Great expectations

Upon receiving his honorary doctorate, the nation’s first Indigenous parliamentarian urged his audience of young Australians to live as he did - with purpose and compassion.

The following is an edited transcript of the Occasional Address given by Hon Neville Bonner AO on the awarding of his Doctorate at Griffith University in 1993.

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, academic staff, members of council, and all you, wonderful, lovely, students down in front of me, Ladies and gentlemen. First, let me say from a very humble heart. Thank you, Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and the council, for the honour you have bestowed on me this evening.

I pray God will give me the courage and the strength to live up to the honour that you have paid me.

This evening, I will be speaking from a paper that I've called “My Advice”. At the outset, I shall address myself to Aboriginal youth, but being a firm believer in the togetherness of all Australians, my attention will turn and be directed to non-Aboriginal youth.

My maternal Aboriginal grandfather was Junju, anglicised name, Roger Bell, the last initiated member of the Jagera tribe in whose country I now reside. He, my Aboriginal grandmother, my mother, my Aboriginal father became fringe dwellers. They were dispossessed of their heritage, land, and consequently became members of what I term “the legion of the lost”.

I was born in a blacks camp in New South Wales. That I survived was a minor miracle, for hunger, cold, deprivation, ill health, drunkenness, was the norm in those surroundings. My mother Julie decided my brother and sister and I needed schooling, so off we went. Ever so proudly dressed in hand-me-down, cut-down trousers. Shirts skillfully made from flour bags turned inside out. The event was calamitous. Since the parents of the white kids were warned of our presence and hey presto! After much surreptitious scurrying the school was left with only little black Bonners in attendance. I tried again years later, Beaudesert state school and I successfully completed one year of formal education, rising to grade four.

The years before and after my formal education attempt were filled with income earning activities. They included gathering grass seed for sale, working as a banana plantation labourer, dairy hand, scrub fella, stick picker ring-barker, fence-builder, stockman, rodeo rider, head stockman, drover, cane cutter. These work experiences were punctuated by times of jumping on the rattler, illegally jumping on, and traveling on railroad on the rail trains. Dusting down for the night, in all types of comfortable and not so comfortable places, intermittent sojourns into Aboriginal communities from big feed and loving care from relations to you.

At last I married and moved with my family. My Aboriginal wife to her birthplace, Palm Island, 75 kms off the coast of Townsville, Queensland. I became works overseer of 250 men, remaining there for 15 years. So I subsequently took my wife, five sons and two foster daughters to live in Jagera country, Ipswich, Queensland, where I managed a dairy farm, and tried my hand at Boomerang manufacturing, followed by bench carpentry and on into the Senate of our Commonwealth Parliament in 1971. I was then aged 49. I possess no birth certificate. In fact, I didn't even know if my birth had been registered. And in my wallet, only $5. Most humbly I say, the rest of my life is Australian history.

So, what has all this got to do with you, my Aborigine sons and daughters? It has all got to do with you. Otherwise the struggle of my life, the struggle of my contemporary Aboriginal fellows, whose numbers are legion, would have been in vain. I charge you to be forever aware and proud of your Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, whatever your chosen skill may be. Be it a ringer, fitter, boilermaker, typist, chemist, mother, father, lawyer, driller, dressmaker, teacher, nurse, nursing aide, politician, sportsman or woman, cane cutter, engine driver, and so on.

Into all facets of Australian community living, I expect you to direct yourselves, and at the same time, I expect you to become part of any decision-making instrumentalities. For far too long, far too long indeed, have we been decided for. Step into your chosen role with dignity and determination, for you represent the most unique culture on earth. Get off your buntis (backside) and get moving and get moving now! Of course, my sons and daughters, no one knows more than I, but it takes courage, coming as we do from a background of communal living, communal tribal living that is. And more recently, a community of extended family living. It is apt to be lonely in certain roles, particularly for those upfront. There will be no acclaim. Yet I promise, I promise that each brave step forward you take, makes it much easier for the next Aborigine who comes along and I pray you will hold on to that in your moments of despair.

What do I impart for you, precious youth of our race? Our golden future concerning the psychological scars we all bear. We all bear these as a result of our almost total dispossession of our own countries and the accompanying disruption of our 50,000 years of ordered living. Oh yes, we are all scarred. I acknowledge my scarring and came to terms with it as much as possible. It was not easy. But the alternative is bitterness which ultimately destroys both body and soul. Secondly, I took a long, long, look during my youth at the non-Aboriginal Australian and then decided to accept many of their virtues and disclaim their vices, while at the same time, claiming our Aboriginal virtues and disregarding our few vices. You note, I say, our culture has only a few vices.

True, however, no matter how you play it, I must warn against carrying a chip or block on the shoulder. I will never excuse a chip on the shoulder attitude in the young of my race. For in contrast to the inflicted misery and hardship on the Aboriginal generations since the advent of European settlement in this country, you cannot begin to know what hardship was.

Let me turn to our sensitivity. Be proud of this emotion, for I find sensitivity to lead to one of the most noble attributes of mankind, compassion. My advice to you, the young of my race is to forever display compassion towards all fellow Australians regardless of their ethnic background, age, and skills. Surely, we who have been conquered, are able to emerge from our dark dismal depths with loving, caring and compassionate hearts. Giving to others, the very qualities we expected from our conquerors. This is truly, I believe, the way we are, for we are descended from a loving, sharing, caring, compassionate culture. I charge you here now to show compassion at all times. Aborigine to Aborigine. For if there is one paramount obstacle to the onward march of today's Aborigines, it is the public or private mocking of one Aborigine by other Aborigines. Earlier I spoke of the courage it takes for a lone Aborigine to step out from the Murri mob. I feel so strongly about compassion, my young hopes for the future, that if any one of you lacks compassion, then I don't want to know you.

The natural progression from sensitivity to compassion, leads to loyalty, and I am forced to ask myself, what has happened to loyalty in this Australia of ours? Answer me if you are able. Here, where is the loyalty and mateship I knew in ring barking camps, cattle stations and wild droving? Why the demise of loyalty in partnership, woman or man, loyalty and family, or kinship groups? I challenge you to go and find it, this lost ingredient so vital for the cementing together of human beings into an indestructible unit. You may weave through the tapestry of your life strong cords of sincerity.

I suppose what I'm saying is, fair dinkum Aussie to fair dinkum Aussie. And believe me, there are no more fair dinkum Aussies than Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. I would have to advise at all times, be genuine.

On the story of my life, you would observe that I have been around. I've been almost drowned in insincerity, compelling me to rank good old time-tested sincerity very, very high on my advice. May, I say may, it rank high also on your list.

You may have heard other old Aborigines begin a tale. When I was a lad … Well, mine goes like this. Once when I was a youngster, a skinny-called black youngster, living in a humpy on the outskirts of Lismore, NSW, a shopkeeper gave my grandmother a packet of porridge peppered with weevils. Wow, we thought! We are going to eat breakfast like the white fellas. As the adults went out soaking the porridge to enable the weevils to float and to be tipped away, I remembered white people had milk and sugar on their porridge. Every morning. Gee! Every morning!

Now, we'd got syrup or treakle that did in place of sugar, and I thought I'd just nip up the road and ask the farmer living reasonably near for some milk. I greeted the stern-faced farmer with the astonishing announcement: We’re having porridge! Could I have some separated milk? Oops! I literally hit the ground as he screamed “He'd need his milk for his pigs, and not for some little black me.”

I tell you this story my sons and daughters, to illustrate not discrimination or cruelty, but how I came to my goals. For right there and then, I determined someday I would have all the porridge, sugar and milk I could eat. And for as long as I wanted to eat it! Oh yes, I achieved this special goal, and more. I firmly believe that that Northern Rivers farmer planted my little black feet steadfastly on the rocky road leading to Australia’s Senate. I travelled on ready to accept each and every discomfort, savagery and racial hatred felt by refugee Aborigines in that era and turn it into yet another determined goal.

If I achieved goal after goal, so perhaps can you, in this easier and more enlightened era for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. My ambition for my people and myself was planted by that farmer, watered by the one year of formal education, but nurtured by the skills I acquired along the hard road.

You, my young Murri’s, I recommend that you take advantage of the various types of education being offered to Aborigines today. There is an old Bush saying, it is an old dog for the hard road, leave the pups down on the flats. I have walked the flat, where you are now, my black puppies. And I do not want it for you. You will gain your goals of the high road to education, because the number of Aboriginal students undertaking secondary education has increased from 19,000 in 1981 throughout Australia to 35,000 in 1993. My advice is, that you swell those numbers. The Aboriginal study grant scheme, ABSTUDY, which began in 1968 as a scheme to assist those of us who wish to undertake courses of further education after secondary schooling, and ABSEG, Aboriginal Secondary Education Grant, are designed for those Aborigines who are eligible for admission to colleges, universities and other appropriate institutions. In the first year of operation, 115 ABSTUDY grants were made. But over 25 years later, the number of Aborigines receiving these grants for tertiary and adult education has jumped dramatically to some 22 500. Of course, this has required a high level of government assistance, but the reward of such efforts can be measured by the greater participation of Aborigines in the workforce.

This leads me to the broader aspect of education and how it affects us as Aborigines today. Education is of prime importance in making one's way, as an Aborigine in Australia today. Young Aborigines are now moving into a broader spectrum of careers and professions. Educators should then no longer be constrained by narrow notions of fixed Aboriginal careers. There have been assumptions at areas suitable for Aboriginal careers. Including only teaching, nursing, social work, public Aboriginal administration, typist and so on. Worthy as these occupations continue to be, educators must now think in terms of Aboriginal doctors, lawyers, psychologists, professors, and scientists, engineers and broadcasters - for increasing numbers of us are entering into these areas of professional training. So grab hold, and like an eagle, soar up and up, taking our Aboriginal race with you.

I recommend that in whatever walk of life you select, act with great responsibility. Do not, I beg you, give credence to the monstrous belief of many non-Aboriginal Australians that we are an irresponsible people. We are the descendants of our once proud owners of this vast continent, who for over 50,000 years, lived a regimented lifestyle, and who were masters of their own destinies. Immorality in the area of our tribal ancestors was punishable by death, spearing or lonely banishment. So what has happened? No, I don't mean to the punishment. I mean to the morality of Aboriginal youth. I cannot believe that after the cruelties and disadvantages endured by temporary fellow Aborigines, endured in the main, to enable our Aboriginal race to survive, that you would be stupid enough to fall prey to modern day immorality, with its risks of AIDS and lesser scourges. I firmly believe we are members of the most adaptable race on Earth. We comprise today, almost 2% of Australia's population, having survived all the weaponry that so-called European civilisation could aim at us. Forty-five percent of the Aboriginal race is integrated into the broader mainstream Australian community and retains its ethnic identity - that is adaptability. But do not dare to take up adaptation to the extreme. Remember what I said earlier, accept many of their virtues and disclaim their vices.

My final bit of exclusive advice to you, my Aboriginal sons and daughters, is extremely difficult to follow. When situations or relationships go awfully awry, do not cast around for someone to blame until you have taken a deep, honest look into yourself and your own actions. It is astounding how ninety-six percent of the time, our biggest enemy is ourselves. And when you fully recognise this revelation, you are well on the road to maturity, and off the flat, and onto the high ground.

To non-Aboriginal young, I say, most of what I have said applies to you also. For pride, dignity, courage, sensitivity, compassion, loyalty, mateship, partnership, security, goals, education, responsibility, morality and self-evaluation are the ingredients for total maturity, no matter what race, colour, or creed. To me, of course, a major component is love of God, and unapologetically, I confirm I'm an old-time religion fellow myself.

I would convey to white youth, my deep appreciation. For at no time since my birth in 1922, in that miserable blacks camp, have I found white Australia so ready and eager to attempt to understand Indigenous, as your race, as your age group now. The young of my race must, I stress must, be allowed to step forward, and they must be allowed a greater degree of self-determination. Many times, many times, that intangible dream, that utopia, has been talked about. The very edge of young black and young white contact in this country is the area in which this ideal state will eventually develop.

Unfortunately, learning and teaching alone will not get you across cultural barriers. These barriers can only be crossed one side to the other, black to white, white to black, by communicating, while experiencing each other.

My treasured sons and daughters of Australia. This beloved country of ours will flourish in harmony only when you view it through the knowledge that for an enthralling rhapsody to be played successfully on a piano, one has to play the white and black keys together. Finally, may I say: May God grant you the talents of communication and harmony for the benefit of this great nation of ours.

Thank you.