‘Living the trauma helps us help others’

Joe Collard got his first conviction at 19 years old, when he was charged with assaulting a police officer.

‘A great way to make progress is trusting us as leaders’ … Noongar cultural trainer Joe Collard with his son Jacob in Perth. Picture: Colin Murty

Joe Collard got his first conviction at 19 years old, when he was charged with assaulting a police officer.

“It was like a rite of passage, I was one of those boys who saw prison as a way of building up our status, being with our uncles and role models,” he says. “It was a way of becoming a man, progressing from juvenile to adult prison.

“Luckily I had other role ­models,” adds the well-respected Noongar cultural trainer who has worked with repeat offenders and runs courses for agencies working with Indigenous clients.

“I’ve got lived experience as an Aboriginal youth, an Aboriginal man and an Aboriginal leader. So a great way to make progress is trusting us as leaders, communities and local organisations in how we do our business.”

Joe, a father of nine children and stepchildren, says he’s proud that the career of his eldest son Jacob is a sign of intergenerational change. When Jacob was 19 he made a different decision to his father and he joined the West Australian police force. Nearly four years and two service awards later, he is moving on to a role as Aboriginal cultural adviser in one of Perth’s male prisons.

Jacob says he has worked hard as a policeman to connect with Perth’s mostly Aboriginal street kids, many of whom are likely to end up in juvenile and adult jails.

“I used to have kids ring me all the time, or multiple families would call. They’d heavily rely on me to give them answers. I understood what they were going through,” he said.

“A lot of kids I’d pull aside and say ‘If I had stolen your shoes, how would you feel?’ But you can only give so many cautions before it goes to court. We can refer them to the Juvenile Justice Team, but there need to be more diversionary programs. There is still a tonne of work to be done.”

Father and son have witnessed many milestones in black-white relations. Joe Collard was a child growing up in a Pilbara town when John Pat was found dead in his cell in nearby Roebourne in 1983. “I was seven but I remember it because it was big news,” he says.

Pat’s tragic death later led to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, whose final report was delivered 30 years ago to the day on Thursday.

Jacob was the police recruit chosen in 2018 to raise the Aboriginal flag on the historic day that WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson publicly apologised for the police force’s past treatment of Aboriginal people.

Both men have witnessed first-hand the impact of poverty, racism and intergenerational trau­ma, all of which were examined in detail by the royal commission.

Joe Collard says he regrets the suffering he first caused his son: “I’ve carried some of my past … on to him when I should have closed off that cycle. He saw the pain, he knows our people struggled.”