2023 #Mycelium #44 Listening

Been collecting stories post referendum by listening to friends and hearing first hand from Aboriginal people. There is the one of the elder in his nineties who didn’t talk for a few days after the result and who is depressed with the result and sure he won’t see recognition in his lifetime.  There is another one about a teenager who says well I now know white people don’t care about my future. Another story of a woman sobbing and worrying that she will be witness to more suicides in the coming years. There is a story of a woman who has nothing else to give to reconciliation, and of a man who intends to start giving Unwelcomes to Country.  I am sure readers have their own stories. 

What are the stories we tell ourselves about the Referendum result area we getting seduced by the same myths of the campaign? 

Be wary of nodding to people who say there wasn’t enough information, it’s a wild place the post referendum forest, it is not a desert and there are plenty of people sewing seeds for the future.  I certainly am! 

If we look at the results of the polling booths we can where the votes were high in the binary, and this points to where the work might be focussed into the future. I won’t be the only one looking at these numbers. One in seven voters didn’t bother to vote, around 2.6 million Australians. I will also be having a look at these numbers when I get the chance to see if there is a pattern there, I’m sure the electoral analysts are already preparing to share their insights with us all. 

My analysis remains that fear was the primary currency well supported with funds from those who have something to benefit from keeping people in fear, perhaps even something to gain from fuelling anxiety and even racism.  I am benefiting and deepening my understanding on how I benefit, not the least I have benefitted from someone, possibly even the State securing land which i now live on, land that was never ceded. I am squatter. 

I am learning more about my origin story, thanks to an enthusiastic sibling who is under taking some serious family history digging.  Discoveries include the names of ships and barges worked on, illegal activities and oyster saloons, multiple deaths of babies and young children, hospital admissions, mental and physical health illnesses and traversing oceans and this country looking for a place to call home.  As these discoveries come to life, I am drawn to the edges. Where were they living, who supported them to stay there, how did they acquire where they lived, or who did they pay rent to or even a mortgage. One thing is clear in all the discoveries, these people across a range of different lineages are all on quest to find a place to belong, a place to raise a family, find friendships, work and build their lives. These people were all embarking on a journey for s better life than the one they envisaged, one that their offspring in future generations would be more prosperous than they had been. And indeed we are…

I wonder if they would have voted yes for the next generation?  Being so close to being beneficiaries would they have had a better understanding of what was at stake in any relationship with Aboriginal people. I wish more of us had put ourselves in the shoes of future generations, and voted with them in mind. That is the kind of mycelium we need to be fostering, one which helps people understand their power and contribution for many tomorrows, not just for today.  

It is a time for listening for the next invitation.

NAIDOC Week 2023 Noarlunga

2023 Mycelium #43 #Act

Grief is a complicated thing. The underground qualities of spreading filaments in and around memories, popping up when not invited into conversations, arriving inside a Trojan Horse, so many ways it shows up and reveals itself. It has a rhythm too, connected to anniversaries, places and embedded in momentos.  It was six years this week since my husband died. Forty years of lives shared, children born and raised, ill for a quarter of that time we spent together. In the aftermath of the Referendum result, there was already enough grief seeping in and out of my body. 

The Referendum result is inviting me to deep grieving reflections. Who we are has been revealed, the misinformation, lies and devious ways fiction posed as facts are hard to swallow.

There was a sense it was always going to end this way, but I constantly hoped that wouldn’t be true, and that the better angels would fly in and find their love making its way into the hearts and minds of my fellow voters in the suburbs around the country. I believed, and still do, that conversations matter, and like thousands of others, every conversation would make a difference to help the arc of history bend towards justice.  I think that bow has only just been picked up and we clearly need a whole lot more archers on that bow and the quiver needs to be filled with Cupid’s arrows. 

I am reading a book by Robert Livingston called The Conversation,based on his years of research detailing a road map of how facts about racism and techniques on how to bring these facts to life in conversations will lead to understanding, empathy and action. I think we have the foundations for this in Australia.  This is where the truth-telling comes in and we need more of that in as many ways as possible, prompts and epic explainers will be necessary.  I would love to see a film festival on mainstream television leading up to Australia Day with classics across the ages from Jeddah, to Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, to Rabbit Proof Fence, to Brand Nue Dae and The Castle.

Acknowledgement of country statements might begin with a story of the gaps yet to be closed locally, a local massacre site or perhaps an image of precolonial times showing a healthy and rich ecosystem.

I am so heartened by the vote of young people and it makes me think our curriculum is doing a good job of history, geography, ethics and justice education.  

I am actively turning my mind to ways I might be able to foster revealing what stories. The questions of my week have included: What protocols can I use: which ones will I abide by? which ones am I willing to break?  

Truth telling found its way into our vernacular with the Mabo decision, that Australia was founded on the lie of Terra Nullius. In South Australia when we passed the Aboriginal Lands Trust Act in 1966, before the 1967 Referendum, the Premier at the time, a lawyer, Don Dunstan, used the unfulfilled Letters Patent, which recognised the preexisting occupation of the land, and protected those rights of Aboriginal people, to make that law.  This was enshrined in the SA Government Act of 1838, after being precluded two years earlier.  This too is documented in a film called King’s Seal.  I suspect we will all be hearing a lot more about the Letters Patent. 

Truth telling is hard to hear. And the invitation to listen is central to the invitation from the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Preparing the sixty percent of Australians, who were unable to hear truths prior to the Referendum, to be able to hear post the Referendum, embodies the cry “history is calling”.  I suspect we will see Jack Nicholson from a Few Good Men being channeled in the days ahead – you can’t handle the truth – could also become a catch cry. There will be times we will want to look away, ignore the signs, retreating from the front line as quickly as we can.  I suspect though this is the work ahead before we can move on. Facing facts isn’t pretty, it is messy and only in the mess can we start to clean up our act (and Act).

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Mycelium 2023 #42 Nooooo

A few weeks ago I participated in a webinar with five possible scenarios for the Referendum on the Voice. It gave me an opportunity to prepare myself for the potential of a high no vote, which is what my electorate, state and nation produced. I expressed my anxieties about the cause of this outcome during the webinar, as being connected to mis-information, algorithms of fear, fake news and living in a post truth world.

I was worried then, and have now had those worries confirmed, about the divisions in our country around age, wealth and education. The data from the electoral profiles and voting patterns support this analysis. The more well-off, better educated, and if you are in the 25- 40 age group, you are more likely to be progressive and able to navigate your way around an argument. I doubt I will live to see another referendum, on anything. Education is vital and truth telling is a must to get us there.

I am deeply concerned about the polarisation in our country, and where those poles are, who holds the axis, and where the messy middle and if that might be the best place to boost civil conversation. There is a deep and dark underbelly that needs to be exposed and while I might run the risk of being seen as having a conspiracy theory running, I have always found it useful to “follow the money” when looking to see who supports a campaign. If you want a deep dive into who was pouring money into the No campaign, I encourage you to read this article by author Jane Mayer, who details the sources of funding for campaigns and the lack of political will to address. Without legislation for truth in political adversiting, and without clear and visible accounting for where political donations come from, I am confident we have just witnessed the successful beta testing of instruments and methodologies to disrupt the foundations of our democracy.

I thought Aussies laconic, and genuine belief in the ‘fair go’ might have been enough to inoculate us against the worst of a Trumpian post-truth world. This morning, though, I have a heaviness that comes from having to relinquish this romantic notion. I feel numb today.

While the YES campaign has outed and discovered four out of ten Australians who support recognition of our First Peoples in our constitution, and I do see that as s big step in the right direction, I am so disheartened with the way mis-information and plain lies were peddled and then believed.

We will witness the dissecting of the campaigns over the coming days, and while I have my own views on what worked and what didn’t and why, these are distractions. The main game is to understand , and then work out how to strengthen democracy with better questions, more civil and respectful debate and enabling voters to discern fact from fiction, lean into kindness and compassion.

So much bizarre behaviour during this period of the referendum that we have seen echoing the behaviour of Sovereign Citizens. It has been very well documented by the Australian Electoral Commission. Exactly the same behaviours we saw during US elections since Hilary Clinton all the way to the lobby of the City of Onkaparinga during my election. There is plenty to google to find out more, here is just one and here is another, this one is the AEC Commissioner on Ray Hadley’s 2GB radio show, Australia’s most listened morning show. I could go on and on, but the lack of fact checking was dreadful and was evident in the publicly funded referendum booklet sent to all voters. As a bare minimum we need to take steps to ensure the AEC has the power and resources to fact check and disallow from distribution any lies being peddled during election.

My friends who have been on the front line, and are always on the front line, because they are First Nations, and who advocate and work daily to close the gaps, I say sorry and I promise to continue to walk with you. To my friends who voted no, and I honestly don’t know who you are, but I must know some of you, I haven’t stopped having the conversation with you and I expect you to step up and do your bit to close the gap, which starts with listening. I am tired and sad today. The vote has revealed to the world who we are and revealed to oursleves what messages we listen to, which ones we check and most importantly whose voice counts. Over 80% of 3% of the country are First Nations and their voices have been drowned out by the majority.

In leadership we have the job of bringing everyone along with us, this tiny group of outstanding Aboriginal leaders have raised up so many young voices in this campaign, have helped non-Aboriginal people to add their voices to the campaign, all the while with such incredible grace, tenacity and generosity. We now know that four out of ten Australians are with you. This is the mycelium to build on, the threads we can connect and strengthen, the foundations for more justice and equity.

Prof Tom Calma, one of the co-writers of the report leading to the Voice proposition warned of the problems with mis-information and malice and as I watched him give his response to the result, he once again schooled us in dignity.

I’m taking solace in a brief encounter with world winning debator Bo Seo this week. We talked about polarisation, good disagreement, the roles in a debating competition of player, adjudicator and moderator. The moderator is the person whose role is to act as a neutral participant in a debate or discussion, holds participants to time limits and tries to keep them from straying off the topic of the questions being raised in the debate. This role is missing from our civic discourse, with the exception perhaps of Sarah Ferguson, we desperately need more moderators in our media.

At the event I met Bo, the Asia Pacific Cities Summit and Mayors Forum, Mayors and civic leaders asked me about acknowledgment of country and respect being paid to elders and the polls showing no to the Voice. They couldn’t understand why the anomaly …. I don’t either.

There is a direct correlation between the Uluru Statement from the Heart and life outcomes for First Peoples. I continue to accept the invitation and continue to say yes.

Always was always will be.

2023 Mycelium #41 #Yes

Took a walk through the glorious Aldinga scrub and the spring flowering orchids were on their last legs. There was a mum and her joey truly overgrown still trying to tuck themselves into her pouch when I pulled up the car. She was less interested in her offspring and more interested in me, though she didn’t choose to move an inch. Her fidelity to her posture was complete. She made me think of the words so many of our leaders of the Yes campaign have been saying that the kangaroo on our national coat of arms is an animal that can’t go backwards, they can only move forwards.  The joey kind of tumbled into her pouch though and I wondered what kind of Australia we might all be tumbling into this time next week?

Not all the no voters are uneducated or ill informed or even confused, some have clear cohesive arguments, not that I share their views, I am trying to hear them out. Mostly however the no voters, from what I can observe and the ones who have told me they are voting no, have anxieties with no substance … but isn’t that try of all anxieties. It has got me thinking about anxiety and how thoughts colonise the mind and bring unrealistic fears into sharp relief that feel so real, we think they must be.  I have been wondering just how anxious we are as a nation and if we might be also having a referendum about anxiety or the failure of our education system.

I have been working with five different scenarios in a post Referendum Australia, thanks to the work of Mark Yettica-Paulson and his colleagues at Collaboration for Impact. In all of them anxiety features somewhere, there is grief and fear too.  I suspect in a post-pandemic world we are more anxious than we were before. I just can’t hold onto the idea that as Australians we are becoming more racist, so I am digging around trying to make sense of what it is that is causing crazy ideas to turn up as fact, and the ability of lies to be heralded as gospel. I am coming to the view that many of the no voters share many of the same features as the worried well.  This term describes people in good health, although they believe they are might be unwell or super prone to get an illness. No voters don’t have anything to lose, yet they are worried they will lose out if they vote no.  This population are genuinely concerned about their well-being, and it is all about them, quite often not able to see beyond their own backyard, which they are worried (falsely) will be taken away from them.  The thought distortions show up as exaggerated, inflated and irrational thoughts that become patterns which seems to turn up the anxiety dial. There seems little distinction between what is real and what isn’t. 

I have been studying this at close range recently in the Sovereign Citizen movement. One of my favourite clips online is a gentleman who says he didn’t drive to the place where a police officer was asking me to get out of his car. He claims he used a car to transport himself to the location, however because he had stopped, he hadn’t driven the car. It’s quite a feat, but he is immovable and deeply sincere in the way he sticks to his argument.  The synaptic pathways that allow these people to hold their arguments and thoughts together are impressive. My anxiety starts to kick in when I see that this phenomena is growing in Australia, and I want to know what is feeding it and how can we inoculate ourselves from it and where is the antidote?

I am holding onto my optimism that the majority of Australians haven’t been infected by this disease and our collective efforts of civil conversations, town hall meetings, kind smiles, knocking on doors, being personal and bringing humour. The best inoculation is surely listening and bringing people together, reminding one another we are a community mature enough to hear history calling.

Regardless of the referendum result, these people are still in our community, fearful and some of them dangerous. We need to not leave people behind and when so many of facing down cost of living rises, we must remember that includes First Peoples as well, who have suffered more than anyone else, not just in a recession here and there, but since colonisation came to their shores. This is land never ceded, to address the minimum sovereignty we could offer with recognition in the constitution through the establishment of a Voice to parliament, seems such a tiny concession.  Fear is a currency I don’t want to trade in. Vote Yes, to build national synaptic pathways for a course correction that is so urgently needed.

This is the referendum question:

“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

Back in 2019 in Logan, Qld with the Uluru Statement after Prof Megan Davis had delivered a wonderful talk – this week I will be RSVPing to the invite with a YES on my ballot paper. Honoured to be able to accept the gracious invite.

2023 Mycelium #40 #ForOurElders

Soon I will turn 65. It is an age I grew up understanding would bring benefits of respect for seniority and lived experience, potential to be included on a national pension scheme, no longer able to sing The Beatles When I’m 64 and a promise of retirement. I am not sure if these past expectations have any validity, now that I am on that threshold. There is often little respect for lived experience, the ability to tap into universal health and welfare provisions are less accessible than they ever were, my singing is best done in good company, and there is little likelihood of withdrawing from work anytime soon.

In a week that has book ends, of my father’s anniversary and his birthday (we buried him on his 71^st birthday), I am conscious, once again, of just how precious these years are. I am part of the generation that is likely to have a whole lot more years ahead of me than they ones before. Jane Fonda calls the years beyond 60, Act 3. I have taken that instruction quite literally and turned my mind to ponder what I want these years to be and how I can harvest and apply my lessons from Acts 1 and 2, to Act 3. 

Growing older is a privilege.

I have been to more funerals in this calendar year, than I have for a while. One was my age, others a few years older than me and a couple in their 80s. It feels like a season. It has really taken its toll on me this week and I have had a few wobbly moments of grief. The unsteadiness these moments brings is a kind of calibration, shaking me gently into gratitude for the lives I’ve known and been a part of and the lessons those relationships have offered.  Being wobbly and being dithery are my two tell-tale signs of being unsettled.  The tales to tell, are of people who have unsettled me, times of rejection and trauma, deep loss, inexplicable events, anxiety and fear. I have come to understand the wobbliness as an invitation to consider running away or running towards what can offer respite or even relief.

I am constantly in awe of how elders and eldership is celebrated and valued in other cultures, especially in First Nations. There is reverence, respect and an expectation that those with experience will let you know what they think and more importantly the younger ones will take notice of them. This year, the NAIDOC week theme was For our Elders, and with the mortality rate so woefully lower than for First Peoples compared to the rest of the population, older people are cherished.

There was a NAIDOC event I went to this week, in my mayoral capacity, that had been postponed (because of Sorry business). Rescheduled, the event celebrated in local community centre was a delight. There was much love in the room in recognition of the occasion and for the elders who had special guest status.  There was no talk of retirement or pensionable age.  They are continuing to share culture, language, stories and friendship with one another and with the wider community. Friendships were being built over a meal, some songs, even a bit of dancing!

I sat down with a room full of locals at lunch in downtown Hackham West, one of the poorest communities in the State, and the suburb with the highest number of Aborginal people living there, compared to any other suburb in the City of Onkaparinga. In Canberra, the day before, at the National Press Club, one of the leaders of the Yes campaign, Noel Pearson spoke about friendship and empathy, something this community knows all about, how to be neighbours to each other in tough times. Their economic status is low, but their social capital is high.

Pearson said: “Friendship can increase empathy… we are 3 per cent. And you, 97 per cent,” he said.  “It’s understandable we mostly don’t know each other as friends — if we shared meals, we could rely on the empathy of friendship. It’s just — we are so few, and you so many. Australians mostly do not know our cultures, our languages, the things that make us the same as you. Empathy is so important but only love can move us now.”

So, over damper, lamb and lemon myrtle tart, in a community centre I have spent hundreds of hours in, over many decades, friendships were being made. Empathy was unfolding and quietly, relationships, were forming, people were getting to know one another.

The elders in the hall, stay the course, proudly and confidently. They have waited patiently for us all to come to the table. In the same way their younger ones bring them food and water, sit at their feet and tune into their wisdom, I hope we can give them the same respect at the ballot box. The intergenerational threads that have kept us apart, now warp and weft to weave us together.

Surely the least the 97% of us can do is vote yes? It could be our way of saying we see you, we hear you, we recognise you as the First Peoples and right a wrong with a little edit in our constitution. That would make the best birthday present ever (and maybe even my wobbliness might be banished for a bit).

Mosaic, Hackham West Community Centre