This is my passion at the moment – The Gap. It has been for about 3 years actually, but it’s taken this long for me to find someone to help me enter the world of Aboriginal Australia. I know that sounds ridiculous but honestly, it’s so much harder than I ever thought it would be to meet and engage with Aboriginal people. It feels like there’s disinterest and mistrust from the Aboriginal side, and I don’t blame them. You can’t just rock up to an Aboriginal person and tell them you want to get to know them and engage meaningfully with their community. At the very least it’s super lame! Who would want to hang out with a lame-o like that?
I approached a lot of organisations who work with Aboriginal people, but none of them really knew what to do with me. Some tried, many never returned an email. I sought out Aboriginal leaders I read about and saw in documentaries. No return emails from them either. Gary Foley accepted my Facebook request, and has given me a few hot tips, but he’s very busily pushing forward with his own trip.
So my deepest gratitude goes to the Fred Hollows Foundation. They not only returned my email, but have greeted me with enthusiasm and generosity. They put me in touch with the Black Arm Band, which is a loose collective of some of the greatest Aboriginal musicians working today, including the one and only Archie Roach. I went to see them play at the Footscray Arts Centre, which is stunning, and chatted with Lou Bennett about the state of Reconciliation.
(I met Archie, but he used every ounce of his immense personal presence to let me know he was not in the mood to chat. I’m sure our time will come.)
All in all, a great start – FINALLY! Looking forward to “moving forward”.
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[...] than the scope of this blog. If you want to read further about the reconciliation gap check out Meshel Laurie’s latest blog post, she writes and speaks about it much more eloquently than [...]