‘Our Voice, Our Future: Reclaiming our Rightful Place after the Referendum’
Good morning. If I could firstly just acknowledge the Larrakia people on whose land we gather and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Thank you all for your invitation to have been here to speak…
I’m just so happy to be here and spend some time and have a look around at the businesses that are here. I guess just looking at the title of this speech, 'Our Voice The Future, Reclaiming our Rightful Place After Referendum', I thought it was really important to touch on a few things.
One is that we are such a resilient people as First Nations people, and the strength of that carries me. Certainly through the things that I do and the work that I do and the people that I meet.
But I certainly hope it does the same for each and every one of you. I have no doubt that each of you have your own stories, your own family stories of different ways of seeing the world, but also wanting to survive and thrive in that world.
The most important thing is, in my view, one of the most important things is respect. Respect for the fact that we might not think the same, respect for the fact that we may have different ways of trying to get to a solution or a conclusion.
And respect to the fact that we can always learn from one another and that's important. I'm also not only a senator for the Northern Territory, but as a Yanyuwa and Garrawa woman, I've always carried that very strongly in my heart and in my journey in life.
From Borroloola to Alice Springs to working with the ABC, working with SBS and NITV, and as a politician in the Parliament, your sense of self and identity is absolutely critical in my view.
And I know there are so many of our mob all across the country who are still working that out, but that's still a journey as well and one that must be respected. I talk about resilience because that's really the key to moving forward. Resilience and respect.
Resilience from the sense that so many of us put our hearts and minds and souls into a hope for a 'Yes' vote across this country.
The reality is that constitutions are so hard to change and carrying that burden, but also the very real reality of knowing that only eight out of 44 referenda in this country had succeeded was a very obvious challenge going into that.
It's now 8 out of 45 referenda that have succeeded in this country.
The deep hurt and devastation felt by so many who supported the 'Yes' vote was clearly evident straight after the October 14th, and in particular with our young people and in particular with people who perhaps had never campaigned before, people who'd never had to fight for something before. Some of our younger generations and in some respects it's a real understanding of going through what a struggle is.
After the referendum, it's also now about accepting and respecting that decision, which is a really difficult thing for people to do. But we must do so because I really urge all Australians, in particular the over 6 million people who voted yes, that we always have to strive to be the better part of ourselves, in particular in loss, in defeat and failure- always strive to be the better part of yourselves.
Why? Because I think to do the opposite destroys your own sense of self and spirit and colours the way you see the world. We all have to be really careful of that. We see lots of things that are going on in the world.
And I always think that in the moments of deep defeat and disappointment, there's also something that I always remember, and I don't know if it's true through the spiritual sort of learnings, when you're going through your classes or as much as it is from the elders who teach you about resilience, there is a saying: "just as gold is tested in fire, often the human character is tested in the furnace of humiliation".
Have a think about that, just like gold is tested in fire, the human character is often tested in the furnace of humiliation.
And when you look around at your own life and your own achievements and your losses, ask yourselves when was the greatest learning in your life? And you'll often find it's through loss, through defeat. But I want to point out this, too, in that learning that with over 6 million Australians who supported us in the 'Yes', a large percentage of First Nations communities were well over 60, 70, 90%, 'yes'.
And that was very reaffirming because the whole question of the referendum was actually about First Nations people, about 3% of the population. We needed to ask 97% of the population for that support. So to know that was there means it gives greater determination, certainly for myself and certainly for my colleagues and those who know that we have to keep going.
The urgency hasn't changed. The urgency was there before the referendum, and the urgency remains. Our people are being incarcerated at rates way too high. Babies are still being born with low birth weight. We still have tremendous amounts of statistics which are so, so bad in terms of family, domestic violence and unemployment.
So the urgency is still there. And that's why you come in, here with this conference.
That's where you come in with the economic sector and the indigenous business sector. And I hope that you can also share your own stories of success or failures, but that you keep going.
You keep going because you believe in something. You believe in yourself, but you also believe in what you're trying to do to make a change to the broader Australian community.
We have just 5 hours south of us, about 24 million Australians, a population of around that. And then 5 hours north of us, 400 million people. It's a really unique position here in Northern Australia for business. A really unique position. Grab it.
When we look at our history as First Nations people, yeah, sure, we've got the cattle industry and I work with that and I acknowledge Frank who's very much involved with that with 7 Emus and the cattle industry of his families. But I also look at the trading that we had with the Macassans where my family, and I acknowledge Zoe and Nicholas.
With the Macassans, we traded for hundreds of years in Northern Australia well before the White Australia policy in 1901.
We traded. We were international seafarers and diplomats. Dig deep and stay strong. That history still lives in terms of the relationship with the Macassans. I know that representatives from Numbulwar went across to spend time there.
Just recently I was in Macassar at the end of last year, retracing the sea voyage that occurred between Macassar and Borroloola, and the Sir Edward Pellow Islands.
So they would come and live with us for months and they would come on the wet season winds and go back with the dry season and they would learn from us around the ropes and the trees used for the cutting of the canoes, and we would learn from them with the sails that we used for the canoes.
They looked for the sea slug. They brought the tamarind and the tamarind trees that just flourish across north east Arnhem Land, across to the west, the Kimberleys.
So that engagement of First Nations people as international diplomats was long there before white settlement in this country. When I went to Fiji last year to work with the Pacific Women Lead, I wanted to see Indigenous women on the Indigenous Forum because they are our brothers and sisters across the seas.
We work around the blue Pacific Ocean, creating business, trying to lift each other out of poverty, the economic strains. And not only did we try to appoint, and I think that process is ongoing at the moment, to have someone at that level to have that engagement internationally so that we can continue not only domestically around indigenous economic development, but internationally.
So, with the Pacific Women's Lead Forum to look at our First Nations women interacting with our women across the Pacific.
And the other position was the First Nations ambassador. So we've got that position now with our first ambassador, Ambassador Muhammad, to continue the links that we all know from our own history and our own family histories that we've had for a long time.
Just here in the Northern Territory. We're also looking at changes with the CDP, the Community Development Program.
The CDP trialling pathways to real jobs, we've seen in the Galiwinku region of the Northern Territory, the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation, is running the Galiwinku Meal Kitchen project and that project, is trialling an approach to growing local industry and enterprise by developing a commercial kitchen to prepare meals for contractors visiting the island.
The kitchen provides low cost, high quality dinner options for community members and long term sustainable jobs for 5 to 10 people with the potential for future expansion. And so far benefited a CDP total of 21 participants through paid work, accredited hospitality and commercial cookery training to support them in their employment and support to address other barriers.
On Bathurst island, a part of the Tiwi Islands, have begun the Bathurst farming precinct and a location known for the Headstone project, and it's a community-led job trial program. We all know that it's the local solutions. Local people know what they need. They know what jobs are that they can provide will make a difference in.
On the Tiwi’s they are responding to the concerns- we bury our people too much with funerals and they needed to look at things that they wanted to do around the cemeteries. So this has been the proposal: Cemeteries in the region are in need of repair and beatification and the cost of transporting a finished headstone to Tiwi from masonry businesses in Darwin exceed $10,000 and it makes it prohibitively expensive for many, and most wooden crosses have deteriorated.
I know that sounds really sombre, but it's jobs- you know, it's the Tiwi mob who came forward with that. In Milingimbi we all know about Manapan Furniture and the work that they're doing, with furniture that crosses the seas and sits in boardrooms, whether it's the four big banks, whether it's other companies or corporates that's all coming from Milingimbi through Sea Swift, that delivers it on the barge here in Darwin.
This is all local. This is Territory. These are First Nations businesses and initiatives. There are many of you in the tourism industry, for example. Tess who's worked so long in that space and tourism and put so much heart into this, like so many of you in your businesses in Central Australia and the work that you're doing down there. There's so much more we can do.
But I think coming back to the topic here, post referendum, I'm not really worried whether you voted yes or no. I just want to know that we are going to continue working on the urgency of improving the lives of First Nations people in our country. I do look at the example of those who've gone before us and the struggles.
And again, I can only speak for where I come from with the Yanyuwa when in 1976, we were the first to go for land in the Sir Edward Pellow Islands, and we didn't succeed completely. We've got a small area, but it was difficult to give evidence in a former courthouse where our families had been jailed.
That courthouse was used then for the first land claim where our elders had to give evidence. I was only a little girl. I remember watching the eldest sitting there, speaking largely in language, but not really understanding what that Westminster system of law was all about. But they were determined to show that this was Yanyuwa land.
And then it was two decades later, where us, the next generation had to speak.
We never gave up. We still don't give up. And I know each of you don't give up. I know the Larrakia don't give up on whose land we come together.
Resilience and respect, ladies and gentlemen, is what I leave with you. And there's always hope.
Hope for a better future for all of us. For First Nations people and for our country, Australia. Thank you.