HAYLEY MCQUIRE HAS A VISION
SUBJECT
Hayley McQuire
OCCUPATION
Education advocate
INTERVIEWER
Nathan Scolaro
PHOTOGRAPHER
Gregory Lorenzutti
LOCATION
Melbourne, Australia
DATE
January, 2021
When we set out to do this issue on truth, our lens was initially focussed on the current deluge of disinformation and mistruths circulating online. What is it about this time, we wondered, that has rendered us unable to hold multiple truths? Why aren’t we challenging the “certainties” we are told and holding them up to questioning and examination? Not long into researching the issue, I received an email from our friend Maya Newell, the documentary maker behind In My Blood It Runs. She was letting me know about the “Learn Our Truth” campaign, which aims to get First Nations histories, perspectives and experiences into the classroom. It immediately dawned on me that “siloed” truths, indeed manipulated and distorted truths, are not a just phenomenon of this moment, they have been happening as part of the colonial project for hundreds of years – shaping the very fabric of the culture we inhabit.
One of the founders of “Learn Our Truth” is Hayley McQuire, a Darumbul and South Sea Islander woman who works with schools and government to raise education equality in Australia, particularly for Indigenous youth. After spending four years as a member of the UN Secretary General’s youth advocacy group, which included standing alongside Malala Yusafzai at her first public address since being shot by the Taliban, Hayley saw the need for a movement towards First Nations-led education. She secured funding to bring together a diverse group of young people and form the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition, which recognises that Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing can support all youth to meet the complex challenges of their generation. “We work at the ground level,” says Hayley. “To ensure that learning is contextualised to the landscape, history and aspirations of the community, while also pulling systemic and structural levers that tackle education inequity.”
Central to Hayley’s work and “Learn Our Truth” is getting multiple perspectives and stories of Australia’s history taught in the national curriculum. Only one story from our nation’s past has ever really been prioritised: the story of the First Fleet. But history is nuanced, it is many stories intersecting at once, and for us as a nation to heal we need as many of those stories foregrounded. Hayley’s invitation – to be open to multiple truths, to be curious about the way this country was inhabited before colonisation, to be humble enough to let go of the stories that have fuelled our sense of worth – is one for all of us to heed on the journey to belonging.
NATHAN SCOLARO: I’m calling in from the lands of the Wardandi Noongar people here in south west Australia. Beautiful bright country. And we are speaking three days after Australia Day, it’s been a very powerful week. I found the language of “resilience day” and “survival day” really resonant this year. And actually before I share, I wanted to hear how you’re sitting with it all, what’s come up for you this week?
HAYLEY MCQUIRE: Yeah. This week every year is just exhausting. It’s kind of that annual rollercoaster, you have your Christmas break and new year and then it’s like, “Ugh, gotta count down now to invasion day and the whole conversation that just doesn’t seem to. When I think about my family and our story as well, like, we got some pretty amazing strong people in my family. Definitely. To have endured so much.
