I am aware of both the honour and responsibility of being elected as the president of ANTAR. I step into this role as the first Indigenous president in ANTAR’s almost three decades of advocacy for First Nations rights and justice. However, the inter-cultural spaces on our Board will be maintained long into the future.
I would like to acknowledge the work of Peter Lewis, ANTAR’s president for the last 14 years, and also one of our founding members. At a particularly challenging time in 2023 following the loss of the Voice Referendum, Peter also stepped into the role of acting National Director for six months and navigated ANTAR’s recruitment of its new National Director, Blake Cansdale. We appreciate Peter’s expertise, insights, commitment and empathy which he will continue to offer as an active member of ANTaR Victoria.
I see myself as one of those blackfulla warriors who keeps on fighting the frontier wars. Some say they went from 1788 to 1934. No! The culture wars continue, particularly under conservative governments who continue to work against us; ignoring all the evidence that contradicts their punitive, neo-colonial ways. Child removal. Incarceration. Dishonesty and lies. An inability to listen to blackfullas that shows up over and over again in the failure to close the gap. For as long as those wars continue, and for as long as I can, the fight goes on.
Back in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Council (ATSIC) days there were 35 ATSIC regional councils across Australia and I was elected as the chairperson of the Alice Springs council. When Howard and Brough, along with their cabinet, abolished ATSIC and promised to deliver better programs and services to the countrymen, women and children, I went out to my community, Wallace Rockhole, and waited. And waited. And waited. That mob at Wallace Rockhole, like mobs all across the country, have kept going with their lives, but they’re still out there waiting for the promised improvements to appear.
I was born in Alice Springs in 1951, so you can do the sums. I am a Pertame Man and my Grandfather’s country is around Horseshoe Bend on the Finke River; the oldest river in the world. I have lived in Queensland for the past decade and my connection here is through my Grandmother who was born about 46 kilometres south of Cloncurry.
It has taken me some time to be comfortable with being called Uncle. Not because I’m vain, it’s just that I doubted that I had ‘earned’ this important cultural title. Uncle-Elder is not defined by age, it’s what you have done for mob. There are and have been many of our Elders who just keep standing up and I guess I’m one of those. My job is never done!
My work with ANTAR began as a Board Director five years ago. I recognise that sustaining ANTAR into the future is challenging, but I am very confident that with the continued hard work of the staff and team, and more creative thinking, we have a long, long future ahead.
