In This Together

~ © 2020 Kirli Saunders

My sister lives in the States, something I’ve been worrying about in a time like COVID — in a space where her ancestral skin might attract her the police brutality, and racist hate that we’ve seen amplified against Bla[c]ks everywhere of late.

Throughout this week, my socials have been lit up by white guilt holding Celebrations for Reconciliation in Australia, while First Nations Peoples around the world have been marching (or as the gas lighters term it — ‘rioting’), to honour the tragic loss of George Floyd (#sayhisname #icantbreathe) and for the 407 First Nations peoples we’ve lost to deaths in custody since 1991, including David Dungay Jr who also couldn’t breathe and whose family still have not found peace with an ongoing inquest.

To clarify, that’s on average nearly one death per month, for each year I’ve been alive, 407 bla[c]k lives, just like mine, that matter.

As a writer and community project leader, I’ve been the poster girl for Reconciliation, for NAIDOC and for First Nations Causes. For the most part, I’ve tried to hold a ‘non-political’ space and avoid protests for fear of being ‘an angry Bla[c]k’. I hoped to separate my identity from The Struggle, and to stay within the celebration of our people, culture, land and languages.

But the truth is, I am struggling. I am angry and I am bla[c]k.

This week is National Reconciliation Week (NRW), held 27 May and 3 June each year, this week commemorates two significant milestones in Australia’s reconciliation journey — the anniversaries of the successful ’67 referendum and the High Court Mabo Decision.

Preceding Reconciliation Week in Australia is National Sorry Day (26 May), a day of healing, held to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of our nation’s First Peoples and particularly those harmed in the Stolen Generations.

This year, our theme is ‘In This Together’. I’d usually run with open arms, in the hopes to find common ground with non-First Nations allies of which I’m thankfully surrounded, and with communities during NRW, but this year, I find myself in a space of burn out and deep sadness.

On Sorry Day, I woke with a heavy heart aware that our children are still taken from their families, at a rate higher than the Stolen Generations. I thought of my Mum, removed from her family and of her siblings, and all of their children and grandchildren who bear that sadness and for them and us, I cried.

I cried for the foster systems that don’t serve our children and for our women who are still at higher risk of domestic violence and sexual assault than non-First Nations sisters and for all of our sisters, I ached.

On May 27, I woke to conversations of Treaty. They’ve been raised again without action at a Government level — this inaction has been long echoed in our history. I ached for those members or my family who were born ‘flora and fauna’, with hope that my own babies will be born into a world where they are seen, and known, and see a treaty honours them. At the pit of me, I doubt this will happen.

On June 3, when I rose, I thought of Native Title, and of our Lands. Instead, I saw a wealth of writing on the ways that mining giants have been allowed to desecrate the sacred sites of our First Nations communities. Like lots of mob, lots of POC who’ve similarly been harmed, I was overcome.

This week, as I’ve watched video after video, read each status and scrolled over each square of #blackouttuesday, the gut-wrenching, heart-aching in me has repeatedly wanted collective action. It called for feet on street, banners, and truth speaking that honours our Nation’s History and talks of the atrocities that have gone unchanged. It has wanted for donations and support for legal proceedings around First Nations lives, and to see bla[c]k organisations and business invested in. The ache longed to know that the loneliness, the tears and the fears of our people have not gone unheard.

This weekend, I’ll join my local community at a vigil, and protest, to honour my people and First Nations peoples around the world that we’ve tragically lost to racial brutality. I’ll be sharing resources to support change and I implore each and every one reading this to do the same– to stand by bla[c]k people in a time like this, of isolation and separation, to donate and protest boldly and unapologetically so that we might bring ground shattering change. I want to know that we are, truly, in this together.