Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia by Anita Heiss

Sometimes it’s an adult in authority, sometimes even another Aboriginal person, but the confident refusal to accept that a child with fair skin can be Aboriginal occurs again and again in almost exactly the same words, never without impact on the child. The challenger isn’t always another child. I don’t remember what happened after that I just remember feeling ashamed. ‘I’m Aboriginal.’ I waved my hand in the air. We were learning about Aboriginal people and I piped up very proudly. I was six years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor in my checked dress, which was slightly too long for me, looking eagerly up at Miss Brown – at least I think that was her name – the first time I had a blow to my sense of identity. Here’s one of them, as told by Keira Jenkins, a Gamilaroi woman from Moree in New South Wales: I was struck by the sheer number of almost identical incidents in which someone challenges a young person’s Aboriginal identity. There is no single or simple way to define what it means to grow up Aboriginal in Australia, but this anthology is an attempt to showcase as many of the diverse voices, experiences and stories together as possible. The range of contributors is huge: people from all parts of Australia, urban and remote, from Cape York to the Western Australian wheat belt some who are household names, some who should be, and some who live quiet lives far from the limelight people who were strongly connected to culture and community as children and people who discovered they were Aboriginal only in adulthood old (several contributors were born the same year as me, 1947) and young (one was 13 at the time of publication) sports stars, poets, novelists, classical musicians, prisoners. It contains 52 essays from First Nations people of Australia. I’m coming to this book late, but it’s a book that will remain fresh for a long time yet.

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia by Anita Heiss