Mackay woman shares discrimination experience

‘If you’ve got black skin, you’re treated differently’

Fiona Bobongie . Picture: Tony Martin

AS THOUSANDS rally around Australia in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, a Mackay resident has spoken of her own racial experiences.

The rallies across the world protested the death in custody of American man George Floyd.

Darumbal woman Fiona Bobongie said Mr Floyd’s death and that of West Australian woman Ms Dhu were just two fatal examples of what she called entrenched racism.

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Ms Bobongie said young men had been handcuffed, “roughed up” and bashed in lockup.

“A lot of our mob (in Mackay) just feel like our hands are tied because if you muck up or try and resist, you’ll get arrested yourself or if you try and argue the point, you’ll get arrested,” she said.

“We’re continually fighting and that’s why the riots are going off in America – because you get sick of fighting every little thing.

“It doesn’t matter how much you earn or what position you have.

“If you’ve got black skin, you’re treated differently.”

Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody ended in 1991, there have been at least 434 deaths as recorded on the Guardian Australia’s Death Inside database.

Darumbal woman and Mackay resident Fiona Bobongie. Picture: Tony Martin

Ms Bobongie said while Australia had undergone some positive changes, many of the older generations still clung to derogative views of indigenous people.

“They’ve been influenced by the White Australia policy, they’ve been influenced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (being) known as flora and fauna … we weren’t considered citizens until 1967,” she said.

“I was born in 1966 so I was an ‘animal’.”

She added many were unaware Mackay was the location of Queensland’s first Aboriginal reserve – this piece of history acknowledged by an “out of sight” plaque at the Mackay Botanic Gardens.

The 14,080-acre reserve gazetted in 1871 at Sandy Creek, south of Mackay, had the dual purpose of “protecting” European settlers from “vagrant” Aborigines who would be “transformed” into “honest” work supply for the plantation owners.

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Ms Bobongie said more needed to be done, particularly in schools, where educating future generations about the strengths of indigenous people was key.

“People don’t know what they don’t know,” she said.

“We are the oldest continuous culture living on the earth and the system and the complex knowledge that has been held for thousands and thousands of years has not been embraced and acknowledged. This is the strength that we bring.

“Every person is accountable for their actions. Every interaction that we have can either empower or disempower people.

“If we actually embrace indigenous knowledge we would save our planet because at the moment it’s dying in more ways than one.”