Over the weekend in a column for the Australian, Patricia Karvelas seized on the comments – some of them abusive and racial – that greeted Adam Goodes’s appointment as an ambassador for retail giant David Jones. Karvelas often writes about Indigenous people and issues and shines a bright light on Indigenous society unafraid to expose failings, of others and our own. That’s how it should be.
Karvelas was blunt in her column: if we don’t deal with racism we can’t deal with reconciliation. But she also saw this not as a story about hate and bigotry, but one about hope. She pointed to the numbers of people who called out this racism. They wrote in support of Adam. They took on those who would lead this country down a divided road. These are the voices too often not heard. These voices speak to the greatness of Australia and what it could yet be. Many prominent Indigenous voices echoed her thoughts.
That we feel so grateful to those who see our common and basic humanity, that it takes that for us to be proud to be Australian, tells us only how far we still have to go. Just think: how demoralised must a people be that a simple act of compassion, some words of kindness can feel like acceptance. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful too. But it feels like saying sorry for your loss after a parent or child has died. It is lost in a fog of pain.
It is easy to align with Adam Goodes, he is a wealthy, powerful symbol of Indigenous survival. He should make Australians feel good. Like me though, I know Adam would be aware that we are the “acceptable faces” of Indigenous Australia. We don’t pose hard questions. No one need cross the street when they see us coming, not like some of the boys I grew up with. These are the people Australia has failed – and continues to fail. Not for lack of trying – but the outcomes nonetheless are damning.
These numbers need to be drilled into the minds of all of us: Indigenous people are less than a 3% of the total population but a quarter of the number of Australians locked up in prisons; Indigenous men and women die roughly a decade younger than the rest of the country; the rate of infant mortality is twice as high. There are other statistics and they are uniformly bad. In short, being black can kill you, make you poor and leave you blind and deaf.
This is the reality of our country. We all own this: bigot or no. In fact, those of good will especially own this, because they have failed to change it. Words of support and compassion alone don’t fix this. Sending Indigenous children to private school alone doesn’t fix this. Adam Goodes winning a Brownlow Medal or me winning a TV Logie award alone doesn’t fix this. Would it were that simple.
Individual success doesn’t enlighten what troubles us; it often obscures it. It can fool us into thinking the problem no longer exists.
We all seize on hope – hope is energising. And there is hope in the words of those supporting Adam Goodes. There is hope in every Indigenous student who graduates from school. But we have been here so many times before. So many times we have promised to achieve liftoff – the 67 referendum, the freedom rides, the tent embassy, Mabo, sorry – and so many times we have stalled.
We are lured into the light only to be mugged by the darkness of our past.
This moment with Adam Goodes is another one of those flashes of hope. Patricia Karvelas is right, Australians want to be heard and they do not want to be defined by cowards. But there are other words that need to be spoken; words beyond football, booing and David Jones. Let’s hear words like sovereignty and treaty. Other countries speak these words, more than that, they have made them law. Here they are barely uttered.
We need to talk about dispossession – yes, the loss of our land. I sometimes sense people are tired of this. But we can’t ignore it. It sits at the heart of the malaise. Land is spirit, land is identity, land is power and wealth and inheritance. Ask any farming family. Then look to us – we lost it all. Where it has been recovered – even there – the road back can be long and progress slow.
Australians who so laudably challenge the bigots among them need also challenge themselves. What are they prepared to give up? Land, history, flag, anthem, myth or identity – all of it is on the table if we are truly serious. Other countries fight wars over these things: we can do it in peace.
As former prime minister Paul Keating reminded us just this past week, we can’t be a great country and not deal with the original grievance: dispossession.
But it will not be a battle easily won. We are right to be excited by those who denounce racism, but those others who speak words of hate – though smaller in number – speak with the power of history. Their words hurt because to Indigenous people they are so familiar, sadly more familiar than words of kindness.
The story of the good in ordinary Australians needs to be told but we cannot leave it there. Indigenous people need more than support; we need more than just feeling good. There are hard choices and tough policy decisions to be made – for that we look to our leaders. Indigenous people and communities need to be empowered – economically and politically – to make those choices, to take those decisions.
Australians need to see Indigenous people as more than a charity case; more than a welfare problem. Supporting Adam Goodes is easy, and Adam is tough enough and successful enough to survive. There are others we don’t see – without the privileges of Adam or me – and they need support. They need more than words.
We know what is the price of failure: it is death.
