Linda Burney’s speech to parliament yesterday was not like those we normally hear from the House of Representatives. There were no slogans, no shouts, no accusations or name-calling.
But there was singing.
Clutching a kangaroo skin cloak, Burney looked to gallery as her Wiradjuri sister, Lynette Riley, sang a song of welcome and celebration in their traditional language. Such an act is not normally permitted in parliament, but the courtesy was extended for the occasion – the maiden speech of the first Indigenous woman elected to the House.
That cloak, made by Riley, was an expression of Burney’s personal story, and featured both her clan’s totem, the goanna, and her own personal one, the cockatoo – a “noisy messenger bird”, laughed Burney, as she showed it to her colleagues.
A long-time state politician, the former NSW school teacher was lured into Federal politics by the ALP. Come July, she stood for and won her place as the representative of Barton, a seat named after Australia’s first Prime Minister and, poignantly, the architect of the White Australia policy.
That irony has not been lost on Burney. A proud Wiradjuri woman, the 59-year-old yesterday told her story; the story of “a freshwater kid from the Riverina”, a kid scandalously born to a white mother from an Aboriginal father, a kid who was not even recognised as a citizen for the first ten years of her life, until a long-overdue referendum corrected that injustice.
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And what of her white mother and that heritage?
Just asking.
Obviously identifies with her Indigenous history more, as it probably affected her growing up, with people being defined as 'half caste', 'quadroon', etc. around the time of her childhood. Her own mother left her at the hospital, probably frightened of being an unmarried white woman with a black child. She was probably discriminated against because of the black in her and she has probably seen racism directed at her family, friends and language group members. She wants to use her identity to fight for her people, who are the most disadvantaged in Australia. I don't see how her 'white' heritage' is really relevant here.
Being Aboriginal is how you live your life, your culture, your world view as well as ancestry. Alicia Keys and Halle Berry both were born to white mothers and identify as black and accepted as black.
Her identiity - her choice.
Non-Aboriginal people don't get to decide our identity any more!
Besides if she claimed she was white she would face all the usual racist claims that she isn't white enough to be white, not good enough, that black blood will make her do bad things. Really. Aboriginal people just can't win.
Celebrate her achievement and glory.
I am sad she even went near Wyatt. That scoundrel proposed and had passed a motion to change 18C and he publicly supported a Liberal Candidate who wrote the violent and disgusting attack on an Aboriginal women who was a survivor of the Stolen Generation. Shame on K. Whyatt.
I think you may be confusing Ken Wyatt with someone else. Ken has always been staunchly against any change of 18C, said he would cross the floor to vote against it in 2014, and he reiterated this again last month. He will vote AGAINST the repeal of 18C.
Also, maybe Ken knows that, as sad as it is for someone to have been part of the Stolen Generation, it does not automatically make them a good person by default. Being a Stolen Generation victim doesn't automatically make you a good person above criticism. Ken is a good decent man, so therefore if he supported a candidate who disagreed with an Aboriginal woman, he obviously had very good reason.
What about it?
She chooses to embrace her aboriginal side in this instance
Her choice, her business