Book extract: Understanding the challenge for First Nations peoples

A ‘much unloved people’

In the introduction to this book, I quoted from Noel Pearson’s 2022 Boyer Lectures. He described the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, laying bare the uncomfortable truth that Indigenous Australians are ‘a much unloved people’.

You may have thought Pearson was being a little harsh to suggest this. I would have too if I had not personally witnessed the truth behind his words many times in my life.

I learnt just how unfriendly white Australians could be to my people when I was around nine years old. After a wonderful and memorable afternoon at the Darwin Show, my parents, younger sisters and I were driving out of the dusty car park. As we hit the Stuart Highway, a red ute drove alongside us with a group of young white men sitting in the tray. It bewildered and frightened us when, unprovoked, the men spat vile racist abuse at us – ‘Filthy abos’, ‘Dirty boongs’, and worse. Then they sped away.

My strongest memory from the bicentenary year, when I was eleven, is another example. Our family was on a long driving holiday, going from Darwin, down the Stuart Highway to Adelaide, and returning home via the east coast. To make the holiday affordable, we would often pull over to cook and eat dinner on the side of the road. Dad would drive through the night, napping in the car if he became too tired, my mum asleep in the front passenger seat and us three kids rugged up in the back. I experienced some of the best of our country on that trip. I also experienced the worst. In a small country town in the south of Queensland, a one-hotel sort of town, the proprietors of the hotel wouldn’t serve us. Perhaps we were going to stay in a hotel because Dad was particularly tired that evening. But he drove on. His anger would have kept him awake that night.

Just today, as I write this chapter in January 2024, I have received a text message from an anonymous person who obviously holds strong views about Indigenous Australians. I write it here exactly as it was written:

if this number is correct it should be thomas mayo . mr mayo , as i live in australia , i know what an australian aboriginals appearance is , and it is not you , david gulpilil yes but not you , i remind you that yes , the fullblood aboriginals were here first , then people from many other nation , then wannabes like you , you and your ilk are a by product of fullbloods and us , so , remember we were here before you (wannabes) . the voice was decided with a NO , you lost , move on

I wouldn’t usually share a message like this, though it is one of many. I have received worse: menacing questions about family members and death threats. I felt that sharing this one as an example is important, though, because we need to remove any doubt about how horribly racist some Australians are.

Familiarity matters

During the referendum campaign, it became clear to me that many Australians do not know who Indigenous people are. This unfamiliarity made voters susceptible to the No campaign’s scare tactics and methods to confuse voters so they would turn against us.

It is easier for a person to believe a vicious rumour about a stranger than about a friend. Familiarity matters. This plays out in the way many Australians are led to believe terrible lies about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, because in the main, they don’t know us.

That we are strangers to most Australians makes sense. As I mentioned earlier, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up less than 4 per cent of the population, spread across the vastness of one of the largest countries (by land mass) on Earth. But the reason for the negative and unfriendly views goes much deeper, both historically and as part of the Australian psyche today.

In his Boyer Lectures, Noel Pearson mentioned WEH Stanner, a non-Indigenous anthropologist who gave his own Boyer Lectures in 1968. Stanner explained how Australia’s sense of its past, its collective memory, had been built on a state of selective forgetfulness that couldn’t be ‘explained by absent-mindedness’.

To get his point across he used a powerful analogy showing how ignorance toward Indigenous Australians – our existence, our humanity and our rights – has been by design. Stanner said: ‘It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.’

There are those of us – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people – who have broken the spell and stepped up to Stanner’s window. We have seen a vision of an Australia that includes the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But we must be aware that the cult of forgetfulness continues, maintained by a few ultra-conservative historians, shock-jock radio commentators, columnists and TV hosts, and it has a real effect on the psyche of many of the people we love.

These immoral influencers have made a career from a niche in the media that exploits how little Australians know about Indigenous people. They exaggerate, misinform and use fallacies to generate clicks, to create fear. They loudly ask questions without accepting the answers – which come from Indigenous leaders and eminent legal authorities – as a way to cause confusion. Most egregiously, they lie when they claim that Indigenous people want Australians’ personal property, especially their land.

When people are told to mistrust Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and when combined with the deep-seated amnesia that Stanner speaks of, it is more likely these people will resist change.

The referendum was an opportunity for voters to face up to the past and present injustices. And many responded positively. There were valuable, open conversations that I and many supporters enjoyed across the country. But the cult of forgetfulness and fearmongering continued its work – the result was that people were angry at us. Such strong feelings were certainly felt at the polling booths.

The greatest challenge in achieving justice for Indigenous Australians is twofold. First, we need to understand the inherent prejudice that will take a strong and united effort to overcome. Secondly, we need to help fair-minded Australians become familiar with the truth of who we First Peoples are.

We must use truth to protect our fellow Australians from the lies they will continue to hear.

A note about Bad Actors

Almost 60 years on from Stanner’s groundbreaking lecture, voters were invited to widen their view through that window in order to appreciate the full vista of who we are as Australians. We had an opportunity to dispel the cult of forgetfulness at its core, through constitutional recognition. Collectively, we were on the cusp of stepping toward the window. But some chose to obstruct the view.

What would compel people to stand in the way of such an important revelation? Noel Pearson outlined what proved to be an irresistible temptation for Bad Actors in his Boyer Lectures when he went on to say:

If success in the forthcoming referendum is predicated on our popularity as a people, then it is doubtful we will succeed. It does not and will not take much to mobilise antipathy against Aboriginal people and to conjure the worst imaginings about us and the recognition we seek. For those who wish to oppose our recognition it will be like shooting fish in a barrel. An inane thing to do – but easy. A heartless thing to do – but easy.

In any analysis of the referendum, whether in a conversation at home or at work, or in an article, book or essay you might read, it may be that you agree with arguments about flaws in the Yes campaign; you may speculate on what the Prime Minister could have done differently; or in hindsight, you might believe we should have waited for more favourable economic times.

While all aspects of the attempted constitutional recognition of the First Peoples is fair game, we should always remind people that the most significant factor that turned Australians from a majority who would vote Yes in the early polls, into a majority who voted No, were the powerful few – the Bad Actors – who chose to use the referendum as a weapon in their ideological wars against peace and justice in our country.

We should also remember that a vast majority of Indigenous communities voted Yes.

This is an extract from Always Was, Always Will Be: The campaign for justice and recognition continues by Thomas Mayo, published by Hardie Grant Explore. Mayo has campaigned for the Uluru Statement’s proposals of Voice, Treaty and Truth-Telling since it was created in May 2017 and was a leading spokesperson in the Yes campaign for the 2023 Voice referendum.