Illusionists and Hunters: Being Aboriginal in this Occupied Space

Abstract

As I have often opened I do not put my voice out there to be taken as ‘the’ Aboriginal view, for it is but one. Unfortunately this federal government and all previous Australian governments, both state and federal, haven’t quite got that point, that is, the singular Aboriginal voice does not speak for the mob, for there is no one Aboriginal view, or one that ‘Aboriginal leaders’ can legitimately advance as being ‘the view’ or ‘the way’ to move on out of colonial traumas. Aboriginal Australia is a complex and layered landscape ‘always was, always will be,’ a place of not only Aboriginal sovereignty but a diversity of those sovereignties. Speaking from the margins I remain hopeful that the voice of dreamers and resisters will grow, because to do otherwise from where I sit seems to not only waste a voice but also posit a place too frightful to imagine. Others may say that this is an egotistical voice, speaking of what power and privilege deny and also a wasted voice, one which would be better filled by that of the pragmatic deal breaker. I have drawn my own conclusions, knowing that resistance is essential to our future, for without resistance we will have no place left to stand. The situation is now becoming impossible to even live from.