Dear GRNers,

We hope you are well. As I write to you I am listening to the rain that comes with Makuru, the Season of Fertility, and the coldest and wettest season. I do so sitting on the unceded country of the Whadjuk Noongar people who so generously share with us philosophical, technological and scientific knowledges, which were subjugated by colonisers, and which they have kept alive. I pay my respects to these people and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Australia. How we do so is something that I have been reflecting on in the past fortnight as we have recognised National Sorry Day and National Reconciliation week.

National Sorry Day is held on 26 May and commemorates the day Bringing Them Home  was tabled in Parliament in 1997. The report is a result of a Government Inquiry into policies which ordered the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families. The symbol for National Sorry Day is the native cotton flower, a hardy flower that survives in most climates and which is a soft purple, indicating compassion and spiritual healing. At Curtin a number of events jointly hosted for the first time by the Cultural Capability team, the Guild and Centre for Aboriginal Studies were held for National Sorry Day. After lunch a Yarning Story-telling was led by two members of the Cultural Capability team: Whadjuk Noongar woman, Jayde Conway and Noongar man, Elisha Jacobs-Smith. With characteristic generosity they shared the stories of their families and their grandparents. Writing on the experience afterwards Jayde sent this for me to share:

"Being asked to reflect on National Sorry Day is often a request that has so many layers or simplicity and at the same time complexities.  It gives the opportunity for friends, colleagues and other community members to acknowledge members of Stolen Generations and the journeys that have occurred to try and heal from and overcome the hurt. However, this is one day, a small piece in the much bigger picture that is my grandmother’s story, my grandfather’s story and the story of so many others that impacts many aspects of our everyday lives.  This year was the first year I shared my grandparents story in a public forum and it felt empowering to honour them this way."

Since its institution in 1996, National Reconciliation week has run 27 May to 3 June, spanning two significant dates in Australian history: to open, the 1967 Constitutional referendum which gave the Commonwealth the power to make laws for “Aboriginals” and to count First Nations people in the census, and, to close, the landmark Mabo decision which overturned the myth of terra nullius, recognised the pre-colonial existence of Indigenous people and laid the groundwork for the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). The theme this year was “Be Brave. Make Change”  and, as Dr Carly Steele put it to us in a research forum, it is a challenge to us all to “tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation”.

It is this unfinished business that Jayde referred to in her reflection, and which the newly appointed Dean of Indigenous Futures in the Faculty of Humanities, Yindjibarndi woman, Mandy Downing, picked up on in a recent email exchange: “The irony of Sorry Day being separate to National Reconciliation Week is not lost on me. I find it troubling that we reflect on Sorry Day and yet choose not to action the largely unmet 54 recommendations of the Bringing them Home Report. Then we wake up the next day and its Reconciliation Week.”

Here Downing takes us to a debate about responsibilities and legacies and reminds us of a brutal reality: an inquiry into past policies does not mean that the practices are not carried through into our present, in other words continued practices of child removal stand as one example of the ways in which self-determination of First Nations peoples – and reconciliation – is limited despite Mabo and the 1967 Constitutional Referendum. It is these issues which are given acute attention in the work of Assoc. Prof. Hannah McGlade. A member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, McGlade sat at the 21^st Forum in New York in May which called on national governments and global institutions to work harder to support and protect Indigenous lives and land. The Forum also announced that the United Nations’ Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will visit Australia for the first time and while here they will look at human rights issues affecting Indigenous people as well as child removals.

As National Reconciliation week ends, Pride Month begins, this year with the slogan: “Be Brave, Be Strong, Be You”. As we shift perspective slightly, or widen perspective, the personal again meets the political, and we are reengaged on issues of autonomy and agency – on bodies and ways of being which can be seen, heard, included and engaged in a public and civic spaces, an issue which was only too real with the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill 2022. Soft/Hard: radical love by R. Goo opened this month at John Curtin Gallery. Taking pieces from the Curtin collection, the late multidisciplinary trans artist, Bec O’Neil, engaged the theme, ‘Queering the Gallery.’ The 40 pieces in the exhibition cover 50 years of art history and include artists such as Sidney Nolan, Lisa Reihana and Theo Costantino, who has written the exhibition essay, as they explore trauma, queerness, alternate histories and futures. As we view them O’Neill urges us to accept ourselves, however we are, and to do the same for those around us, a beautiful vision for us to take with us through Makuru.

Samantha, Therese and Liz