Rebecca Bateman:

Wow. And the event hasn't even started yet. How lucky are we? Yuma everyone. My name is Rebecca Bateman and I'm the Director of Indigenous Engagement here at the National Library. It is my very great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight, both here in the theatre and those of you watching from home for this very special event on National Indigenous Literacy Day. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land that we're on tonight, the Ngunnawal people, to pay my respects to them, to their elders past and present, through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including the many other nations who have long and enduring connections with this country as well. I would like to extend that respect, as I always do, to the many, many First Nations peoples and elders whose stories and histories and knowledges reside in the four walls of this very big building and that we're extraordinarily privileged to be steward of.

I'm most excited to introduce Wallabindi, although I don't think there's any introduction necessary.

Wallabindi is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, visual artist and educator, and we were lucky to see some of her artwork up at the front here as well. And a proud Wardandi Bibbulmun Noongar and Yamatji and Myanmar woman. She's joined tonight by Richard Gorter on guitar and Jon Jones on percussion.

Wallabindi:

Trouble.

Rebecca Bateman:

I don't want to talk for too long, but I just wanted to acknowledge that music is a way for us to honour our heritage and our ancestors while keeping culture and language alive and strong. It brings strength by enabling us to join the resilience of our ancestors from one generation to the next. It transforms a story into a living event that is shared by both the storyteller and a listener. And what a storyteller we have with us tonight. Wallabindi is a multi-talented singer. I've already said that.

Wallabindi:

No pressure.

Rebecca Bateman:

In First Nations community, storytelling and literacy extends well beyond writing and reading. When it comes to sharing knowledge, history, culture, oral storytelling is where it is. And when you overlay music onto that, it becomes living, breathing, shared experience. And that's what we're very privileged to have here tonight. It's especially meaningful for us to be gathered here for an evening of storytelling and cultural celebration and music on National Indigenous Literacy Day.

There could be no one better to do that with than Wallabindi. Wallabindi's music urges, deep listening, reconciliation and shared pride in First Nations cultures and stories. Things that have been championed throughout her 20 year career where she has performed widely at schools, festivals, workshops and protests. And recently she presented a TEDx Canberra talk and I actually watched that talk earlier today. It was very moving and the beautiful performance that went along with it was just. Do yourself a favour if you haven't watched it, do, and it was something for me as someone with a very similar family story that really resonated. So I'm not going to take up any more time. Please help me in welcoming Wallabindi, Jon and Richard and sit back and enjoy.

Wallabindi:

Thank you so much. Thank you, sissy. Thank you to the National Library for hosting someone like me. And, to these troublemakers for joining me. Two very, very dear people to me, Jon and Richard. Before I start my sharing with you, I would also like to acknowledge that we're meeting here on unceded Aboriginal land. And I wanted to stand up to acknowledge this because it's also acknowledging you all too. So I would also like to acknowledge we're meeting here on unceded Aboriginal land. This is the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I really want to acknowledge their tens and thousands of years of care of this land that we get to work, live, and play on.

And further to that, I also want to acknowledge country and the pain that she holds. Equally, I want to acknowledge her resilience and her incredible ancient knowledge. Country speaks to me on the wind, through the salt water breeze, through the red earth that stains my feet when I go walking on the land my mother was born on. Through the birds, the cheeky jitty-jitty my people's messenger bird in feathers falling at my feet or a dandelion seed floating in the breeze. If you stop to listen, you will hear country speak to you too. I acknowledge my ancestors and all First Nations people. They remind me who I am and what I came here to do. To all here tonight, I acknowledge each of you and the lands and people you are descended from.

I acknowledge the elders that never gave up and continue to pass on knowledge and wisdom. I also acknowledge our emerging leaders, our young people coming out unapologetically, black loud and proud. It really fills my heart. Working in education in ACT schools, I see that and it's very, very, it's just beautiful to see. Above all, I acknowledge the staunch matriarchy, say that fast three times, that I descend from if it wasn't for them and all the things that they endured would not be here. Lastly, I acknowledge that today is Indigenous Literacy Day and I'm very, very honoured to be here sharing with you tonight. Thank you so much for being here, taking time out of your busy lives. I really, really appreciate it. So yeah, we're going to. Oh, hang on. I'm going to share with you.

Kaya you mob, or Yuma. Kaya is hello from Noongar Country where I'm from. So just a little bit about me. I was born in Perth, Boorloo, on Noongar Boodjar. Boodjar is the Noongar word for country. So Noongar Whadjuk is that area and, yeah grew up on the beaches of that beautiful place. And my family, all of my connections run up and down the West Coast. So my mum was born on Yamatji country and a lot of family connections for us are there. My grandfather, my mum's father, he was a proud Wardandi Noongar man. And Noongar country, just to give you a quick little Noongar lesson, so there's about 14 different language groups in Noongar country. It's all the southwest of Australia, Southwestern Australia. And so Wardandi is kind of, we call it forest like saltwater country. If you've ever been to Margaret River, you've been on my ancestral homelands.

It's a beautiful part of the world. So Wardandi, interestingly, refers to those people, that language group, and often we're referred to as people of the sea. So definitely a saltwater girl, even though I live here in Canberra. And I do feel that pull and I feel that call to me quite often. So I think as my kids get older, it's something that I need to kind of remedy and get back to Noongar Boodjar.

Yamatji country for my family is very important for me because my mum was born there. It's also where my mum was stolen from, but we'll get to that a little bit later. But I was just thinking a lot about Indigenous Literacy Day and it means a lot of, for me, there's a lot of layers to it. And I think for me, language reclamation is something really big in my world at the moment, but it is also about our young ones being, obviously hearing those stories. A lot of our, I guess, cultural stories, our cultural knowings and understandings had a lot of interruptions due to past government policies. So for me, there's a lot of layers there. And yeah, even just sharing Kaya you mob is a little step in the way of my own language reclamation. And yeah, I'm feeling like we might sing a song soon, but before that, I'm going to show you this.

So my late mum was part of the Stolen Generations, and this is a picture of the tin humpy that she lived in with my grandparents. I've just jumped a little bit, but this is a nonlinear nature of what you'll experience tonight because nothing in cultural life is linear. So this is where mum lived on the outskirts of Geraldton and this Shanty Town, depending on how much history you know about Australia, Shanty Towns were places on the outskirts of all the town centres across the country. And that's where they used to put what they called half-caste people. So people that weren't quite black enough, weren't quite white enough. And it was all done under the assimilation policy, which was in effect at the time.

And this particular Shanty Town had about sixty odd families. A lot of my extended family members were also part of the living in that space. And that's where the police and welfare used to come quite regularly to remove children. So yeah, dirt floors, no running water. And yeah, that's where my mum was taken from at the age of two.

Now, I'm just jumping into that because tonight, coming here and sharing what I'm going to share, a lot of what I've done creatively and in my working life in recent years has very much been shaped by what I've just shared and obviously the aftermath of that. And it's not something that defines me, but it certainly is something that really has shaped what I do and how I do it. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm making up for lost time because when I was younger, I didn't know what I didn't know. And I didn't know those things because my mum was only a baby when she was taken away. So she was only two years old.

But for me, I'm the oldest of technically eleven kids, and that's probably another talk for another time. But my mum had six of us. So I'm the oldest of mum's six kids. And all of us in different ways are, I think, especially later in life, we've been shaped by the kind of late learning of some of these things. And well, not late, but I think growing up in Perth, it was a very, and it still is from my own family experiences and personal experiences, a very racist place. And it wasn't a thing to be proud of to be Aboriginal. I remember being in high school and I knew that mum had been fostered out and she had never really talked about what that meant, but my kid brain went, "Well, she was one of ten kids. It was a really big family. Maybe there was too many kids and they had to have someone help them".

This is my very young, naive mind. And mum never ever said to us ever that I'm stolen generation. It's just not something that she ever said. And why the hell would she? But a lot of questions I had about my family at that age, just starting high school, were not things that she could answer. And it was a real contrast to the other side of my family with my dad being an immigrant. So my dad came out as a kid from Burma, Myanmar, with my grandparents. And so he was very much trying to, I guess, assimilate into Australian society as an immigrant. And mum was very much in the being assimilated. And so yeah, two very different worlds and two very different experiences. Have a lot of deep connection with my Burmese culture and grew up enjoying a lot of that, very much immersed in that.

But with mum's story and all of the disconnection on that side, it's just something that now that we're very, very blessed in this day and age where we're really spoiled for choice with information and people like me that will sit and share, I think that's really important. It's definitely something that I'm meant to do. I'm meant to be here and sharing. But before I tell you too much more about that story, I will put the caveat on this evening that all of this is not about making any of you feel personally guilty or responsible or bad, but it is about knowing the truth and actually embracing that truth.

This is not Aboriginal history. It's Australian history and it doesn't exist in dusty old history books. Well, a lot of the truth doesn't. It exists in people like me and a lot of my extended family who shout out to anyone from WA that might be watching. I share all of this with the utmost respect for all of those individual lived experiences because all of us have such incredibly different experiences. So just going back to this picture. So on the 4th of November 1959, my mum and a number of her siblings were removed from this place. And I've just lost the remote. Oh my God.

So this photo is a photo of the day that these particular aunties and uncles and my mum were removed. My mum is the little blonde girly sitting on her older sister's lap. And on that day, they were all removed. And the auntie that my mum is sitting on the lap of, she's the oldest of the ten because mum's one of ten. And so my auntie Sue and both of us being the oldest, we've kind of, I don't know if you have the same thing, sometimes you kind of connect with older siblings of other friends you have or whatever. And her and I have developed a really beautiful relationship, even though she lives over in Perth, we've had a lot of conversations about what she experienced. She's done a lot of writing and talking about her own story, but she was seven years old on this day in 1959 and she remembers it very clearly.

And one of the missing pieces, I will say that all of these parts of our family's story, it's like a big jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. And the more you talk to people and also make your own connections and do your own learning, you kind of get to place those missing pieces. Some of them we will never be able to put in that missing spot. But she in recent times told me that my nana was actually pregnant on the day that these babies were taken from her. So she was 26. So yeah, she had a lot of babies and she died very young. She died in her mid 40s. And yeah, it's pretty harrowing to think that out of the ten, there is still eight still living, but to have this as a normal conversation in our family, it's sometimes really surreal.

And I think one of the powerful things about having forums like this to share in is that it makes it real for you too, because it is, they're people that. All of my aunties and uncles went on very different journeys from the point of removal. So from Geraldton, they were all ferried down to Perth. And because they're all different ages, obviously the girls went to girls' homes, boys went to the boys' home. My mum was considered a baby, so she went to a baby's home. And from there they went into some pretty. Some of these families were really wonderful.

And look, the propaganda at the time was telling people that they were doing a good thing, taking in these poor, neglected, savage children. It really was. The propaganda that was going on the radio, tele, it was really selling that to non-indigenous Australia, that they would be doing a good thing by taking these kids. I often wonder if they ever talked about the fact that there was this policy, assimilation policy. But yeah, it's probably things we will learn through having conversations with people.

But I don't know where I was going with that. You're listening, aren't you?

Richard Gorter:

I am, I am.

Wallabindi:

Yes. Where was I going? I was. I was. I think it's time for a song. So this is why I have Richard here. Give it up for Richard. Yes, he's a good egg. So the songs that I'm sharing with you tonight, we actually co-wrote those and it was a very interesting journey in that a lot of these stories that we've put into song initially were things that I never ever thought I could sing and certainly sing in front of people and be okay with. So the whole writing process was quite interesting because it was a lot of me yelling and crying and like, "I can't do this." But there was a part of me that knew it was really necessary. And I think music and anything creative is just a really beautiful, gentle way of inviting people in to really hard conversations and really hard parts of our history because it is our history and really, really passionate about truth telling.

Not for the guilt factor, as I said earlier, but it's just really, I think, from my own personal perspective, if we call ourselves Australian, whatever that means, it's surely part of that is to know our history and embrace that 'warts and all' and do something better next together. So this next song is called Beer Bottle Baby. Oh no. Oh my God. And this all came out of a report that I received from an auntie of mine, probably about a year after my mum passed. So my mum passed at a very young age of 61, but that will be in the next song. But after she passed, it was that constant, those puzzle pieces I was talking about. This extra puzzle piece appeared in my Facebook Messenger and one of my aunties who had also lived in Shanty Town sent this government report to me and it was 30 odd pages of a very clinical documentation of my mum and her siblings and my grandfather before them.

And so all about those removals. And it was just really weird reading about people I know and my mum in such clinical terms. And something that really stuck out to me, probably as a mum too. So I've got two kiddos and my daughter's just about to embark on high school next year. Oh my God.

It's big. And something that really, I guess stuck out to me from reading this report was just the resilience and the strength and the resourcefulness of the kids in Shanty Town and just how life was there. So there was still a lot of hunting and a lot of traditional things that were happening, and the kids made their own toys. So my Auntie Sue that's in that picture with my mum on her lap, she told me about these beer bottle babies that they used to make. And this is one I prepared earlier. So I actually would love to pass this around for you to hold while I play this. I know it's probably a bit cheesy, but it was actually a piece at a couple of exhibitions that I did, but now I feel like it needs to be in the arms of people. So the girls used to make these beer bottle babies out of bottles and old rags or flower bags, and they were their dollies.

And I guess the takeaway, one of the many takeaways from this song is on the day she was taken, they removed the doll and chucked it in the bin, basically. So she was holding onto that. They all held onto something special, but those things were taken and yeah. So I'm going to pass this to you, Beck, and if you want to just maybe.

I often describe it at different places that I perform and it's, I think, one thing to hear me explain it, but it wasn't my lived experience. It was that of my mum and her siblings. So to see it, I think is quite powerful and happy for you to pass that around and see. Yeah, I don't know. Do you want to. Sorry. All right. So this is Beer Bottle Baby

My beer bottle baby I’ll keep her close to me. With her deep brown eyes and her beautiful skin. Played with my sister, hold her in my arms. Welfare came, threw my baby in the bin. Report was written about kids in poverty. Never much to eat, lived as Aborigine. We didn’t have much, played with bottles from the tip. Said something must be done and our family must be split. My beer bottle baby I’ll keep her close to me. With her deep brown eyes and her beautiful skin.

Played with my sister, hold her in my arms. Welfare came, threw my baby in the bin. I think of our parents kept us as close as they could. Fed us and clothed us and sent us off to school. But because of our skin we lived near Mt Misery, like my doll I was stolen from my family. My beer bottle baby I’ll keep her close to me. With her deep brown eyes and her beautiful skin. Played with my sister, hold her in my arms. Welfare came, threw my baby in the bin. You ask where I’m from, and who are my kin. Look and judge me by the colour of my skin. I’m so far away from my mother’s land. It was all stolen by invaders hands. My beer bottle baby I’ll keep her close to me. With her deep brown eyes and her beautiful skin. Played with my sister, hold her in my arms. Welfare came, threw my baby in the bin. My beer bottle baby I’ll keep her close to me. With her deep brown eyes and her beautiful skin. Played with my sister, hold her in my arms. Welfare came, threw my baby in the bin. I lost my beer bottle baby along with my dreaming…

Oh, thank you. How are you guys feeling out there? Have I totally taken you on a magical mystery tour so far? I have to say I am a neuro spicy girl, so you will never get anything linear from me, I'm afraid. Probably what I would like to do now is just stop for a minute and do something like read you a poem. Now, there's a lot of this talk that I guess I can't help but weave educational reflections in and I'm trying not to go down the road of timelines and talking about policies.

And I think in Canberra, a lot of us are pretty well educated and aware, more so than a lot of places I feel. And having been on this beautiful country for well over 20 years now, it's certainly where I feel like I've actually ironically learned a lot more about my culture living on this side of the country, which is kind of weird, but it's kind of beautiful too.

And there is a really beautiful community of first peoples here, a lot of mob, some beautiful circles of sisters that I'm really honoured to be a part of. And yeah, it's definitely not linear. Okay. I'm going to read you something that I wrote last year and it's called decolonization. I'd love to memorise it one day so I could go and do one of those cool slam poetry things, but the only thing I can remember is song lyrics. I can't remember anything else.

So this is called decolonization.

What if everything you learned wasn't true? What if the history books were lying to you? What if things weren't as they seem? Could you open your mind and dream? Could you imagine what it was like to be living a simple and happy life with your ancient culture and no one to fight? Could you imagine one day that people came from another land under a false name, exploration versus invasion, settlement turned into annihilation, genocide and rape till there was nothing left to take. Do you not believe these truths because they weren't fed to you by the racist spoons of the colonial school?

Do you think they are lies because you didn't see it yourself or because you know better, those poor savages needed some help. Could you ever entertain that your colonised brain was only taught what they wanted you to believe, to conceal our pain, not let true history breathe? Could you ever believe that everything you ever knew was simply, completely, unequivocally not true? What if terra nullius was a lie? What if we were given blankets full of smallpox to make us die? What if we were massacred, almost complete obliteration? What if there was a policy called White Australia and then one called assimilation?

What if we were stolen, taken from our homes for the colour of our skin, tried to bleach us to the bones? What if we were told to stop speaking our tongue? What if then the missionaries did come? What if our families were ripped apart? What if we never had a chance from the start? What if we never saw them again? Would you believe us? If not now, when? These things have all happened. These things are all true. They don't live in old history books. The truth flows through me and if you let it, you too. What if you could open your mind, keep a soft heart and always be kind? As you breathe in these truths to your very core, decolonize your mind and remove the old lies once and for all.

Thank you. It was a really bizarre like. I didn't actually sit down to write something, but I was, I don't know, reaching around home and all of a sudden I felt this urge to sit down and write something. So yeah, I think there's a lot of things that we can decolonize. And I think one of the really powerful things about you all being here tonight is that you are open to sitting with some pretty uncomfortable and hard truths and it's okay. It's okay to feel uncomfortable, but don't feel personally responsible for those things. From here, it is about going out and having real conversations. And as an Aboriginal woman, I have to say that the most powerful thing we have apart from our communities and our leaders and each other is allyship. And I heard Assissi recently say allies and accomplices and I bloody love that.

I just think that's exactly what it is that we need. You can turn on the news at any place you go, online or otherwise, and there's just so much divisiveness. There's so much out there that is trying to divide us as human beings. And that's what it comes down to, we're all human beings. And I think that sometimes we forget that and a lot of things get dressed up and put labels on. And yeah, the fact that you're here is very, very, very heartening to me. I really appreciate you being here. So this next song is called Grey Matter. And so the three songs we're sharing with you tonight are actually part of my debut EP, Wallabindi Dreaming. And Richard and I put these songs together, put them on an old school CD. No one even buys CDs anymore. So I don't know what we were thinking, but we had a beautiful vision and we do have some here tonight if you wanted to take one away with you later.

But this particular EP, just to spout a bit of blacksellence, we call it blacksolence, it was nominated for and won the independent debut of the year through Music ACT. So we got this cool little record in a frame and I think the record in a frame is gathering dust on my mantle piece, but I think what it said to me and to both of us was that people you know, have open hearts and minds to hear things that might be really hard. And I think we need to do that as evolving society, evolving people. So Grey Matter is very much born of the government report that I just told you about, but it's kind of the next part of that story, I guess. So it's a tribute to my late mum and I need to talk about my mum now. So my beautiful late mum was, like I said, she had six of us kids, an amazing single mom, just still in awe of how she did what she did and just instilled so much love and fun and magic into our upbringing.

And we didn't always have a lot. You know, there was a lot of things like a lot of issues with government housing, a lot of domestic violence that we were kind of escaping, but mum was just incredible. I really don't have adequate words, but she passed away in 2019 at the very young age of 61, and that is really young. I just turned 51 and that's bloody young. And she died without a cent to her name in government housing in Adelaide. And I think for my siblings and I, it was just, we all have had so many conversations about this, but in all the different work that we do with keeping our culture alive and staying connected is that she should still be here. And just to further set up this song, the day after my mum's funeral in Geraldton, so she always asked to be back on country, so she's now resting up on Yamatji country there.

And my siblings and I had this, I don't know, I don't think it was morbid curiosity, but we asked one of our aunties if she'd take us to the site of the Shanty Town. We just wanted to, I guess, stand on that land and knowing what we knew just for our learning too and understanding. And so we went there, we walked on the site and it's just still to this day a desolate bit of scrubland in the shadow of a place called Mount Misery, I kid you not. And we were just walking around seeing all these bits of corrugated iron and not much else. And she just said to me, "Mon, you know, we were just grey matter." And that just stopped me in my tracks. It was something that really, I don't know, it just really hit me. She didn't explain any more about what that was.

To me, knowing mum's life and the life that she had lived, not ever quite feeling like she belonged in either black or white world, never quite feeling black enough in the black spaces, never quite feeling white enough in the white spaces, grey matter. And I'm not sure if the people in the town were calling them that or this is what, I don't know. But yeah, it was really like it just kind of took me back and it stuck with me. And so this song is very much about honouring mum and yeah, just also I guess commiserating that history and that really difficult, difficult journey for so many stolen generations, people and their descendants of spending their whole lives walking or trying to traverse two worlds. And I can say from my own lived experience, that's the only experience I can talk from. I've certainly felt that in many, many spaces over the years.

But yeah, let's just play the song. This is Grey Matter.

Hey Grey Matter, Mother of kin. Red earth blue sky under our skin. By land, sea, ancestry. You’re home now. Rest easy, back on Country. Taken from home. Scattered love a crime. Broken culture, family mark of the time, grey matter don’t matter. Bring them up as white. Fill the Shanty Towns. Hide the grey from sight. Hey Grey Matter, Mother of kin. Red earth blue sky under our skin. By land, sea, ancestry. You’re home now. Rest easy, back on Country. Watch along the dirt roads. Clouds of dust. Watch for the welfare. Rounded up in trucks. Hide along the creek bed. Don’t show your face. Don’t make a sound. Or you’ll be taken from this place. Hey Grey Matter. Mother of kin. Red earth blue sky under our skin. By land, sea, ancestry. You’re home now. Rest easy, back on Country

Down by the creek bed, said I was in danger. Stolen from my parents, sent to a stranger. Dragged us away drove us into town. Took us far away. Because we weren’t so brown. Hey Grey Matter. Mother of kin. Red earth blue sky under our skin. By land, sea, ancestry, You’re home now. Rest easy, back on Country. A Blood Alley story. Not the only one. A government misguided by ignorant sons. Don’t see our worth, wanted our land, tried to destroy us. It was part of their plan. Hey Grey Matter, Mother of kin. Red earth blue sky under our skin. By land, sea, ancestry. You’re home now. Rest easy, back on Country. Back on Country. Back on Country. Back on Country…

Thank you. And just all the babies come back. So just as I finished that song, I realised I skipped a verse and I might share, so I'm sorry for the captions on the livestream that will now not be correct, but the verse was down by the creek bed said I was in danger. And that story relates to one of my mum's brothers who as a baby was hidden down by the water. And it was another time when welfare and police were coming. And a lot of times in places like Shanty Town, there were hiding spaces and places where people or kids would know to go to hide so they wouldn't be stolen. And yeah, this is another story from one of my aunties and my uncle was found by the welfare, by the authorities, and that was their justification to take him. It's like, "You're not looking after your child.

You've just left him there by the water." It was in the local paper in Geraldton at the time that this poor baby was left in reeds.

So it's really, really confronting to know that these are still people that are living now and just for your. There is question time at the end, but I think I've probably set it up for you to wonder if my mum reconnected with a family and all of the siblings did reconnect and there is only one photo in existence of them all being together in one place. And that was unfortunately for my grandpop's funeral. So bit of a weird family reunion. But growing up, they all kind of met each other in different places. My mum met one of her sisters at a local swimming pool when she was a young girl and this older girl came up and asked her for some money or bullying her a bit. And they realised there's a certain resemblance and they asked each other what each other's names were and then they realised that they were sisters.

So there was a lot of really, I guess, bizarre, call them sliding doors moments where people reconnected.

My mom, I think, saw her mum one or two times after she was stolen. So she was in a few different foster home situations. And when mum was 14, my nana was in hospital at the time, really bizarrely. I never met her. She passed before I was born, but I was born in the same hospital she passed in. So yeah, sliding doors. But mum had to get permission from the welfare board to go and visit her mum and basically say goodbye to her. So there's all these. And three years later she had me. So I can only imagine what that was like for mum. And again, as a mum, all of these parts of my family's story definitely hit harder being a mum and yeah, gone off sideways. About 10 minutes. That's gone really quickly. I haven't changed a photo. There's only a few.

And the last one is another one that was taken on the day mum was removed. That's my mum. I did consider sharing some recent ones, but I think that's. Yeah, some days are hard and yeah, I think they're for me and for people I want to share them with. But yeah, she was a very beautiful soul and yeah, for someone that lived a fairly short life, I definitely learned what's important. Only 10 minutes. Oh my God. I feel like there's so much I didn't say. So yeah, all the siblings did reconnect in different ways, but my grandparents still lived up on a reserve after all the kids were taken away and just got rations. They lived on the back of a car, actually, on back of a ute. But yeah, I will. Oh, thank you.

Keeping me on task. So this last song is one. Do you guys fancy bit of a sing? Yeah. All right, cool. So this is a singalong and it's called Be Brave, Make Change. And whatever you think or don't think about reconciliation, yeah, I've had a lot of different conversations about what that is, but I really feel like at its core, it's about just connecting and understanding and unity. We have different themes every year for reconciliation, but what it's always trying to do is prompt conversation and prompt connection. And I think from that, you learn. And I really think that any change, any real tangible change in this country, and this is only my personal perspective, it's all from education. And if you learn certain things, then I feel like you're kind of compelled to do something with that information. Live differently, speak with people differently.
Anyway, I'm going to shut up and we're going to. It starts with a chorus and the chorus in this song is repeated ad nauseum. So I'm going to sing it for you and you can. I reckon some of you already know it though, and then we'll play it for real.

You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land, be brave, make change.

So that's the chorus and it starts with the chorus. But yeah, the song itself is all about really, I guess, tangibly, what are those first steps you can do to be part of a change? I think I've got issues with the word brave because hopefully it's not about being brave, it's about knowing that it's kind of the right thing to do. Anyway,

You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land, be brave, make change. We're meeting on ancient land, caring for country takes all of our hands, the birds and trees that our water feeds and its spirit meets all our needs. You should know the course by now. You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land, be brave, make change. Respect the wisdom from long ago. We can learn and now we can grow, stand together, not far apart and embrace the Statement from our Heart.

You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land. Be brave, make change. Accept the past and all its wrongs. Face the truth, but know we are strong. Be the change. You want to see, it is time to own our shared history. Yes it is. You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land. Be brave. Make change. You've got to be brave to make change. Tell the truth, for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land. Be brave. Make change. One more, come on. You've got to be brave. To make change, tell the truth for justice to win. Know where you stand and on whose land. Be brave, make change.

Nice work. I think it's question time. Yay. Oh, the lights are. This reminds me of you know you being in the nightclub and then the lights come on. I remember those days.

Richard Gorter:

There are actually people out there.

Wallabindi:

There are. Thank you again so much for being here tonight. Yeah. Thank you so much. I hope there's been something in tonight for you and I've made some tiny bit of sense. I do tend to ramble and go on so many different tangents, but really that's the nature of my lived experience. There's nothing linear about it and the learnings are definitely coming in from lots of different places. So if there's any questions, I'm happy to

Richard Gorter:

Put your hand up

Wallabindi:

take them
Put your hand up. You would say that. This is a retired school teacher here. No. All right. There we go. Yes.

Audience member 1:

Firstly, thank you so much to all three of you. It's been a really great night. Thank you for your beautiful voice. The singing has been wonderful. My question is, do you remember your mother singing and does your daughter sing?

Wallabindi:

Yes, I remember my mum singing. She was an amazing singer. She never, you know, I've been on stages for the last twenty odd years. I think she did one gig. She had a band for two seconds with a couple of her brothers and it was called Rainbow Serpent. And she had a beautiful voice. She was always singing and just one of those beautiful. She would sing a lot of the old Broadway tunes and yeah, very eclectic music taste from her. Thanks mum. But yeah, my daughter is very, very shy, like crazy shy. I think she would like to sing. Oh, my grandma. Yeah. Yes. And mum's mom, who I didn't meet, she was apparently a beautiful singer. And in Shanty Town, she was often asked to sing and was given food and she used that food to feed her kids. And I can only imagine what her voice sounded like, but yeah, music definitely flows through the matriarchy.

Rebecca Bateman:

Yeah.

Wallabindi:

Thanks for that. Anyone else?

Richard Gorter:

Something I didn't know.

Wallabindi:

Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

Audience member 2:

Thank you also. It's been a great experience and the importance of story. One can never deny someone's story. I was just wondering though, your mother was fostered and presumably siblings as well. Were their experiences different and particularly your mother's experience?

Wallabindi:

Yeah, they all had very different experiences. Unfortunately, a lot of really negative experiences, but there was one particular foster home that mum went to who the lady there, we used to call her Nana and we used to visit her every now and then. And she was a lovely lady. She had a kid of her own. When a lot of people started talking about Stolen Generation and for many, many years it was not talked about or acknowledged that it even happened. She had obviously, she's now since passed, but when her mum was still around, I remember hearing that they'd had a conversation about it and my nana, Nana Callum, her foster mom, she was mortified and she actually apologised to my mum and she said, "I'm so sorry. We were told we were doing something good." So that's totally the case in point that obviously the propaganda that was going around at the time was couching it in very positive terms, but she was absolutely beside herself to know that she had been a part of what we now know in our history as Stolen Generation.

So with all of the different experiences, there has been financial compensation that has been paid out, but how do you put dollar figures on trauma? And I know this is being recorded and I'm going to share it even if my other siblings watch it, but my mum was encouraged by my brother to go for the redress scheme in Perth. And when you go and do that, you basically have to. As much as you're willing to divulge, you list your traumas. And she was paid $15,000. I don't know how the people that. I guess the idea is coming from a somewhat good place, but I just don't know how you sit there and put dollar figures on. If you were abused, if there was other things that was different. And yeah, that just gobsmacks me. Did that answer the question? Yeah, very different experiences. Oh, hey.

How you going? Right in the middle too, girl.

Audience member 3:

Hey, gorgeous people.

Wallabindi:

Hello.

Audience member 3:

Yeah, look, I echo everybody's comments. It's been a beautiful, really charged experience, I think for all of us. I know, Mon, you're really big on the education piece and your interest in relearning language and putting language back into communities. There are a number of First Nations performers now performing in language and doing that internationally, which is great. When are we going to get one from you?

Wallabindi:

That is an excellent question.

Richard Gorter:

We would like to know too.

Wallabindi:

No pressure. Yeah. Well, there is one of my songs where there is literally one word of language, and I guess we're really lucky with Noongar language in particular, is that it's quite an intact language. You can go to uni over in WA and you can learn Noongar. So for me, it's a process of finding time in my insane life to sit with those words. I subscribe to a lot of things and just to hear those words and with the one song that has the word Noongar Yorga in it, and Yorga is Noongar word for woman. And just to have any language, I think, in your mouth, in your body, and to feel that resonance is such a powerful thing because you're realising that that has been spoken on this land for tens and thousands of years.

So there's great power in it, but I have to learn more language. But I think for me, the first step was putting one word into the song. So one word at a time, but it's also about being able to sit with my kids at some point and do that with them because that was a lot of stuff that I didn't get as a kid and I know why I didn't get it because my mum didn't get it. But we're very much in a privileged place where I can do that. And I do feel very privileged. I've done a lot of cool things in my life and I don't. Definitely, we talk about the deficit model when you're looking at First Nations people and we're very strong and resilient and talented and multifaceted and articulate and we're all the things. So yeah. Am I even answering that?

Yeah. One word at a time. Any other takers? Be brave. Ask a question.

Rebecca Bateman:

I'm sorry if I should know this, but is your poetry published?

Wallabindi:

No. Another thing to do.

Rebecca Bateman:

Excellent.

Wallabindi:

Got to write some more. But I guess technically songs are poems, but yeah, I would love to write something and publish it one day. Yeah. On the printer. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think it's a good start. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I know just the place. Yes. Thank you. I just want to say thank you again so much for you being here. I know life is busy and insane and it's. Is it hump day? It is. It is. Yes, it is. Oh, another question.

Audience member 4:

I'm asking for my very shy friend, but again, love and gratitude for the sharing of story and song. Thank you, and Fa'afetai.

Wallabindi:

Oh, you're so welcome.

Audience member 4:

In my language in Samoan, I say Fa'afetai, I dearly love her. So we are interested. We were late, so apologies if you had told.

Wallabindi:

That's why you sat up the back.

Audience member 4:

It's the Samoan in me you know. But we were wondering if you've told the story, our apologies, but we wanted to know what happened to your grandparents and their story when all their children have been taken or your mum and her siblings. Do you know much about?

Wallabindi:

That? Well, I never met my nana, but I know that after. There were a couple of kids that returned home. I think there was one younger one that stayed, but they were living on a reserve, and a reserve, if you know where a lot of Aboriginal people were kind of herded to, and they were reserves where rations were delivered to. So your tea and flour and sugar, all the things that our bodies never ever traditionally ate. And they lived pretty rough. I think my nana and both my nana and my pop would definitely have been brokenhearted. And I know my mum did see my grandpop probably a few months before he died. So I have actually met my grandpop, but I only met him that one time and he was staying. It was a weekend where I was going to visit my mum because my mum and dad weren't together.

And I remember mum saying, "Got someone I want you to meet." And he was sitting in bed and he was just this frail little old man and not really coherent. He was an alcoholic and he was very much at the end of life, I guess. He passed not long after that. My mum was so happy to have him in her home and to be able to, I guess, care for him for a little while. And then I think he just, yeah, not long after that passed, but life for them after the kids were stolen was not great. My nana who was non-indigenous, obviously black and white unions back then were pretty frowned upon. She wasn't treated particularly well in Shanty Town, but when she died, there was a lot of beautiful honouring and ceremony around her passing. But I think for the most part, it was pretty hard living and not really joyous, unfortunately.

But that's the power of you know. We have oral traditions and there's so many missing people in our lineage, but we have enough to, I guess, be able to cobble together what it would've been like for them. And I think also as a parent, you can kind of imagine what that would. Well, actually, I can't imagine what that would be like for my babies to be taken. I actually can't even comprehend that. Yeah. You're great singers, by the way. So good. I think I heard some harmonies too.

Richard Gorter:

That was me.

Wallabindi:

You would say that. Yeah. Thank you again so much for being here. I honestly am really blown away. I hope that there was some sensical things that came out of my head. Yeah. I feel very honoured to have a space like this to share. Thanks guys. Thanks National Library. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks you guys.

Rebecca Bateman:

Wow. I don't really quite know what to say. I feel like I've just heard my own story being told and just such a privilege to have been here tonight to hear and share your story and your beautiful voice. Thank you so much.

Wallabindi:

You're so welcome.

Rebecca Bateman:

If anyone here or at home would like to experience tonight again, it has been recorded and you'll be able to find it on the National Library's YouTube page in due course. And if you're visiting the library, I really encourage you to drop in and have a look at the beautiful exhibition we've got up there at the moment, Wangka Wakaṉutja. The story has been told, the story at the Papunya Literature Production Centre and the beautiful books that came out of there. A very different story from what we've heard tonight, but one about the maintenance and holding tight to culture and to language, which I think I'm sure there are those of us who wish we had had the opportunity to do.

So would you join me once again in thanking Wallabindi, Richard and Jon for an amazing evening.

Wallabindi:

Thank You.