GRIEVING ABOUT THE STATE OF THE WORLD

It seemed appropriate that in NAIDOC Week I finally got to see the beautifully crafted theatre piece 7 Stages of Grieving created by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman. It was first performed 30 years ago, and like Fran, it's hard to believe that many of the stories still play out for indigeneous people. In the words of the Yirra Yaakin programme for this new production:

From the Stolen Generations to protest marches, funeral rites to silent mourning, she gives voice to the collective stories of her ancestors, her family, and her people. The play shifts between moments of anger, humour, sorrow, and strength, as she becomes a vessel for memory and truth. Structured around seven phases of grief, Dreaming, Invasion, Genocide, Protection, Assimilation, Self-Determination, and Reconciliation, the work invites you to reflect on what has been lost, and to bear witness to what endures: culture, connection to Country, and the resilience of First Nations people. 

Each of the issues are still with us - deaths that are too early, deaths in custody, children removed from community, racism, a history ignored. It ends an a slightly more optimistic note with the reconciliation walks but the 2023 defeated referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament would have soured the mood yet again.

1994 - Sistergirl (photo by Jeff Busby)

The sense that for every small step forward in our growth as a community, there's an easy step back into racism reminds me of a story about indigenous actors facing discrimintion in Melbourne. In 1994, the cast of Sistergirl travelled from Perth to Melbourne to perform for Melbourne Theatre Company. I went out with some staff to the airport to welcome them and take them to their accommodation in St Kilda. One of the actors wanted to go shopping so I asked my Marketing Manager to take him to the nearest supermarket. She rang a short time later, upset, to say that three taxis had refused to take him. He was a tall, beautiful dancer from the Kimberley region. I suggested that she hide him, hail the taxi herself - she was petit and blonde - and then he could enter the taxi with her. That worked. But why should it have to?

Nearly 20 years late, in 2013, indigenous actors working on a production at Malthouse, had exactly the same experience. What makes the situation so horrible is that it's likely most of the taxi drivers concerned where from somewhere else and probably not white. Someone, the taxi companies perhaps, had told them not to trust indigenous customers.

And ten years on, the director of 7 Stages of Grieving, Bobbi Henry, spoke of her 15 year old son being followed in Myer by a security person. When the young man was brave enough to challenge them as to why him, the answer was "we're told to". Institutlional racism again.

On a more positive note, the Yirra Yaakin production was strong and moving with a powerful performance by young Noongar and Yamatiji woman Shontane Farmer.