Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, told the National Press Club last week that there are no negative ongoing impacts of British colonisation on First Peoples. In fact, according to the Senator, colonisation has actually had “a positive impact, absolutely” on us.
What absolute rot.
To have anyone say Aboriginal people don’t suffer negative impacts from colonisation is offensive. It is gaslighting. It is a dangerous erasure of this country’s true history.
When the boats arrived, the massacres of our people began. We were dispossessed from our lands – lands that we’d successfully cared for and cultivated for over 60,000 years. Our families were torn apart.
These are facts. They are undeniable parts of our history. And we are hearing the real, ongoing and personal impacts of such facts through the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the nation’s first formal Truth-Telling process.
Senator Price would do well to read Yoorrook’s first major report. In that report, the Yoorrook detailed there was an “unbroken line” between colonisation and the over-representation of First Peoples in our prisons and child protection system today.
Intergenerational trauma from colonisation is difficult to quantify. Given what Aboriginal people have endured this week from the NO campaign, I don’t have the space to unpack the emotional side right now – but here’s a look at the economic costs of colonisation.
It’s not always easy to separate which parts of your upbringing were more difficult because you’re Aboriginal, rather than just being poor. But, as I got older, I could see that our poverty was because my mother didn’t have intergenerational wealth.
My great grandmother, Molly, had a lease for a tiny block of land, about 600km from Adelaide, that was only attached to her lifespan. There was no ability for her to hand that down to her children. It went back to the crown and remains crown land today.
My grandmother, Doreen, was put into Koonibba Mission and only given a Grade 4 level education before being sent off for domestic work. After getting permission from the ‘Protector of Aborigines’ to get married, she had five kids and wasn’t able to advance herself economically, with limited education and work experience.
My mum grew up in a mix of public housing and camping – again, no assets to hand down. Mum proudly graduated from university in her 50s. The first of Molly’s 180+ descendants to do so.
The realities of my family’s lives directly result from the White Australia and Stolen Generation policies.
I regularly saw other kids getting a leg up from their parents. Whether it was being given their first car, giving them deposits for their first home or having enough equity in their home to be a guarantor on loans.
This simply wasn’t a reality for Aboriginal kids my age. It still largely isn’t for Aboriginal kids today. We don’t have generations of inheritance handed down to us. The very first inheritance from first generation non-Aboriginal Australians came from stolen land. The colonisers called it commonwealth, but for us, it’s stolen wealth.
We’ve been on the back foot economically since that day the boats arrived and a Treaty was never negotiated.
230 years of compounded economic loss from stolen land, stolen wages and stolen opportunities. Two centuries of deliberate policies to keep Aboriginal people down. How is that not intergenerational trauma? How is that not ongoing impacts of colonisation? No wonder so many of our people are still living below the poverty line.
As an Aboriginal person, I feel the impact of intergenerational trauma from colonisation every single day. That doesn’t make me a victim, it’s a simple fact. That doesn’t leave me without agency. Actually, it does just the opposite. Every day, I carry the strength of Molly and Doreen Smith, and I work to try to better the lives of Aboriginal people in the hope my grandchildren don’t live under the shackles of colonisation.
Yes, Senator Price’s comments are offensive, but more than that, they’re dangerous. They serve to try to rewrite our history, before it’s even been fully told. And whatever Senator Price says is quickly picked up and parroted by every person advocating against our collective interests.
The denial of our common experience by one of our own is a betrayal. It is tempting to say that Senator Price should know better, but I believe she does – in becoming the darling of the NO campaign, Senator Price has deliberately picked personal gain over her people.
In response to Senator Price’s comments, Les Turner, head of the Central Land Council, said that the elected grassroots representatives of Aboriginal people across the southern half of the NT had made it clear they supported the Voice to Parliament. He said that they supported the Voice precisely because Senator Price does not represent them and they “do not feel heard by politicians such as Senator Price”.
A Voice to Parliament would be a direct line for our people to share our experiences, hopes and priorities with Parliament. It would be a step towards the call for Voice, Treaty and Truth – the three simple asks of the Uluru Statement, which itself was the result of a grassroots process led by First Peoples.
Voting YES is a vote for facing up to our shared history, for taking steps to right the wrongs of the past and to create a better future for everyone.