Dumbo Feather – July 2019

whitefella to have been immersed in Maori culture and to know the songs and the language

and, like, what a terrible thing it is for non-Indigenous people in Australia that they don’t get

to feel that and be a part of it.

Yeah.

I feel you can feel it. There’s a different energy

to the conversation for me in the times that

we’ve connected, where I felt like I’m a part

of something much bigger than even my own

culture. And it’s absolutely embedded in that

cultural framework and situated there but

it’s even bigger than that. It’s that beautiful

moment where different ideologies and backgrounds can come together because ultimately

our freedom is all bound up together. I think I’ve been so blessed in Melbourne because when

my partner and I moved down here, you know, this state has a particular history that is very

hard to come to terms with, even in the context of everything that’s happened in Australia.

Because there was a false treaty to begin with. One of the head fellas down here believed

he was signing off on something that would benefit his community and it didn’t. And the

Indigenous population went from 60,000 to 2000 in a couple of years. So a lot of people

call the state of Victoria “the killing fields.” At the same time it’s also the home to so much

amazing art and commerce and all of the bits of Western culture that we love and, you know,

Melbourne is an amazing city. A lot of people are drawn to it for that reason. When we came

down we were here for a purpose and that was to be in the arts industry. But we had a baby

pretty much straight away. So it was the opposite experience that we thought we were going

to have. We were down here without our families but we still knew that there was a purpose

for us to be in this city. We were going through this really tough time. And we sat down and

we were like, “We need a grandma. We need a grandma. We don’t have a grandma.” [Laughs].

And so we consciously had a moment of connecting to that wish and desire and within a

couple of weeks we met a woman, Antomina Rumwaropen. And I’m actually in her lounge

room today. And she became our grandma. She has given us so much. She helped raise my

daughter. She’s got five beautiful extraordinary kids of her own. She’s from West Papua. And

what’s happening in West Papua right now is what happened on my homelands around 200

years ago. So it’s this really confronting moment in history. But I look at this woman who has

all of the consciousness and awareness of what’s going on back home and she does what she

can in terms of activism and supporting the struggle and the cause but ultimately she’s just

this loving woman who is so generous in her spirit and so giving. And hasn’t let any of that

embitter her or change her. All of the Elders that I know who are true Elders, they have that

same special quality. Uncle Larry Walsh, Uncle Archie Roach, Uncle Jack Charles, they’ve all

been through so much. More than I could have ever imagined experiencing. Yet when they’re

together and when they’re with other people, all they do is uplift. It just makes me cry in

That’s how I understood two-way strong. I understood when you said it more as belonging to

one another, that I can belong to you and you can belong to me and that we do that by staying

in conversation with one another in real time. It’s both/and. It’s on the everyday plane and

then on the spiritual plane. So I’m at the frontline of business and industry. And I actually think

even racist people and people in the fossil fuel industry and all kinds of people who are in all

kinds of head spaces and heart spaces, if we were to watch the movie of humanity, everyone

thinks they’re doing the right thing. But at this time where Mother Nature is calling us hard to

not only belong to ourselves, to transform ourselves, but to belong to each other, “two-way

strong” just felt like such an abundant, empathic, compassionate idea to hold and live into.

That my privilege or my life of joy would be intertwined with

your life of joy. And that we would be two rivers feeding

both sides of the abundant land between us. I don’t know.

It’s a very profound concept and it’s just one of the ancient

concepts that I think, as we metabolise it through me and

through you and between us, something new could emerge.

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LYDIA FAIRHALL

DUMBO FEATHER