maintain the rage

LIDIA THORPE

GREENS SENATOR FOR VICTORIA PROUD GUNNAI, GUNDITJMARA AND DJAB WURRUNG WOMAN

I was born into a political family, starting with my great-grandmother Edna Brown. Aboriginal people were being buried as paupers, so Nan set up the Aboriginal Funeral Benefits Fund in the 1960s to ensure our people were buried with dignity. In the ’70s, her daughter Alma was instrumental in setting up the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. Then my mother was a co-commissioner to the Bringing Them Home report and sat on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. She met with then prime minister John Howard, and I was the young pregnant tag-along.

I only really got called an activist when I joined the Greens. Before that I was a Blak woman fighting for Country and my people’s rights. The label of activist takes away from how we fought for Country for over 200 years. My old people who fought weren’t activists; they were land protectors.

You get handed the baton in the Blackfella world. You’re picked up and told, “There you go. Your turn. Get out there.” You’ve got no choice when your elders choose you to be a spokesperson. They have faith that you’ll follow the old values of our culture. I’ve made mistakes; I’ve learnt from them; but as long as my people tell me that I’m doing the right things, then I’m going to keep doing them.

Equality in Australia has gone backwards – just look at the statistics. There are over 20,000 Aboriginal children in out-of-home care right now. In the 30 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, we’ve had almost 500 deaths. That number continues to climb. The imprisonment rate has gone up nearly 500 per cent for Aboriginal women in Victoria since 2009. Children are incarcerated from the age of 10. Suicide, homelessness and family violence rates are getting worse. We have a weak government that doesn’t allow Aboriginal