Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia

Anita Heiss

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781863959810
• eBook ISBN: 9781743820421
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Childhood stories of family, country and belonging

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia?

This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

This groundbreaking collection will enlighten, inspire and educate about the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia today.

Contributors include- Tony Birch, Deborah Cheetham, Adam Goodes, Terri Janke, Patrick Johnson, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Jack Latimore, Celeste Liddle, Amy McQuire, Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Miranda Tapsell, Jared Thomas, Aileen Walsh, Alexis West, Tara June Winch, and many, many more.

'Wouldn't it be great if this book was required reading for every Australian child? Maybe then, the next generation might have more success than preceding ones at reconciliation.' —Good Weekend

Notes on Contributors

SUSIE AND ALICE ANDERSON are Wergaia women who grew up on nearby Wotjobulok country in Horsham, Victoria. Susie (27) is a writer and producer, currently living in Sydney, who has been published in The Lifted Brow, Australian Book Review and Voiceworks. Alice (22) is a singer–songwriter who has performed with the likes of Archie Roach and Dan Sultan. Her first album is soon to be released through CAAMA.

EVELYN ARALUEN is a poet and teacher researching Indigenous literatures at the University of Sydney, where she is completing her PhD. She coordinates Black Rhymes Aboriginal Poetry Nights in Redfern and is a founding member of Students Support Aboriginal Communities, a grassroots organisation based in Sydney. Born and raised in Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung nation.

BEBE BACKHOUSE is a Bardi man from Western Australia. With a background in classical music as a concert pianist, repetiteur and teacher, his educational work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in the Kimberley led him to win ‘Western Australian Young Person of the Year in the Arts’ at twenty-one. He now lives in Melbourne where he designs and produces creative high-profile festivals and events for that city’s diverse communities.

ALICIA BATES is a twenty-eight-year-old Gunditjmara, Kirrae Whurrong woman living in south-west Victoria. She is an early childhood teacher, foster carer for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, and a previous director of the Gunditjmara Co-Op board. Alicia has degrees in both education and psychology. Alicia shares her story in the hope of dispelling pre-conceived negative views about Aboriginal people.

DON BEMROSE is a Gungarri man and Australia’s foremost male Aboriginal classical opera singer. In professional productions, he has sung four leads of which three were in world premieres: Pecan Summer for Short Black Opera Company; From a Black Sky for The Street Theatre; Cloudstreet for State Opera of South Australia. Don currently works for the ACT Government within the Education Directorate at a Bilingual Italian Primary School while contributing to the local and national arts sector as a speaker, trainer and performer.

TONY BIRCH is the author of Ghost River, which won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing, and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. He is also the author of Shadowboxing, and three short story collections – Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People. Tony is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio, and a regular guest at writers’ festivals. He lives in Melbourne and is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University.

NORLEEN BRINKWORTH was born in 1947 in Yarrabah mission, Queensland, where her grandparents were placed as young children at the beginning of the twentieth century. She later went to school in Cairns, where her parents moved with their six children. Opting to do factory work to help supplement her family’s finances, Norleen let her secondary schooling lapse but returned later, as a mature student and mother with two children, and obtained a tertiary degree. She worked in the judicial system until retirement seventeen years later.

KATIE BRYAN’s great-great-grandmother was born on Jackie White’s station, near Naracoorte, in 1855. She was the first light-skinned girl born in the district and, at the age of two, she was taken from her mother and sent to Murrabinna Reserve near Kingston SE. Katie is the first generation of her family to grow up without language, culture and connection to kin and country. Her family have been assimilated; she is the only one who remembers their origins.

DEBORAH CHEETHAM is a Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer and educator, who has been a leader and pioneer in the Australian arts landscape for more than twenty-five years. She was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2013. In 2009 Deborah established Short Black Opera, a national not-for-profit opera company devoted to the development of Indigenous singers. The following year she produced the company’s first opera, Pecan Summer, Australia’s first-ever Indigenous opera, which has been performed around the country, and in 2016 became the first Indigenous opera to be presented at the Sydney Opera House.

NATALIE CROMB is a mother, legal professional, writer and activist. Belonging to the Gamilaraay people of Burra Bee Dee Aboriginal Reserve, she enjoyed a childhood on country despite being born and raised two hours away in Tamworth. Natalie now lives and works in Sydney and returns home to country and family whenever possible. She is a determined advocate of change and reform for her people, a responsibility instilled in her by her grandfather (a Gamilaraay elder) from a very young age. She is a founding member of the Gomeroi/Gamilaraay Sovereign Peoples, advocates for Treaty and structural reform of our political and justice systems.

KAREN DAVIS is a Mamu–Kuku Yalanji woman who grew up in a family of six in Far North Queensland during the 1970s and 1980s amongst a backdrop of crystal-clear swimming holes, monsoonal rains, sugar cane burn-offs and tropical cyclones. She now lives in Melbourne, works in the tertiary education sector and volunteers for community radio.

IAN DUDLEY lives on Wirangu manda (land) on the west coast of South Australia, but his roots could be from just about anywhere. He has three young daughters and, when he’s not running around after them, he splits his time between teaching, helping revegetate a rundown old station back into the she-oak forest it would have been 200 years ago and trying to catch a few waves in peace.

ALICE EATHER was a bilingual school teacher, activist, poet and leader. Born in 1988 in Brisbane, she completed primary, secondary and tertiary education in Queensland before moving in 2010 to live in Maningrida to pursue educational and community projects. In 2014 Alice became the first Ndjebbana-speaking Aboriginal teacher to graduate from the Remote Indigenous Teacher Education program in Maningrida though Charles Darwin University. That same year she also won the NT Young Achievers Environment Award for her work establishing ‘Protect Arnhem Land’, a community campaign against coal-seam gas-fracking on the coast of Arnhem Land. Alice took her own life in June 2017, but her family hopes her work and messages will remain as a legacy to inspire others.

SHANNON FOSTER is a D’harawal saltwater knowledge keeper, educator and artist who was born, raised and is still living on country in Sydney’s Tucoerah (Georges Rive...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Anita Heiss Introduction
• Susie and Alice Anderson Two tiddas
• Evelyn Araluen Finding ways home
• Bebe Backhouse It’s not over
• Alicia Bates My story
• Don Bemrose Dear Australia
• Tony Birch My father has a story
• Norleen Brinkworth Murri + Migloo = Meeks Mob
• Katie Bryan Easter, 1969
• Deborah Cheetham So much still pending
• Natalie Cromb ‘This is Nat, she’s Abo’
• Karen Davis Thanks for the childhood travels
• Ian Dudley Growing up beige
• Alice Eather Yúya Karrabúrra
• Shannon Foster White bread dreaming
• Jason Goninan There are no halves
• Adam Goodes The sporting life
• Jodi Haines A Tasmanian Toomelah tiger
• John Hartley I remember
• Terri Janke The streets of my youth
• Keira Jenkins What it’s like
• Patrick Johnson My life’s voyage
• Scott Kennedy Red dust kids
• Sharon Kingaby December 21
• Ambelin Kwaymullina Growing up, grow up, grown-ups
• Jack Latimore Far enough away to be on my way back home
• Celeste Liddle Black bum
• Mathew Lillyst Recognised
• Taryn Little Just a young girl
• Amy McQuire Stranger danger
• Melanie Mununggurr-Williams Grey
• Doreen Nelson Different times
• Sharon Payne When did you first realise you were Aboriginal?
• Zachary Penrith-Puchalski ‘Abo Nose’
• Carol Pettersen Too white to be black, too black to be white . . .
• Todd Phillips Living between two knowledge systems
• Kerry Reed-Gilbert The little town on the railway track
• William Russell A story from my life
• Marlee Silva Cronulla to Papunya
• Liza-Mare Syron Letterbox-gate
• Frank Szekely From Marree to the city
• Miranda Tapsell Nobody puts Baby Spice in a corner
• Jared Thomas Daredevil days
• Ceane G. Towers Finding my belonging
• Aileen Walsh My childhood
• Shahni Wellington Life lessons, or something like them
• Alexis West It’s too hot
• Alison Whittaker Aboriginemo
• John Williams-Mozley Split affinity
• Tara June Winch First, second, third, fourth
• Tamika Worrell The Aboriginal equation
• Notes on Contributors
• Back Cover