Culture

The Importance Of Celebrating Blak Excellence This NAIDOC Week

Good news for mob from the year that was 2020.

by Bizzi Lavelle  12 November 2020
naidoc week

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

There’s one clear fact that everyone knows all too well: 2020 has sucked.

The fires, COVID-19, and elections have not made it any easier for anyone and we’re all tired and exhausted. However, this year’s bad news cycle is unfortunately one that Blak people already have to handle year upon year, without a break. It is practically a given that anytime mainstream news covers the topics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the subject will always be negative. Positives are spun into negatives, empowering stories are met with inflammatory comments, and peaceful rallies and marches are made out to be disruptions of peace and mass arrests.

2020 has taught us that being educated, aware and knowledgeable on a wide range of topics, particularly ones that focus on minorities, is important. But why do so many flock to understand the “plight” of Indigenous Australia rather than the triumphs?

Related
The Revolution Starts By Cutting Carrots: How To Show Real Solidarity After Invasion Day

For starters, I guess it’s easier. It’s easier to focus on the negative stereotypes, the stories and the news we regularly hear rather than do a little digging for some positives. It’s easier to just keep hearing, reading, and thinking the same thing, rather than challenge your presumptions. It’s what everyone is used to. When you’re used to only hearing bad things why bother changing it up or questioning it? Maybe there’s a reason things are always bad for this lot. People may even be spreading and sharing these negative stories in genuine good faith, believing that they are helping to raise awareness on Indigenous issues to a wider audience.

But in reality, this repetitive cycle of negative news on Indigenous Australians is not only emotionally draining, but is obscuring the positive stories from the public eye. The truth is, with every heart-aching story and topic you hear about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, there are positives that are buried with no focus on them.

This is a problem. It’s clearly a problem for blak youth in need of role-models, and blak adults who are emotionally exhausted from the news cycle, but it’s also a problem for the non-blak public.

Non-blak youth are being told there is only ever negatives, sadness and heartache in relation to Australian First Nations. This then helps further perpetuate stereotypes and beliefs that there is a plight Indigenous people are suffering, that they cannot be helped or that they did this to themselves through a lack of self-determination. Youths will carry this notion with them into adulthood, giving uninformed opinions on Indigenous issues through a narrow-minded point of view.

Blak youth, on the other hand are being told that their lives are to be filled with suffering and pain. Representation matters, and for blak youth growing up as a minority, positive representation is so important. Constant negative representation leads blak kids to feel stigma and shame about simply existing as a First Nations person, which is not something to be ashamed about. How can our youth develop any pride in their Indigeneity if everything they see and hear about their culture is negative? These kids need to be seeing that they can do anything, that they can achieve whatever they set their mind to. But for some reason or another (racism, probably) the wins aren’t being as widely broadcasted as the losses.

For blak adults, it’s tiring going to social media or the news and only seeing heartache after heartache. There’s only so much death and destruction one can take. It is emotionally and mentally exhausting to only ever hear bad news about your race, about people that look like you, about people with the same blood as you.

Related
Australia's Racist Cashless Debit Card System Should Be Replaced With A Universal Basic Income

Especially in an age of Instagram activism, where every acquaintance is expecting you to be a spokesperson for every Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the country. I’ve written before about white guilt, on how Indigenous Australians are often expected to be flowing beacons of knowledge, eager oracles ready to inform any and all of the undisputed facts and history of Indigenous people.

This means that not only do you have to find out about the Djab Wurrung trees via Twitter or the news but you then have to deal with the aftershocks of every white person you’ve ever come across reaching out for advice, reassurance, and education.

Hearing the good news is a relief and a break from an emotionally fatiguing news cycle.

So, to practice what I preach here is some good news for mob from the year that was 2020.

Blak Excellence In 2020

History was made with this years prestigious Archibald prizes, with Meyne Watt becoming the first Indigenous person to win any of the awards the Archibald offers with his Packing Room Prize. This was quickly followed by Vincent Namatjira taking out the 2020 Archibald Prize, becoming the first Indigenous person to win in the award’s 99 year history.

FREEMAN is a documentary about everyone’s favourite Olympian Cathy Freeman and her iconic win at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. The film details why her victory means just as much 20 years later. The film is available on ABC iview.

In September Gurindji Traditional Owners were recognised with Native Title rights to the Wave Hill Station. This is significantly important as the Gurindji people have fought for a long time for land rights on the site, including walk offs documented in the song ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’.

Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe was sworn in as the first Aboriginal Senator from Victoria and the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian for the Greens.

Jack Wighton, Canberra Raiders Five-Eighth and proud Wiradjuri man won the NRL’s Prestigious Dally M. Earlier in the year Wighton opened up about how a connection to culture and elders helped him through some troubling times.

Five Asteroids have been named after Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, elders and academics. Name sakes include the Meriam Mer people, Merium elder and artist Segar Passi, Wardaman elder, storyteller and musician Bill Yudumduma Harney, Yiman and Bidjara Anthropologist and Geographer Professor Marcia Langton and Researcher Martin Nakata, who was the first Torres Strait Islander to complete a PhD in Australia.

History has been made in the NT parliament with the election of an Aboriginal speaker. Chansey Paech is no stranger to making history, also being the Nation’s first openly gay Indigenous parliamentarian. Ngaree Ah Kit takes on the role as the Deputy Speaker making it the first time that both these positions have been held by Indigenous people in an Australian parliament.

Broome based Indigenous publisher Magabala books won the small publisher of the year award at the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards.

AFL dropped the Aboriginal flag from their Indigenous round celebrations and instead backed the Free the Flag movement. Free the Flag is a movement that is seeking to free the Aboriginal flag from it’s current licensing agreement and see Aboriginal people have rights and access to their flag rather than it be copyrighted by a white-owned company.

This list is not an exhaustive list of every positive and good thing that happened for mob this year. It is however, is a starting point so that we can see that not everything has gone to hell in 2020 and so that we can have conversations about these triumphs and achievements too, especially when the other ones become to heavy and painful to have.

All it takes is a moment to see that First Nations Australia have achieved many things and are born from greatness and why should this year be any different?

Bizzi Lavelle is a Wakka Wakka woman living on Quandamooka country. She is an educator, performer and writer who specialises in sociology, gender and sexuality and race based works.