NAIDOC Call and Response

Sam’s NAIDOC reflection this week felt like a call-and-response. These are my thoughts, as I find time in my own way to reflect on and honour the significance of NAIDOC week. I’m choosing to share it, because I know it can be difficult sometimes to envision some of the outcomes here that we’re being invited to imagine. Especially when we're often without evidence or example in our day-to-day lives of the types of positive shifts necessary to bring about the systemic transformation that can happen at the meeting place between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ways of being.

These are my imaginings, worthwhile contemplations that have given me more direction and sharpened my focus. Yours will look and feel different to you. Yet they’re connected because when we meaningfully respond to a call like this, we serve a collective purpose of reimagining a future that dismantles old structures that continue to harm and divide, leveling and tending to foundations of reimagining a better way forward, together.

Next Generation

Strength: How can I contribute to the strength of the next generation?

This is less about doing and more about getting out of the way and recognising our kids’ innate proclivity to problem solve and love each other without too much interference and conditioning from the adults around them. They will surely need guidance and safe boundaries to navigate the complexities of these times and this world. But discernment is needed to know when to act out of love, rather than fear.

I can fortify their sense of self and potential by helping to create the environments, structures and communities that allow them to be themselves and develop their own path of inheriting and caring for Country and each other.

Young people want more than to just be heard. They want to be listened to and understood, and for me as a parent and in other roles where I support young people, this means relinquishing power and the belief that I know best to make room to be receptive to the creatively powerful new ideas that are so often only produced by young minds.

As someone on the path of allyship, this also means educating my kids around the history of the place they call home (learnings they may not receive in school), learning about Aboriginal culture with and from Aboriginal people, and again, listening to how they want to be involved in their community and the decisions that affect them.

My seven-year-old daughter asked me an interesting question this week:

“Mum, how does someone become Aboriginal… like, is it only if their parents are?” 

I began to say, “Yeah, if it’s in your blood..." But stopped and said, “I think that’s part of it, but I’m not really sure. Should we ask Aunty or Uncle?"

Realising the privilege that my children are growing up with access to Aboriginal role models, it isn’t beyond any of us to pause and get curious with our kids, acknowledging we don’t have all the answers, not only to cultural questions but a lot of complex questions in life, empowering them (and us) to learn things together. 

My daughter is yet to become aware of her privilege and the extent to which systemic racism poisons the world she loves and already so instinctually wants to protect. So regarding strength, I see my role over the next few years as she develops as to neither shield nor shame her from these realities but to allow her curious and insightful mind to slowly explore the truths about the history of the place she calls home and walk with her in navigating her place within it.

I believe she’ll live to see much greater outcomes on the path of justice and reconciliation in this country than I will in this lifetime; all our kids will. A strong legacy is happening now, with how we choose to support the next generation.

Legacy: How am I investing my energy?

The idea of legacy that I connect with is not really linear or tangible like something that gets left behind when my body dies. It’s something more abstract that impacts my own little ecosystem as a result of how and where I invest my energy.

When I think about it in the context of reimagining a future society that centres First Nations ideologies and leadership, I ask myself, what am I doing now to facilitate this paradigm shift and redistribution of power? 

Legacy is transmitted and passed on in many ways. We are all connected and are constantly impacting each other and the environment with every decision we make. So I see my role in creating a positive legacy as an unlearning of destructive and conditioned thought patterns that reinforce colonial structures, a willingness and capability to learn and apply the Indigenous knowledge systems that I'm invited into, and consciously choosing the thoughts, words and actions that I transmit and imprint – not only to the children in my life but to everyone. It’s aspirational, and I will sometimes get it wrong, but it’s something to set my compass to and keep orienting towards.

As I get older, I’m noticing a blurring of lines that used to distinguish life categories like “career”, “family”, “community”, "health", and “home”. The phrase "How you do one thing is how you do everything" resonates loudly in my mind and inspires how I want to live. Realising and remembering the interconnectedness and the cyclical impermanence of life is a powerful way to guide the decisions that ultimately create legacy.

Vision: The Meeting Place

It's hard to imagine a collaborative future between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people as a prompt to do by myself. I feel like it’s a co-creative process that needs many open hearts and minds, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, meeting at an intersection somewhere safe and sacred.

Still, there are the practical and immediate outcomes that I believe need to be envisioned, advocated for and upheld by non-Aboriginal people. Outcomes that have been a priority for Aboriginal communities for a long time and that require a greater groundswell of support from the rest of us. To quote Sam and state some of them again here:

“…To honour this week meaningfully, we need more than acknowledgement and celebration. We need:”

• Real investment in culturally grounded leadership pathways

• A shift from consultation to co-governance

• Structures that embed truth-telling and shared decision-making

• Recognition that Indigenous governance is not new; it’s just long been valued as less than, from a colonial lens, for too long that the West is best.

When I envision these outcomes, I see community, collaboration, diverse populations and ways of thinking. I see grassroots initiatives. Projects and structures that exist outside of government hierarchy and politics. I see practice and failure as well as persistence. I see compassion, humility, vulnerability, connection, and creativity. I see spaces where deep listening and conversation can occur without agenda or reactive judgement. I see many paths and many ways to find answers.

I’m reminded of Stan Grant. Most relevant is his book Muriyang, his recent interview after 2 years away from media, and his life's work as a journalist, theologian, and activist. But it’s Him I am reminded of. He seems to embody the convergence of qualities, virtues, ideologies, and systems (I don’t have the words for it).. the space where worlds connect and truth can transcend limitations. His words reach a part of me that is beyond identification, and I wonder if this is a clue to finding those sacred meeting places.

Sometimes we can’t envision something until it is upon us. Until it is felt. The other day we gathered as a team to strategise a plan for activating and potentialising our new Impact Policy HQ. We talked about creating a space that reflects such an intersection of worlds. Where lines blur and forms such as community, art, culture, music, policy, and poetry coincide and connect. Grey areas: creative spaces where potential for growth and renewal exists. It was the first time in a “work meeting” that I heard the word “Spirit”. I can’t speak to how or why, but it invited in a deeper level of integrity (at least for me), and I was reminded we can be so much more when we gather than just the sum of our minds and bodies.

I never would have been able to imagine some of the outcomes we are working towards as a team by myself, because when we come together with intention, imagination and energy are shared and something new is accessed and created. I might not be able to clearly hold or articulate a vision for a future that prioritises and deeply values First Nations people and culture, but I can keep following the path and lean into more experiences that create and sustain the intersections that birth new/old and better ways of thinking, being and doing.

In reflection - Vision, Legacy and Strength are deeply connected themes that are rooted in the soil that will nurture the next generation. They are a call to each of us to examine the ways we can tend to this soil, from which we will all grow.

Authored by Holly West for Impact Policy