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I’ve had a serious bout of writer’s block since October 15 and I’ve realised it is because I have been silently grieving over the result of the Voice referendum combined with the horror of the Hamas-Israel catastrophe – the combined tragedy has tied my tongue in a big knot.
By Jacquelene Pearson
I’ve rarely, if ever, suffered writer’s block so it has taken a while, more than two whole weeks, to even self-diagnose. I have still been writing – that’s a big part of my job after all – but I have not been able to craft meaningful sentences about my grief and it has been a double-whammy. So here goes.
I knew the Yes campaign for the Voice to Parliament referendum was hard up against it from the moment Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, cynically withdrew bipartisan support for the model that had been put in place by the government he had been part of for a decade.
Part of me, however, wanted to believe that we were a generous nation, well-informed about our constitution and parliamentary democracy. So much so that, just as we had in 1967, we would answer a very simple question about the very nature of our constitution and democracy with a resounding ‘yes’.
I had deeply considered the radical/progressive ‘No’ arguments and found some truth in them. However, I kept asking myself that one simple question. Do the First Nations people of this continent deserve recognition in its constitution?
I still don’t understand how anyone could answer ‘No’ to that question. It is no different to the 1967 question – do First Nations people deserve to be recognised as citizens and given the vote? How could you vote ‘No’? Well, back then, we voted ‘Yes’.
Irrespective of what you think about the campaigns, the divisions within the First Nations community, the thing that left me crying on the inside for the past two weeks was the overt racism, enabled and emboldened by Dutton, other key No players and the right-wing media.
There I was in my ‘Yes’ t-shirt at the good old Point Clare Scout Hall at 8am and I instantly felt alone and lonely. Ignored by neighbours and acquaintances and thrown into a parallel universe where I was asked whether I “knew any Aboriginals” or how we “would identify THEM”, with compulsory micro-chipping as one serious suggestion.
I wish I’d done more, been louder, had more conversations, dropped brochures in more letterboxes, found time to help on pre-poll, written treatises on The Point instead of trying to be subtle and responsible. Now the opportunity has gone. Kids are still being locked up. Deaths in custody, kidney failure, diabetes, even infant mortality continue to resemble rates found in third-world countries or worse.
Well, no more silence for me. We must move now to Truth telling. We need this to happen at regional, state and national levels. With respect, we should have done it first. We can only move forward together if we confront the past and we have failed, miserably, to do that. If we cannot have voice, we need to fight for Truth and Treaty and keep fighting until there are no more deaths in custody, no more premature deaths for First Nations peoples at all.
Then there is the evil of Hamas and Netanyahu’s Israel – both evil. We are seeing this bloodbath unedited and in real time. It is raw and inhuman and deeply distressing. It needs to stop.
I am a news junky and this is only the second time in my life that I cannot stand to watch the news. The first was the Bali bombings, mainly because I was sheltering my children from that horror. Now it is me shielding myself from the body bags and wounded children.
When will we ever learn? I suppose we should be thankful for our government’s UN abstention but I am not. It seems that, somewhere between 1967 and 2023 Australians lost their collective humanity and goodwill towards First Nations. When it comes to Israel and Gaza, we have confirmed the bipartisan loss of our former courage as a nation that stood up to power in the name of human rights.
Australia should be leading the charge for a cease fire, for the border to be opened so adequate aid can get in and innocent civilians can get out.
