Happy Australia Day

I guess.

I've spent the last 10 years working in or with Indigenous communities.  It makes it hard to be all merry and proud of our 'National' day.  I've spent 10 years making breakfast and lunches for kids because for so SO many different reasons, they just don't have any.  I've dug through lost property bins looking for a pair of shorts or some socks or a shirt that doesn't have holes in it that will fit the small person standing beside me.  I've been terrified of the biggest 11 year old boy you've ever seen, only to realise that all he wanted was some kind words, a gentle hug and for someone to teach him how to write his name - and to one day be a stockman.  I've carried sick babes home to their mum.  I've driven others home who missed the bus.  I've stood in line at the shop, surrounded by bodies that are a different colour to mine and with mouths that speak a different language and wondered if they were saying things about me.  And then heard the huge guffaws and not felt reassured at all.  I've bitched and whinged about a house too old, too small, too big, too hot, too unsecure, too dusty, too dirty, only to look out the window and realise my time in these conditions was temporary and I could leave at any time.  I've sat at the hospital and bitched and whinged about my time being wasted and about how frustrating it is to show up and sit and wait to be seen, only to realise it's because I know health care shouldn't be an all day event where you may or may not get answers and that ringing, making an appointment and then seeing a doctor would be considered a bizarre luxury.  I've been called a Nigger (I cried - he meant it as a complement), I've been called a fucking white c^nt (I cried - I was just trying to help), and I've cried about more kids than I could even name now.  I've walked home at night in utter darkness through the streets of an indigenous community and the only thing I was worried about was the crocodile in the creek coming up the banks and eating me.  (For the record, there was never one and it would have had to walk - stealthily - for about 300m to get me… I may have been drunk at the time…)

I've been in the majority - stock standard, boring, even, white middle class - my whole life, except for the brief time (2 years) where I was very much in the minority.  That whole time I knew it was only temporary.  I got by knowing that my time in that life was limited and had an end point.  Even now, I can come home to my space and forget that there are people who do not have this life, a life of plenty.

Can you imagine waking up in the minority every single day of your life and seeing no real improvements or no real way forward?

Australia day used to be my favourite holiday of the year, the day where everyone celebrated what made living here so great.  Now I spend the day cringing, holding my breath, just waiting for it to be over, wishing I didn't know what I know and hadn't seen what I've seen.