, baptisms, festivals and at the footy. Food also helps us mourn and grieve – when we come together at funerals and memorials.

We have even started to define the food for Australian democracy – the sausage we pay a few dollars for to help the local school at the polling booth on election day.

Marcia Langton AO, who was guest speaker at this dinner last year – a very hard act to follow, I have to admit – spoke about the centuries of connection through trade of food between the First Nations people with our nearest neighbours, the Muslim people of Indonesia, and I am proud to be part of that history through my family and ancestors from the Kimberley.

I want to congratulate the Australian Intercultural Society for the ongoing success of this dinner – it is a really important event in our state’s calendar. And I want to add my welcome to all who are here and especially to our hosts – Ahmet Keskin, the Honourable Colin Brooks and Mr John Pesutto.

But I also want to acknowledge the broader program of Iftar dinners promoted by the Australian Intercultural Society – across many industries and sectors, and hosted by families in their own homes.

These dinners have been open-hearted invitations from Muslim Australians in the service of peace and harmony. These invitations were extended during times of great hardship and trauma for our fellow Australians – where your faith, your ethnicity and your cultures were demonised and dreadfully used by some to create fear and division.

First Nations people share your experience, and we continue to be inspired by your community and events like tonight. We stand in solidarity.

While things have improved, the politics of racism is still seen by some to be profitable. It is still used to create fear.

It is still used as an explanation for people’s economic pain and distress.

It is still used to try to win votes.

Here in Naarm – on the lands of Aboriginal people and now populated by people from around 140 countries – only a few short weeks ago, we had the Nazi salute on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House.

 

This is a clarion call to all of us. The fight against racism is not over. There is no finishing line.

 

While the Nazi salute rightly shocked the state, there are many of us in this room who know there are much less dramatic and everyday acts of racism that impact us and our communities. And while it may seem easy to outlaw the Nazi salute through legislation – it is much harder to face into and find solutions for individual acts and institutional systems that support racism.

Finding solutions has been a major part of my work over many years. As Chair of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, I get to see how legislation and regulation can make change. We have the power to investigate, monitor and enforce the protection of human rights – real power to affect change.

And it is important that we remember the people who laid the groundwork for Australia and Victoria’s human rights and equal opportunity frameworks.

I think it is especially important to remember the civil rights advocates who fought for change – because for many of our young people – understandably frustrated – they only see lack of change and lack of progress. It is hard to convince them that things are better, that we have had victories, that governments and legislation have improved the protection of human rights.

But asking them to believe in these victories feels hollow unless we also accept the other parts of Australia’s history and face into colonisation and the impacts this has on all of us – on all Australians.

Looking into the past is the job of Yoorrook – Australia’s first truth-telling commission here in Victoria. Its purpose is to develop a shared understanding of the injustice of colonisation and the impact it still has today.

The stories are harsh and need to be heard – children taken from families, homes and land stolen, violence used against peaceful communities, systems set up to ignore the humanity of First Nations people.

I know that people flinch when we talk about the atrocities and human rights abuses that are essential to Australia’s story.

 

But you know you are being told the truth, because the truth burns.

 

These words were used a few weeks ago by Marcia Langton quoting one of Australia’s greatest leaders – Yunupingu. May he rest in strength.

Burn the truth might – but it is only when our stories are told and listened to that Australia cab begin to claim a shared history and shared understanding.

We can’t have proper truth telling if we don’t have listening. And we need to get past the discomfort – the flinching – to genuinely engage in truth-telling that leads to solutions and to a better place.

I am deeply committed to creating spaces for people to tell their truths, and for people to be able to listen. In my day job, I am involved in a smaller and more private process of truth-telling than the Yoorrook Justice Commission, and I want to bring some of that to light to share how we can make a difference in specific spaces and places.

Not that the Collingwood Football Club or its fans think that it is small, and nor do I think football is all that private. It continues to amaze me how much reporting and media coverage there is of everything that happens in AFL – this, they say, is the power of football. But let’s not forget its power to take so much away. Let’s not forget our brother, Adam Goodes.

I started work at the Collingwood Football Club in 2021 to implement the recommendations of the Do Better report. This report was commissioned by the club and conducted by Professor Larissa Behrendt and the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research.

Many of you in this room will know the background that led to the club commissioning this independent report.

The Collingwood Football Club has so much history to celebrate. It was born in the working-class suburbs of Melbourne – good ol’ Collingwood. Its purpose has always been to lift up and bring joy to its community. The club has run soup kitchens, housed the homeless, donated to local charities. At its best, it has been a shining light of community solidarity.

But you also know its history of racism – a cost for many, but profound for the individuals who spoke out or, worse, who didn’t feel safe to do so. It is not alone in this of course – every club, every code and every place where sport has been played in Australia has experienced and even bred racism and discrimination.

But sport has also been a place where First Nations people have been able to participate, excel and be celebrated. A place in which we see ourselves represented at the highest level. Where First Nations players bring joy and pride to communities all over Australia.

That is why when we fail in football – when racism occurs – it impacts much more than just the individual First Nations brothers and sisters to whom the racism is directed. It impacts their families, their communities and a whole generation of young people who, within our sport, are our heroes to find hope for a better world. And, left unaddressed, these acts of racism set dangerous norms for the public.

At Collingwood, we are using past incidents and experiences of racism to be a driver for change.

To learn.

To reconcile the past.

To be better for the future.

The Do Better report was just the start. It demanded that the club look deep into itself and recognise institutional racism, and deal with the past. And to set in place the processes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I believe Collingwood has been courageous in its approach to the report. All across the club – the board, the staff and all our players – have committed to learning and doing better. To knowing what racism is, to being able to distinguish between a personal insult and systemic racism, to being able to confront it when it happens and to support those who are subjected to it.

The club has set up football’s first truth-telling program. There was no off-the-shelf truth-telling program for the club to utilize – and unlike the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission – the club doesn’t have the power to establish formal processes with regulatory power.

And so we have created a process that delivers for the club, its players and its people – by the club, for the club. Our starting point for truth-telling is to ‘cause no further harm’ – this is the north star of our principled approach.

We have set up a program drawing on the expertise and excellence that exists within our community – the Aboriginal community – and borrowing from the work of Dr Graham Gee, who is a leader in researching and developing practices that seek healing and recovery in the context of complex trauma amongst Aboriginal peoples. We have also been guided by Professor Yin Paradies’s anti-racism principles and practices to tackle racism.

Our truth-telling program is not adversarial. It is an alternative forum capable of addressing racism, healing and informing cultural change. We invite individuals to tell their story and experiences of racism at the club, in a respectful and safe environment, and the aim is to have the club acknowledge the racism and the harm it has caused.

This means we also ask people to listen – listen deeply, without defensiveness, without flinching and with open hearts.

There are many people in football who may be shocked to think that something they have said or done is being called out as institutional racism and may have caused deep harm. These things have been done and have caused harm – but overwhelmingly not by people who want to be racist or cause harm.

 

But you don’t know – and will never understand – unless you are prepared to listen.

 

This is what we are trying to deliver at Collingwood – truth-telling and active respectful listening. This process does not replace existing mechanisms to address racism or other historic wrongs. It is another way to help create change and to have a truly shared history and future. This is how we get better and be better.

We haven’t got everything right yet, and nobody says that racism has disappeared.

But the Do Better has given this club the pathway that I think the members and the supporters should be very proud of. We are creating the space for truths to be told, for people to genuinely listen and for the organisation to change.

And it has been a great experience for me – I have learnt more about Australian rules football than I ever intended to know.

I want to finish tonight by saying that all Australians have the opportunity this year to be part of historic change by voting ‘yes’ in the referendum to change the Australian Constitution.

On behalf of my Yawuru ancestors, and for the benefit of the next generation of First Nations people from all over this country, I ask you to walk with us in changing this country’s Constitution to recognise its First Peoples.

 

This is no small thing, no simple bureaucratic change. It is a huge step for all of us as a nation. To be heard. To be Listened to. To be better.

 

This step will need everyone in this room – and your friends, your families and your communities – to deliver the ‘yes’ vote.

I thank you for inviting me to be here to share some of my story and share this significant meal with you all. I thank you in anticipation for your support in the referendum – and may your football team win this weekend.

Ramadan Mubarak, Gala Mabu.’