Words || Bohdi Byles
I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that Macquarie University sits on – the Wattamattagal people – as well as all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also wish to extend my respect to Elders past, present and future. Land was not given, it was stolen. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
My name is Bohdi and I am an Aboriginal person. I wish I could tell you more, that I am a proud person from a certain country, and that I come from a long line of Indigenous people who I can trace back. I wish I could tell you that I have such a strong connection with the land and my Indigenous community back home. But I can’t. I can’t because all of that was taken from me the day that my pop and his siblings were taken under the White Australia Policy.
My pop grew up in missionaries and foster homes and was taught that he was not Aboriginal, but was a white person. As a result of this, it wasn’t until he passed away when I was 17 that I even discovered the existence of my own Aboriginality, just before I started at Macquarie University.
Macquarie… What does that name bring up for you? Do you feel pride in your university? Do you feel proud of its name and the connection it has to the past? Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s statue in Hyde Park says he was, “a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart.” His grave in Scotland is inscribed, “The father of Australia.” What an amazing man that Macquarie University (amongst many other things) is named after. So why was his statue, along with that of Captain James Cook, vandalised recently?
A perfect gentleman who knows the human heart so well said in 1816, “All Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be made prisoners of war and if they resist, they are to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fall, so as to strike terror into the hearts of surviving natives.” A perfect gentleman who was instrumental in the invasion and genocide of Indigenous people. Yet, not once is this mentioned amidst the boasting and pride on Macquarie University’s webpage titled ‘Macquarie’s Influence’. In fact, Indigenous relations are not mentioned at all.
There was uproar when these statues were vandalised. White Australian Alan Jones said on Twitter that Aboriginal man Stan Grant “would go the same way as Yassmin Abdel-Magied.” The Daily Telegraph said Grant had inspired politically correct Taliban. Extremists. Terrorists. People defended the statues because they are part of Australian history, much like people defending the confederate statues in the United States. Sure, Macquarie might have done some horrible things but these colonial figures are part of the story that made Australia what it is today. Anyway, it’s history. I wonder though – where are the statues of Adolf Hitler, who did horrible things, but was a part of history? Why are there no Nazi statues?
I agree that Macquarie had a role in Australian history, but I don’t think we should be idolising him with street names, banks, rivers, suburbs, and our university. We even have a museum room dedicated to Macquarie in the university’s library, which makes me sick to core every time I walk by it. He belongs in a textbook and in a museum. His presence doesn’t deserve to live on.
I want to make it very clear that I don’t agree with the vandalism of the statues. However, I wonder if people started listening to Indigenous people instead of talking over, shoving aside or silencing them, maybe Indigenous people wouldn’t feel like they must go to such drastic measures to be heard. Why can’t we listen? Many Australians are ashamed of Australia’s black history, both with Indigenous culture as well as the horrors Indigenous people faced.
It is important for me, as an Indigenous person, to recognise here that there are many white Australians who do acknowledge the history, acknowledge the horrors, and are progressively moving forward with Indigenous people to strengthen connections and to make change. There are many white Australians who express empathy and compassion towards Indigenous people. There are people who understand why colonial statues are problematic.
Dr. Brené Brown is an academic from the University of Houston who researches shame. In her work, she outlines three things that are vital to know in understanding it:
Shame is universal. We all have it.
We’re all scared to talk about it.
The less we talk about it, the more control it has over our
lives.
Shame is not the same as guilt. It is not ‘white guilt’ that people are suffering from. Guilt is a focus on behaviour, shame is a focus on self. Guilt says, “I made a mistake” and shame says, “I am a mistake.” If White Australia was feeling guilty, it would acknowledge the shitty behaviour and amend it. White Australia is living in an epidemic of silent shame and most people are not even aware that they are experiencing it.
Dr. Brown says that shame needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgement. Australians are scared of even discussing Indigenous issues because they fear there will be heavy backlash and judgement, and so they stay silent and treat it like a big secret that does not need to be told. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
I am not scared to bring up White Australia’s shame because it needs to be accounted for. I strongly believe that in acknowledging the shame, things can start to shift, change and heal. When you shine the light on the darkness, the darkness dissipates. When Australia starts acknowledging the damaged, broken, racist past, the racism just might start to dissipate too.
