NAIDOC: Indigenous women’s strength must be recognised, June Oscar says

June Oscar says indigenous women need to be recognised for their strength, not turned into victims.

Oscar, right, said she owed a huge debt to her own Bunuba-speaking mother Mona, left.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are uniquely skilled but hampered by social policies that disproportionately remove their children or send them to jail.

In her NAIDOC address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Conference in Sydney today, June Oscar will argue that indigenous women need to be recognised for their strength, not turned into victims.

Ms Oscar, who is the first woman to hold the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, told The Australian that she had given that message to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at a meeting with him last week.

Ms Oscar says this year’s NAIDOC theme ‘Because of her, we can’ is a timely reminder of indigenous women’s power to effect change.

“It is important for us to reflect on ‘her’ — she who has given us the strength and tenacity to be all of who we are today.”

‘She’, has always known that our children, whether they are hers or someone else’s are our future, the carriers of these lessons which enable our society to thrive from one generation to the next.”

Ms Oscar said she was proud to be the first woman to occupy the Social Justice Commissioner role. But she said she owed a huge debt to her own Bunuba-speaking mother and mentor, Mona, who raised her in and around the Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing.

“I stand here with the spirits of these fiercely intelligent, strong and caring women. Like all of you, we are, I am because of her.”

Ms Oscar, who only met her white pastoralist father and several white half-siblings as an adult, said the recent death of Stolen Generation figure Daisy Kadibil, the last remaining sister who walked home along the Rabbit Proof fence from the Moore River institution, “brought to global attention our women’s unyielding resilience and determination.”

“We will never let go of our intimate connection to family, country, and kin even when the nation attempts to erase our existence.”

She said historical figures like Truganini, Tarenorerer and Barangaroo and, more recently, social justice advocates Faith Bandler, Evelyn Scott, and Mum Shirl had effected change.

“As Indigenous women … we should not be coerced, and never feel the need to assimilate to be successful.”

“For too long our policymakers, legislators and institutional bodies have been deaf to our voices …. We have never been, and we are not, invisible or silent.”

Ms Oscar said her observations were shaped by conversations with more than 1000 indigenous women around Australia, as part of the Commission’s Wiyi Yani U Thangani project, meaning ‘Women’s Voices’ in Bunuba.

She said when women were asked about what made them strong instead of what their problems were, they identified valuable skills and capabilities that kept them going.

But she warned that many women also said they were exhausted. “In a society that does not recognise our tireless work, it is unsurprising that the system continues to fail and undermine us.”

Discriminatory practices were still imprisoning Aboriginal women at disproportionate rates and removing their children, she said.

“There is a direct connection between our women being imprisoned — many of whom are mothers — our children being removed, increasing psychological stress, and a lack of stable and secure housing.”

But indigenous women were not to blame for such events, she said.