Yes

Because I’ve read the living tragedy detailed in the Closing the Gap Report. I saw that Aussie kids of indigenous heritage have twice the mortality rate of the rest of the population. You have to leave the developed world to find infant mortality rates that high. These are children. They’ve got no politics. So when someone reckons they’ve got a better solution – I’m all ears. When that someone is the people who are living it, I’m more ears.

Because it’s clear that generational trauma impacts physical health, mental health and social systems. The evidence for this is established and it is growing as we understand more about epigenetics. I’ve been in the healing game for a long time, and I know the process takes self-efficacy and consistency. Approaches being thrown out every time there’s a new government can’t build this resilience and doesn’t help the healing.

Because the culture that developed on this land understands complex interconnections. No one thread in that fabric is more important than any other, so authority, as we define it, means something completely different. It’s why the Noongar kids I grew up with were so wild in in school in those ‘all the desks in a row, face front and no talking’ days. ‘Because I say so’ just doesn’t fly. Solutions generated from within have a better chance of working.

Because the meaning you give things isn’t the truth. It’s just the meaning you give things. The voice to parliament can’t create division itself. Division will be created by people who want to create it – who want it to have that meaning. I’m wearied by the otherwise intelligent people I know who can’t seem to separate those two ideas.

Because every single Aussie with indigenous heritage that I know, thinks it is worth doing.