Talking To My Country – Stan Grant

 I always find myself drawn back to the darkness. Sadness has always felt so much more familiar and so it is safer. We can live in its confines. We can laugh in its face. But it is preferable to happiness. Happiness feels like giving in, it feels like surrender. Happiness feels like the past is over and done and I am not yet ready for that.  

          Talking to my country is a profoundly readable insight into the Indigenous Australian experience, of living in a country that until the late 60’s counted its original inhabitants among the flora and fauna of this country.

                It is a wonderful discussion of the difficulty of navigating tough conversations, coming to terms with deep cultural connections with the past and being a successful Aboriginal man at the same time. Reconciling anger and frustration. Walking through life with the heavy hand of soft expectations and never being able to truly reconcile the conflicting parts of his identity.

                A deeply personal recollection at times, Stan speaks of fear, anger, confusion. The childhood of constant moving, poverty and seeing hard-working parents unable to find the path to ‘wealth for toil’ promised to all Australians. I don’t know exactly what everyone will take out of these anecdotes, there are elements of them that resonated so deeply with me that I found myself emotional in the reading of them. I turned them over in my head during the 20kms of running I did while in the middle of reading the book… I too remember the tiny triangle holes in the tin of delicious pineapple juice, the mince and onions, the arguments, violence and substance abuse endemic in broken households.

          Stan Grant calls himself a story teller, although it feels like that is a understatement. He is telling stories, but more than that, the writing feels like a conversation with an old friend. A D&M late at night, where someone you care deeply for expresses the history of their feelings. It is controlled and humble, but honest and open. It is not a discussion that is full of answers, but, given the chance, it can take you through an examination of your own latent and dormant biases. The phrases you have no doubt heard, perhaps even used yourself. The feeling for indigenous Australians observing the treatment of Adam Goodes, or remote communities. The feeling of connection with this country, the feeling of their country not being truly ours.

                For those who come across the seas;
 
               We’ve boundless plains to share.
 
               For those who were here when the settlers arrived, there has not been an equal seat at the table. We took those boundless plains. We, the Australians. We invented Australia, and we have not done a good enough job of including the original inhabitants of the land in that definition. Australians were people that came from across the seas, they are people born of those people. The Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and hundreds of other nations, we lumped together into a class of animal called Aborigines. Largely stripped of their individual nations, viewed as less than human, let alone citizens of the country they have lived in continuously for millennia.

                The time has come for the truth telling, the airing of grievances and the acknowledgement of this undercurrent of negative expectation. It is not solely the problem of the first fleet, it is in the discussion papers of the Herald Sun today, it is in the constitutional amendment passed only 51 years ago. We need to embrace the forward momentum wherever we find it, while working to find a middle ground of forgiveness.

                There is a reluctance to take responsibility, as though accepting fault is to accept a lifetime of having blame thrown at us. We will admit some mistreatment, yet point to the standout examples of Indigenous Australians breaking the mould. We will give them Australian of the Year awards, applaud speeches, fly small red, black and yellow flags. But we determine the appropriate level of Aboriginality that we can tolerate in public spaces. We decide what is an appropriate amount of identification.

                Stan writes beautifully of the struggle to straddle the bi-cultural identity of a millennia long ancestry that is getting harder and harder to maintain with a cultural identity that wants to tell him how Australian he should be, and how much Aboriginality is acceptable in that context. It makes him angry. It should make all of us angry, and we should work to make it better. Focusing on the future is the way to build progress, trust and respect. Acknowledgement and reconciliation of the past is the way to overcome bitterness and loss. We cannot do one without the other.

                I love more easily than I can forgive. – Stan Grant

           The love is already there. The love of country, our country. There is love in progress and opportunity. Love moves forward in time, but forgiveness is shaking off the weight that is dragging behind us. There is no forgiveness without taking responsibility. There is no taking responsibility without acknowledging truth.

             I would heartily recommend that anyone who gets the chance to read this, does. It really is wonderful.

Stan Grant - Talking To My Country

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