Anti-Racism

(Content warning: war, genocide, Aboriginal deaths in custody)

Settler colonialism is based on racism, and requires ongoing brutality and oppression. We can see this playing in Gaza and Australia. Anti-racism is understanding oppression and taking action against it.

Genocide in Gaza

I don’t have words for the horrors that the Israeli government is perpetrating on people in Gaza, enabled by Western governments. Racism, dehumanisation and colonialism have made apartheid and genocide possible. We need an immediate and total ceasefire to stop the genocide of Palestinian people. The atrocities of the October 7th attacks by Hamas cannot be used to justify the ongoing killing of civilians in Gaza.

Incarceration of Aboriginal People and Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Since George Floyd’s murder, many of us well-intentioned white and non-Indigenous people can no longer continue to cruise in the denial and apathy of not taking urgent action to acknowledge and challenge the racism within ourselves and our society.

It should not have taken the murder of George Floyd for Indigenous deaths in custody to register in the white Australian psyche, but it has. Aboriginal people have been killed in similar ways to George Floyd. Over 500 Aboriginal and Torres Straight islanders have died or been killed in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. You can learn more about the almost unfathomable injustice of policing and incarceration against Indigenous people in this documentary, Incarceration Nation which you can watch on SBS and learn more about here.

For the past 6 years I have lived and worked on the Wurundjeri lands of the Kulin nation. Since May 2021 I have been working on Walyalup, the lands of the Wadjuk people of the Nyungar nation. I acknowledge the Aboriginal custodians of the lands we live on, that sovereignty was never ceded, and that colonisation is a present-day lived experience for Aboriginal people. I am aware that many of my privileges have been a consequence of the brutal dispossession of our Indigenous people. I am deeply sorry.

Resources

If you are also a well-intentioned non-Indigenous person and not sure what to do, here are some resources that may assist you:

  • Educate yourself by listening to Aboriginal voices. For example, this is a lecture by Dr Chelsea Bond (now Chelsea Watego), an unapologetic Indigenous academic (she starts speaking after 13 minutes). She speaks powerfully about colonisation from an Aboriginal frame of reference.
  • Tara Brach has put together some resources (from the US context) to assist us in doing the anti-racism work in ourselves and our society, including meditations, talks, podcasts and a reading list.

If you want to take some immediate action, you could try searching the internet to find Aboriginal owned and run organisations to donate to. I believe we should not add to the burden that Aboriginal people experience by expecting more emotional labour through asking them to tell us what we can do. Instead, we can educate ourselves by reading and listening, and taking actions in line with our values to truly begin to reduce racism in ourselves and our society.

Here are some starting points for donations: