COVER STORY: Leading change

There is growing awareness and recognition of Australia’s First Nations cultures and history, and the associated power imbalances that have shaped Australian society. Meet some of the people driving important conversations and actions to produce real change for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Ethan Taylor

Ethan Taylor is a man on the move and it seems only a matter of time before we see his name on political ballot papers.

BY MARK DAFFEY

It’s safe to assume that anyone who publicly declares their ambition to one day become prime minister of Australia must possess a healthy dose of self-belief. When that person is still a teenager, it’s easy to be dismissive – until you learn what they’ve achieved already.

Ethan Taylor (TC 2018) was just 18 years old when, in 2017, he announced on ABC Radio his intention to one day run for PM. Three years on, however, even that exalted pinnacle might not satisfy the Warumungu man’s lofty aspirations.

‘I’d love to be Australia’s first Aboriginal president,’ he says from his temporary base in Alice Springs, where he spent a month working on the 2020 Northern Territory election.

Ethan is nothing if not driven, with a track record that backs it up. At high school in Geraldton, Western Australia, his peers recognised his leadership credentials when they elected him head prefect. Then, halfway through Year 12 and disillusioned with the formulaic approach to achieving an ATAR, he skipped the remaining two terms and went straight on to tertiary studies in Canberra, enrolling in online science, maths and arts subjects through Open Universities Australia.

Ethan Taylor

Photo by Dan Avila

Ethan was raised as a Warumungu boy, and says that ‘as an Aboriginal person, you are politicised from day one; you’re born into it’.

‘Tell someone you’re Indigenous and it’s 50-50 as to whether you’ll then talk about normal things or whether they’ll have some kind of opinion [about us].’

But rather than shy away from his heritage, Ethan has always embraced it. In 2019, he joined Culture Is Life to help prevent Indigenous youth suicide through mental health initiatives. Earlier, he founded the Union of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students (UATSIS), which saw him travel around the country lobbying for a better go for Indigenous students in tertiary education.

‘It was about making sure there’s space for Indigenous students in our universities, so we get the same opportunities,’ he says. ‘Part of that is making sure that academics and university staff aren’t racist, and part of that is making sure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge is understood and respected.’

After excelling in his studies in Canberra, Ethan was accepted into Melbourne University in February 2017. For the first 12 months, he boarded at Whitley College, before shifting to Trinity at the start of his second year.

It was there that Ethan felt like he’d found his place. ‘I haven’t come across another college that’s so firm on its values of students being able to access education equally and fairly,’ he says.

On a broader level, perhaps Trinity subtly sang to his political aspirations, given the College has produced three Victorian state premiers and numerous state and federal government ministers.

After briefly contemplating studying law, a Trinity counsellor steered Ethan towards the arts. He majored in philosophy with a focus on political theory and ethics, preparing a road back to Canberra.

Following his undergraduate studies, Ethan built his skillset in a communications role at Seed, an Aboriginal climate justice network that is a thorn in the side of the mining industry.

Ethan’s role focused on the Northern Territory; in particular, on scrutinising Origin Energy’s efforts to harvest coal seam gas through fracking on land where the traditional owners haven’t given their consent.

Ethan spends much of his time researching and sharing ideas, all aimed at creating a better life for – and understanding of – Indigenous people. He lists Aboriginal self-determination as his main priority.

‘It starts with trust,’ he explains. ‘There are a lot of government investment projects that insist on codesign. But co-design is flawed, because it’s still two people with their hand on the wheel trying to steer it in different directions. It should be: what do you need?’

Listening to Ethan, you sense his frustration at having to deal with governments that value economic prosperity ahead of wellbeing. He’d prefer that Aboriginal communities be able to set their own economic agendas. Mistakes will be made, he admits, but that shouldn’t stop the process.

‘Economics is all about having people’s needs met,’ he says. ‘Some of the communities around Tennant Creek – Warumungu country – look like a slice of Brunswick in the desert.

‘The architecture and the services provided don’t fit the climate and I don’t think anyone’s asked the traditional owners how much productivity or how many jobs they think they need in their towns to provide food. None of that makes sense.’

‘Change is slow,’ he adds. ‘But being a part of that is what matters.’

And the future? What does that hold?

‘I want to live a life in service, making sure my people have what we need,’ he says.

Sounds presidential, don’t you think?

Sana Nakata

Associate Professor Sana Nakata, Associate Dean, Indigenous at Melbourne University’s Faculty of Arts and a member of the Trinity College Board, wants to tip the power dynamic to create a more equitable Australia.

BY EMILY McAULIFFE

When Sana Nakata joined Trinity as one of the College’s first Indigenous students in 2001 (alongside Lilly Brophy), she felt immense responsibility for ensuring she would not be the last. Her attendance was only made possible through a scholarship and she sensed that many of the other students came to university with a freedom and lightness to explore and have fun, while she needed to maintain focus to keep her place.

‘There was a huge sense of what was at stake, of something much bigger than me,’ she remembers. The bigger picture was that Sana and Lilly would pave the way for other First Nations students to become Trinitarians and pursue a tertiary education.

Associate Professor Sana Nakata

Photo by Chris Hopkins

For Sana, higher education was always a given. In 1997, her father became the first Torres Strait Islander to receive a PhD, and from as early as primary school, she knew she wanted to become a lawyer.

Through growing up in the ’90s, Sana was hyper-aware of the power of the law and the way it was being used by Indigenous people to elicit change, stating that the work around land rights and the Mabo decision – along with the ensuing backlash – was a very present part of her childhood.

But that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to study law. ‘I probably did a law degree because I was hoping to get rich,’ she smiles, before adding more seriously: ‘There was a material aspiration and ambition that went with wanting to go to university and seeing how that kind of qualification could put you in a financially secure and comfortable position – something I could only imagine.’

Upon completing her law degree at Melbourne University, Sana had the sense that she was ‘going to be okay’. And because she was okay, she could really think about how to spend her time and energy.

Throughout her studies, Sana took an interest in public law, feeling drawn to high-level perspectives and social justice. ‘I wanted to understand how the law operated as a power that structures human beings’ lives,’ she says. ‘I took a politics major alongside my law degree and [studying] politics was where I found a way to think about power.’

One of the final subjects of Sana’s undergraduate degree was about children’s rights and the law, which she credits for sending her down a research path as she sought to understand the dynamics between politics and the law, and the meaning of human rights from the perspective of children and their relationships to adults.

Her research started broadly with a PhD about childhood in Western enlightenment thought, but her Islander background was ever present.

Through ongoing research, Sana uncovered the troubling reality that non-Western children in Australia are seen as being at odds with Western ideals of adulthood.

‘We’re governing children towards a particular endpoint. We call it “growing up”, but what we’re really doing is directing children towards becoming a liberal, rational, mature, autonomous person who thinks, performs and understands their relationship to the world in a particular way … The history of [modern] Australia is really a history of Indigenous children being governed and educated towards becoming white people.

‘When it comes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and those from other non-Western backgrounds, all the assumptions about how that child is embedded as kin and in broader relationships to family and country are misunderstood in the first place.’

Sana says matter of fact that justice will never be possible in Australia, because justice can’t be found on stolen land. ‘Even the idea that we can reconcile harms of the past – as though those harms are not ongoing – I don’t think that’s possible,’ she says. ‘The legitimacy of legal and political power on this continent is questionable and will always be questionable. The second-order questions are not about reconciliation or meeting halfway, or the kinds of compromises or negotiations that take place, but are really about how power can be redistributed.’

To this end, Sana views the proposals for ‘voice, treaty and truth’ in the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a substantive means of structural reform that can help reallocate this power. ‘Constitutionally enshrining the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to monitor the use of the parliament’s law-making power over us has immense transformative potential – not least, in the possibility of strengthening the terms of negotiation and enforceability for future treaties,’ she says.

Rather than having Australians feeling guilty and overwhelmed, she encourages people of all colours and ethnicities to start by thinking about whose land they live and work on and to consider what dispossession and social structures made it possible.

‘It’s not about producing better knowledge about who Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples are – we’re not here to be studied. It’s about understanding how knowledge about Indigenous peoples has been produced and the power dynamic that made it possible. And the way forward is disrupting that dynamic.’

You can ask that

Indigenous students at Trinity College have got the ball rolling on an important conversation about Indigenous experiences and perspectives.

BY JAKE KEANE

During her second year at Trinity College, Nyamal and Jaru woman Jordan Holloway-Clarke (TC 2018) began talking with other students about ways to improve the educational environment for Indigenous students, including ways to support staff and non-Indigenous students in becoming more culturally aware and informed on Indigenous perspectives and experiences.

From these discussions a common theme emerged – the need to create safe spaces for Indigenous students to talk openly about issues affecting them, and for non-Indigenous students to ask questions, learn and reflect on their knowledge of Indigenous cultures and perspectives.

With this in mind, the group decided to produce a video to be posted on the Trinity College Facebook page where students could ask questions and have them answered by Indigenous students.

‘The concept grew from wanting to create a platform for students to ask questions they might not necessarily know how to Google, or about issues they might not have the time to read a whole book about, so it was providing some easy, quick education,’ explains Jordan.

Jordan Holloway-Clarke

Image supplied

The high levels of engagement the post achieved, as well as the number of questions posed, validated the impact that these forms of student-led activities can have when it comes to addressing cultural education gaps, overcoming misconceptions and developing impactful dialogues between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians.

‘At the moment, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s a lot of interest in people educating themselves and understanding unconscious bias and prejudice,’ Jordan adds. ‘But I think a lot of people are still struggling with where to find information.’

Titled 'You Can Ask That', the format for the video was inspired by the ABC series 'You Can’t Ask That', which is based on guests responding to awkward and controversial publicly sourced questions.

‘We created the video in an anonymous Google format and invited students to ask whatever they wanted. Some people get really worried and don’t ask questions because they’re afraid they’re going to say something wrong, and that stops the conversation from progressing,’ says Jordan.

Born in Darwin, Jordan has cultural links with the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of north-west Australia. She began her arts degree at Melbourne University in 2018, majoring in sociology and Indigenous studies.

Jordan hopes the momentum generated by the video post will continue through the involvement and energy of other Indigenous students at Trinity, leading to more educational activities and the strengthening of Indigenous student networks within the College.

‘We had lots of messages of support related to the video and lots of views, which was really pleasing,’ says Jordan, who believes things are moving in a positive direction in relation to social justice issues impacting Indigenous Australians, albeit slowly.

‘Lots of people haven’t quite linked the US and Australia, which are quite similar in a lot of ways when it comes to race and social justice issues … It was an interesting time to be able to spotlight those issues. I think it’s caused a lot of people to look at things differently and to reflect.

‘My hope is that we can continue this momentum so that, in the future, other students can find it easier to hold these types of events and activities that bring us together and get people having important conversations.’

FIRST NATIONS STUDENT COMMITTEE

'You Can Ask That' was an initiative of Trinity College’s inaugural First Nations committee, which Jordan helped establish and headed up as president in 2020. The committee liaised with N’arweet Dr Carolyn Briggs AM – a Boon Wurrung Elder who works closely with Trinity College students and staff – to come up with a language name for the committee, Kumergaii Yulendji, which means 'knowledge arising'. The committee plans and runs a range of initiatives to help celebrate and share Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture within the Trinity College community.

Other members of the Trinity College community helping to promote change

Professor Marcia Langton AO

Professor Marcia Langton AO

Marcia is a Trinity College Fellow and was named an Officer of the Order of Australia this year in recognition of her advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and her contribution to tertiary education. Since 2000, Marcia has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University and is influential in the fields of anthropology, Indigenous agreements and engagement with the minerals industry, and Indigenous culture.

Rona Glynn-McDonald

Rona Glynn-McDonald

Rona (TC 2014) is a social changemaker, drawing attention to First Nations peoples and the importance of sharing and celebrating their culture, knowledge and stories. She is founder of the Aboriginal-led organisation Common Ground, and a director at YLab. Rona also works with First Nations communities to create systems in Australia that highlight the value of Indigenous Australians to broader society. In 2020, she was named Trinity College’s Bill Cowan Alum of the Year.

Robert Lean

Robert Lean

Robert (TC 2012) is a 2020 John Monash Scholar. He is studying a Master of Entrepreneurship and has an interest in social enterprises and leveraging business to achieve social change. Through his studies, Robert aims to help run high-impact, high-growth social initiatives that address Australia’s structural inequalities, with a particular focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights.

Dr Shireen Morris

Shireen is a constitutional lawyer, an Academic Fellow at Trinity College, and a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University Law School. She has worked in the area of Indigenous constitutional recognition for almost a decade, and was previously the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Her PhD thesis presented the argument that First Nations peoples should have a voice in our country’s constitution.

Dr Shireen Morris