marieclaire.com.au 65In 2008, the Olympic sprinter and gold medallist,
now 43, featured on the SBS show Who Do You Think
You Are? As the cameras rolled, Cathy’s mother,
Cecelia, showed her daughter a letter she’d received
from local white authorities in the 1960s, refusing to
let her and Cathy’s father, Norman, travel to visit
relatives five hours away from where they lived in
Queensland. Under legislation at the time,
government officials were given enormous control
over the lives of Indigenous people, including travel
restrictions (this power was fully
repealed by the late ’70s). Although it
was just one story of injustice among
thousands, discovering her parents’
plight changed the way Cathy saw her
background and gave her a new voice.T
he letter was from the local
Director of Native Affairs and
Superintendent near where^
my parents lived. It began with
my mother and father saying they’d be ‘most grateful if
you’d give your approval for us to spend Christmas with
family in Woorabinda’. Then came the reply: ‘Your
application has been refused.’ This was the type of
injustice they faced. On Who Do You Think You Are?
you see my real-time reaction. It was shock and anger. I
couldn’t believe Aboriginal people were treated this way.
“My mum still finds it very hard to talk about the
situation. On the show she said, ‘I felt sad. I just wanted
to see my mum and dad and brothers and sisters.’ And I
said, ‘This is absolutely disgusting.’“Afterwards, I thought about it and so many things
started to make sense. I understood why people in my
family had always carried this feeling of oppression and
why some people had these self-defeating attitudes. This
is the sort of thing that they’d felt from their parents
because this is how their parents had been treated.
“It was so recent – I’m a ’73 baby and this was
happening only 10 years before. You don’t really know
the details when you’re growing up but you can feel
something with your parents.
“If I’d known this story earlier it
would have made me run so much faster.
Train harder. When I ran I was already
running because of some broad feeling
about my Aboriginality, but this would
have made me go even harder. Powered
me. My time in the 400m in Atlanta was
the sixth fastest [of all time] but this
would have made me faster.
“Now I want to take this story and
share it through [social justice law firm]
Maurice Blackburn’s ‘Your Right Is My Right’ campaign.
Then others might have the courage to share their stories,
and together we may all fight for a fair and just society.
Through the recounting of a personal experience, we are
able to connect on a deeper level and allow people to see
with new eyes. My husband and I want to make sure our
five-year-old daughter, Ruby, knows about what
happened to my family years ago. That she knows stories
of her Aboriginality. She already has a strong sense of it,
and I want her to grow up and be motivated to stand up
for the rights of others as much as her own.”“If I’d known
this story earlier
it would have
powered me
to run so
much faster”“Finding out what happened to my
parents changed me forever”
CATHY FREEMAN, FORMER ATHLETE
200
8
Cathy Freeman and her
mum, Cecelia, who
showed her the life-
changing letter on
SBS’s Who Do You
Think You Are? (below).PHOTOGRAPHED BY NEWSPIX; COURTESY OF LIZ JACKSON. AS TOLD TO ALEXANDRA CARLTON