Where is the trust?

[Isabel Kit — 2016]

Bill Leak’s cartoon denigrating Indigenous people — and not only dads — but the brothers, sons, uncles, grandfathers, and importantly, the women who spend every minute of each day keeping family together, is, in addition to being racist, an act social destruction. One of my key interests is to consider the potential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together on issues of ecological/environmental protection and climate change. The prospect is a difficult one, but worth both the struggle and the innovative thinking required to bring into play new ways of thinking and acting. On the positive side, we know that there are already partnerships and alliances in place between Indigenous groups, the science community and environmental activists at a grassroots level. We also know that the environmental movement more generally has a lot learn with regards to relationships with Indigenous communities. Consultation is not the answer. As I have previously written, the place of Indigenous people, both in Australia, and globally, must be at the head of the table to meet the challenges of climate change. This requires a formal — legal and cultural — recognition of Country, of Self-determination, of Sovereignty. It also requires an ongoing commitment to building relationships of Trust. So then, how does Leek’s negligence fit into my interest in climate change?

It is not possible for Indigenous people to enter into intellectual partnerships with others within a socio/political climate where no trust exists. While White Australia too often expresses a short or absent memory in relationship to colonial history, Indigenous memory is long. Its weight is a necessary but, at times, traumatic burden. Not only do Indigenous people carry Indigenous memory, but also act as the custodians of White memory. And yet, so many Indigenous people show a remarkable capacity to offer a generosity of spirit toward non-Indigenous Australia. With regard to environmental work, while there are justifiable concerns about the theft, commodification and selective cherry-picking of community knowledge of Country, Indigenous people often take the first steps in building genuine and equitable relationships.

What the Leaks of this world either do not understand, or do not care about, is that their narcissistic claims to artistic freedom, or a right to speak, come at a cost to the wider community, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The was nothing brave about the Leak cartoon. Nor did he produce a statement about issues that cannot be discussed in public. Leak knows, the media industry knows, the shock-jocks, they all know, that negative portrayals about Indigenous people have been the staple of white society from 1788 onward. A society that feels a need to justify its own violence to both people and Country, must repeatedly denigrate the body and land it wishes to destroy.

As I wrote previously in relation to the torture of Indigenous youth in detention, how possible is it to ask an Indigenous person to enter into a relationship of trust with a society that shackles children? A society that has little understanding the concept of remorse? A society that has stolen country and turned it into a failed hobby farm? A society that places no value in the strength and vitality of Indigenous family life? (It should surprise nobody that the key policies attempting to destroy Indigenous life in the twentieth century focused on the destruction of family; policies that continue in contemporary Australia).

My grand-daughter, Isabel Kit, is held with love in our family. We reject the implication and substance of the Leek cartoon. We want to state that it shows no respect for the many Indigenous families out there doing everything possible to raise culturally strong kids, at times in the most adverse circumstances. And we want to say to non-Indigenous people who do not subscribe to the views of Leak and others, you have some work to do. And unfortunately some of that work is to repair the damage done, not by yourself, but others. I say this with a sense of openness, with an offer of trust in what is sometimes possible in a mad world. If the work is done well, the outcome will be of infinite value for both people and Country.