[00:00:00] Yemi: So the truth is, I'm a little bit nervous about this podcast and so I need your grace. I hope that if you're listening to this, you're already here to do the work. You might be curious and I welcome you either way. The reason why I'm nervous is because having lived in Australia for coming up to 10 years now, I realize how fragile Australia is.
[00:01:05] And therefore how fragile I may be becoming. And it's a big reason why it's now important that my travels. During any given year is highly intentional with a view that I go to countries where activism is alive and my form of activism is probably very different from the average person, but I do know that the fragility in Australia and particularly is, um, is really high.
[00:01:39] And so I'm about to talk about something that I haven't spoken about openly or publicly for a while. And I appreciate some people might come into my inbox. Or come up to me when I'm doing a speaking engagement of this isn't my place to speak. Well, here's what I'd say to you. It fucking is. Because I'm human.
[00:02:00] I exist on this planet. It is part of my responsibility. for our sustainability and every other organism that's in the planet. So I hope I've made that clear to anyone who might get a little bit confused as I embark on this. October 14th, 2023, Australia had its referendum, where it asked the public the question, should we enshrine First Nation voice?
[00:02:32] Into our constitution. And I'm sure there are so many other legalities or words or terms I could use, but I don't want to fool you or trip myself up, but at a basic level, that's what the question was and Australia voted no over 60%, just over the 60 percent voted no. And I assure you it is more complex than just me saying this simply, but if we were to just take the facts, that's what it is.
[00:03:00] Now, I appreciate that how the campaign was run could be questioned. Because the last time I remember Australian having a referendum, of which I couldn't vote at that time because I wasn't a citizen, was where the gay people could get married, like, follow the same laws as the heterosexual relationship that we have been invited to believe was the only way and the right way for decades, centuries.
[00:03:33] Imagine what would have happened if Australia voted no for that.
[00:03:40] Yeah, just sit with that. So let's go back to this referendum, October 14th, 2023. We voted no, the elders I follow asked for a seven day grievance, like silence on the matter. And I was so grateful for that. But if you listened to the podcast before, I've needed about six months. And although maybe not my place, I didn't really have anger.
[00:04:11] I had sadness on how the campaign had been managed. I know more First Nations people who voted no. One was actually when I delivered a keynote in Brisbane to a group of African professionals. And the, the keynote was in December and I had one of my many downloads and shared that I had voted yes for the referendum.
[00:04:37] And a cousin and I'm going to refer to him as a cousin was a first nations, man who had actually done the acknowledgement of country because he wasn't specifically from that country. So it was an acknowledgement from him I had shared in my keynote, as I said, the ad voted. And when I'd finished my keynote and it was opened up for questions, he actually said, I wish you could come and speak to my mob because I'd mentioned sovereignty. And I don't think at that time he knew that I'd voted yes. I eventually shared that openly.
[00:05:17] It wasn't something I was going to do. And he said he voted no. And he explained that the big reason why he voted no is because First Nations people have sovereignty already. They don't need any paperwork to tell them. That they should have a voice and I'm sure there are many other things and I'm sure that that may have just been his reason and I respected it and we could sit at that table and we could break bread even though we had two different ways and opinions because I'm of the view that we can't get to where we want to get to from here.
[00:05:52] That we are going to need to use a different mindset to solve a number of the problems we face as a collective, but most importantly, that First Nations people experience. And yes, I get it. They need to be the authors of that story. And so for the first time, I was able to get a different perspective. But then if I look at the other data that suggested that 80 percent of First Nations within Australia were voting yes.
[00:06:24] I started to think, well, who are the other people that voted no? And this isn't to shame, but for us to just build some resilience to have the conversation. What is it we missed out so poorly, badly, in the management of this campaign, that there was a whole group of non First Nations people who figured better to say no than yes?
[00:06:50] That's the dialogue we won't have because if we don't even tackle racism in Australia, if every time it comes up in particularly, white bodies clamp up, if every time There's another phone call from my son's school about racism, and you can just see the teachers and community freeze that it's happened again.
[00:07:22] How are we ever going to be able to get through this referendum? See, to decolonize trauma, we have to acknowledge the thickness and the depth of the problems we have in our society. Because we weren't even having community debates about this referendum. And believe me, I volunteered, but my volunteering only went as so fast as being invited to two meetings.
[00:07:51] Why weren't we out there, speaking, talking about it, answering people's questions of why they challenged this? Speaking to some of my First Nations friends as well, they were out in country. And there was no representation, whether it was from governments or communities, local MPs, nothing. Thank you. Was this whole referendum just another way to spend millions, with the view that it was always going to fail?
[00:08:17] I question it. I get curious. The other thing I really want to highlight is, sometimes, I think, we carry out performance pain. You know the one where we say, oh, yeah, I can't believe that happened. And then we go on with our day and never actually really try to acknowledge, well, what was our role in that?
[00:08:39] What did we do in that? Because sometimes the very group we are trying to protect Or the very group we are trying to reconcile with or the very group we should be paying back to over and over again is the very group we continuously leave out. And we need to get really curious on why that is. But before we do that, we are going to need to understand our own proximity to fragility.
[00:09:17] And whether we can all get in a room and have a conversation, say, well, what did you think that referendum was about? And what did you vote? What would be the best outcome? And I know some of you might be listening to this and say, well, why are we even having a conversation? What's it got to do with us as First Nations people?
[00:09:35] You're absolutely right. But guess what? We are in this system. I talk about decolonization, trust me, I don't remove myself from the fact that I actually do enjoy, you know, the benefits of what quote unquote colonization may have brought. And my constant, constant battle will be how both sides are fighting each other.
[00:09:59] This desire to break away from the very system I have been born into. And although I don't have all the answers, I stay curious to say, well, what can the alternative look like? Because once again, it doesn't have to be the binary of A or B. Surely we can have C, D or E, maybe not too many options, but as a minimum, we can have more than two.
[00:10:27] So, like I said, the nervousness was, I never knew what I was going to say, but I'd be intrigued to know what's come up for you. Because Australia, we have a lot of work to do. If you're listening to this elsewhere in the world, depending on how much your country, community, families are going through trauma, I invite you to continue to look at it with a decolonizing lens, which is that there is always an alternative story, one that deviates from the dominant,
[00:11:01] and see if we have any answers in that. I love you.