Resilience: what is behind the buzz word?

The buzz word this week has been ‘resilience’ but what does that practically mean for the Territory?

RESILIENCE is a concept often thrust upon minorities.

It is the idea they must ‘buck up’ and ‘push forward’ in spite of the systems that continually oppress them.

In the 1980s the queer community through self-determination and knowledge of culture lobbied for change.

However, the HIV-AIDS pandemic still claimed more than 6700 Australian lives.

Through images of the Grim Reaper the queer community became a visual vocabulary for disease and death which still lingers in social consciousness.

Therefore, when the Territory Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker opened with “resilience” at Sunday’s Covid press conference, I was reminded of Australia’s past. The mistakes. The activism. The self-determination of community.

“Resilience is something we need to focus on because now is the time for the community to step forward and think about the position we have been able to get you to,” Mr Chalker said.

The separationist language of this quote places the community in opposition to politics, despite the inherent values of democracy.

To follow with calls of “catastrophising” minimises the knowledge Aboriginal experts have about their own people. It is counter-productive to call for self-determination and in the same breath reduce a community’s call for support.

Throughout this pandemic there has been a place for resilience – collective resilience – which psychologists would say is an ability to adapt. Businesses have pivoted. Children have learnt new behaviours. Language has adopted new meanings for words like lockout, unprecedented and isolation.

These are tenets of resilience; an ability to collectively overcome, which Territorians should be proud of. However, there needs to be an acknowledgment that not all Territorians have the same access or infrastructures to adapt.

The pandemic has stripped our society bare.

It has revealed the social inequalities which are most evident in our NT remote communities; from housing to food security to chronic disease, the issues that were present pre-pandemic are now visibly part of our collective responsibility.

The problem with the notion of resilience is that it individualises what is a collective response. It places the onus on the minority to again “buck up” to overcome, where it should be our collective experience to ensure equitable access.

Aboriginal people in remote areas have been among the last to receive RATs. Some have walked kilometres in search of PCR tests. Many are currently flooded in with no access to the abundance of shops those in Darwin have.

Resilience washes our individual hands of collective progress. The pandemic has gifted us visibility.

It is not merely a matter of individual resilience, but rather an opportunity for social change.

So Mr Chalker was right when he said resilience means “the strength of culture needs to come to the fore;” but what is the cultural legacy we want to reflect, Territorians?