Final Thoughts

Lyrics

[Interview: Interviewer, & Ziggy Ramo] Hey, look, thanks so much for doing this The idea is to introduce you to the audience But we wanna talk about your music Pretty uncompromising lyrics Yep But there's a lot of—, what I really like about your music is that it's so direct Yep You cite your musical influences, or your influences, as Charlie Perkins and Gary Foley And I think you know, that question of palatability You know, with Hip-Hop you can certainly, you can pull no punches You can say pretty much what you like, because the genre is known for that I'm pretty much like a hip-hop nerd, I just—I live and breathe it And, I live and breathе words, essentially So, you know I'm very big into Shakеspeare I'm very big into my literature But, you know, uh—, like if you look at Shakespeare today You know, he's kind of, kind of feared by students in high school Because he just seems, you know, so beyond our level to kind of comprehend As teenagers looking to, to study him And the thing is, is like, when his works were, were being acted and delivered on stage You know, like eighty per cent of the audience was illiterate We look at it today, outside of the context, as being amazing And obviously it's amazing work But the correlation between, for example, Shakespeare and Hip-Hop is actually You know, it's— it's very conjunction with each other And um, I think Hip-Hop is essentially— it's just, it's just a Genesis of literature You know, it's come from a long lineage It's first kind of credited around the 1970s, but everything has a genesis Nothing just comes from thin air, um Certainly not, yeah You know, and um Around the 1970s, that was when there was a massive influx of Caribbean immigrants in America And they had such a rich knowledge of education And they had this massive library, and they had a caste system Where different people had different roles in society, essentially And they had one role, where it was essentially to memorise just hours and hours and hours upon of poetry And it was to pass on knowledge around social issues And, you've got some people that can recite a four-hour poem, it's phenomenal You know, and that kind of experience came on the boats, and then You know, you also look at like, for example, like Etta James, you know, she was scatting in the '30s, '40s And that rhythm is a lot more aligned with what Hip-Hop is than I guess singing So, yeah, there's a long genesis, and for me, that really intrigued me I really wanted to kind of understand it Because before, if I was into music, I was very much into literature And very fascinated with words I think I— I personally, I probably write a little provocatively Just because in my day-to-day life, I probably don't have that freedom Now tell us where you, where you're from, is the question I wanna ask you Yeah, yeah, um, so As one blakfella to another Yeah, we've just recently re-discovered that we have Wik ancestry Because Dad's grandmother, when she was taken, she was actually taken off country For a while we thought it was kind of 'round Cape York area, but, um Yeah, yeah, just recently, 'cause Mum and Dad had moved to Arakoon at the start of the year Um, where Dad's principal and Mum's teaching up there Yeah, they rediscovered that actually, yeah, we have Wik ancestry And Dad's the first Wik principal, um, which is pretty amazing On top of that, Mum and Dad's first teaching job out of Teachers' College was in North-East Arnhem Land In Gapuwiyak, um, on Yolngu country, and they were adopted into the kinship And, so, um, obviously when they had us kids, we were born into the kinship So, we were also lucky enough to kind of have that connection on Yolngu country And, you know, that is as much as my family as anyone Regardless of blood or, you know, like, they've been such a big part of my life And, I've been so lucky to have that connection to Aboriginality because, you know, add to that connection of culture Yeah, um, and then pretty much just been moving around Australia Doing big circles between Perth, the East Coast and Arnhem Land I finished up school in Sydney, and I just, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do So I returned back up to East Arnhem Land, and worked in communities with Public Health, with, uh, preventing chronic disease And yeah, and then that's when I gotta be passionate about health So, I ended up moving back to Perth then, and that's where I'm based at the moment You also have ancestry from the Solomon Islands Yeah, yeah, yeah Uh, yeah, so Dad, um, yeah, he's Indigenous and Solomon Islander And um, yeah, so his Solomon Islander ancestry brought across, um— Which is crazy as well, like, it's crazy that this isn't more commonly known, but Essentially, what it's called is blackbirding, and yeah, it's slavery So, they were brought, um, across, uh, to Mackay in Queensland to work on the sugarcane fields, um And that's—, that's— yeah, that's essentially like, heh, I guess that's what drives me It's— it's pretty crazy to think, you know, like, the sugar industry is such a big industry in Australia And, it's something we don't talk about, the fact that it's founded on slavery You know, and a lot of Australians are thinking, you know, we kind of love to say, um, lest we forget Especially with the ANZAC spirit, um, but then, kind of as soon as it comes to Indigenous Australia or anything, it's pretty quickly forgotten, um It's amazing how few people know the story Yeah Of the, you know, indentured, well basically organised, industrial slavery that happened here Yeah Particularly in far North—, in North Queensland and northern New South Wales Yeah, yeah, yeah And, um, and Western Australia as well, um, north WA And, um, uh, pretty rampant actually, it's actually— And a lot of Aboriginal people have that heritage too, and I'm one of them Yep, yeah, yeah, and that's like, that's just— I'm one of them Haha, it's crazy to think that, that like disconnect, you know, like that's just— How can you have— how can that kind of be happening in, um I always kind of like to refer in inverted commas, um, to us as the "Lucky Country" Because it's just like, um, if we want to present ourselves— Depends who you, depends who you ask Exactly, exactly, and I like, at the end of the day I love this country, because it's our ancestry, you know, and, um It's just crazy to me to think that, you know, we have the oldest, oldest people in the whole world And it's not something we're proud of as a country It's, it's not something we, we don't really celebrate just how rich, um The resources we have in, in terms of culture That's just baffling to me, that's something I've never, ever understood Because I honestly believe, and I would like to believe that, you know, good, logical, kind, compassionate, people Once presented with the information, will kind of see the light Because, you know, I don't see it as Indigenous and non-Indigenous issues It's just kinda, are you a good human being issue You know, like, how are you as an individual okay with how our government's suspending the Racial Discrimination Act to pass intervention There was genocide in this country, there was slavery in this country And, those, those events didn't just affect the past, but are continuing to affect today In Western Australia, the incarcertation rate of Indigenous Australians is nine times the incarceration rate of black South Africans during the Apartheid And how are we going to sit here, uh, in the "Lucky Country", um, and, and accept that That is, that's disgusting, that is unacceptable to be happening in this country It's just crazy to me, you know Even, even the closure of communities, um, kind of throughout WA, um What a lot of people don't kind of, um, understand about that is You know, the funding for Indigenous communities, were, was a fed— federal funding And then the federal government decided that it would then be state legislation So, they gave all states a big lump sum of money to, to deal kind of with the financing and, and, of these communities So, the WA government took that lump sum And then said, "You know what, these communities aren't economically viable" Totally disregarding the, the importance of being on country and the connection to culture They didn't even have a plan, you know, so like if you're doing this for the children, what's the plan? You know, like you're gonna close these communities and then where are those children gonna go? There was no plan, there was no plan, zero community consultation They were happy to spend eighty-three million dollars on that rollout To invade our Indigenous people's rights Yet, you know, that's seen as economically viable? And it's just disgusting, it's really, it's just so unacceptable that this is happening in our country Well, the intervention created a lot of jobs for non-Indigenous people in Indigenous communities Yeah And there's a huge, a huge costs in administration of the intervention, we know that it's largely been a failure But it's— Yeah It remains in place And that's the thing, it's just been a change of policy And if you actually look at what's really happened, like, you know, in the 1990s So, ten per cent of youth suicides between ages ten and twenty-four were Indigenous youths And to make up ten per cent of, of all suicides when we only make up two per cent of the population is just outrageous But that same statistic in 2010, we make up 80% of those youth suicides And in correlation to the intervention, you know, after the implementation of that legislation Suicide increased in the Northern Territory by five hundred per cent You've got children, you know, ages five, recently suicide You know, what child can not, you know, see a viable option in life, and they rather cognitively take their own life Like that is just unacceptable, that is, eh— It honestly, it makes me quite emotional just talking about it To think that, you know, we have children in this country That look at their experiences as an Indigenous Australian and what they have to, to live for And they decide that it's not worth it And that's just, that is just so, that is heartbreaking for me And I think that's what a lot of Australians don't realise, that you know We're kind of forced to get on the horse and ride ahead And try and make this change, but sometimes it's just hard to, to not have time to mourn Because like this stuff is atrocious, you know, obviously, what was happening in Kalgoorlie recently (Yeah) Like, there was so much talk in the media and everything and I just couldn't believe the fact that people weren't actually realising that there was a fourteen-year-old boy Like he, he'd just died, and he was never going to go home to his family, he was never going to grow a day older And, we were all trying to argue the semantics about what did or didn't happen And it was just like, that's a fourteen-year-old boy, that's a real-life human being, that is no longer here And, you know, we are so normalised and numb and conditioned to, to kind of, to not even budge an eyelid at that And that's just, that's um, quite unsettling for me I identify as Indigenous and non-Indigenous, you know, I cannot measure my blood in percentages If I put my blood on a piece of paper, I don't think it's going to split up you know Like my arm isn't white, and my head's black, you know, one, you know, it's— it's all one And so I identify as Indigenous and non-Indigenous And the only— so I've kind of been privileged of seeing, I guess, the whole picture, um You know, I've been brought up very close with my mother's family With my Scottish ancestry and, you know, I love, I love all of my family And you know, my mother is non-Indigenous and I love– I love her to death, you know, um It's not at all, um, an individual attack on an individual non-Indigenous person It's just looking at the confines of what has happened and the structures of society, but um If you, if you look at the like the first accounts of, um, Indigenous Australians in English literature I think it was by William Dampier, who was a buccaneer, which is just kind of a nice word for pirate And um, his, his kind of first encounters with Indigenous people that he wrote about in his book Called 'A New Voyage Around The World' um, it's really interesting because, um Because they've never really been addressed, it's been allowed to perpetrate, um, for two hundred years And, and, those, um, those ideas of what is Indigenous and what is known to be Indigenous by non-Indigenous Australians Is perpetrated, and it can be directly kind of linked to him You know if you, if you look at his early writings, um One of his first encounters with Indigenous people was, um He got off his boat, and he was, um, met with some Indigenous people, and he saw that they were all naked And so, he put down clothes in front of them, um And in his mind, that was his payment for them to then work for him and carry his water, uh But the Indigenous Australians just kind of looked at the clothes and laughed (Haha) And, what he writes about is that, you know, uh, you know they, they stood like a, uh, a group of monkeys laughing, um And they seemed like they weren't accustomed to carrying burdens (Haha) And I was forced to carry the water myself Um, and that attitude, you know, can be directly linked to events today You know, like you, you look at that terminology, you know, monkey and ape You know, you only have to go back to 2013 when Adam Goodes, um, was called an ape And I think what troubled a lot of people is that We, as Indigenous Australians, don't get to choose who racially abuses us or who racially vilify us And he was brave enough to put a face to that discrimination, and It really troubled a lot of non-Indigenous Australians, that, that was a thirteen-year-old girl Um, and like you said, you know, because, the "other", the Indigenous, is inherently wrong Then, of course, a non-Indigenous girl, you know, you know, wasn't her fault, you know And as Adam— and that's the other thing, is like, I cannot believe the backlash Adam Goodes got Because if you actually look at the way he handled that You could not have been more of a gentleman, you know, if you were paid to Like he, he came out the next day, and said all he wanted as for an education for her Because, you know, she's been conditioned and, and a part of a society that has, you know seen her to call him an ape as something acceptable And he, he spent so much time in educating her and her family And, and the backlash was just, I just couldn't believe it But, you know, you look at what a lot of non-Indigenous commentators were saying about Adam Goodes And it was like, they couldn't believe that he wasn't accustomed to carrying the burden of racism