Before the sun would rise to say hello and dawn just started to colour the sky, Mum and I would often say our goodbyes. We’d pack the little belongings we had into Mum’s rusty Mitsubishi and drive until she decided where we were going.
We’d go to Nan’s, which was just around the corner from Seven Hills Duck Pond; Aunty Delma’s house in Glebe (hers is the one with the big Aboriginal flag out front on Glebe Point Road); Aunty Deb’s house up in Alice; or to my great-Grandmother’s, who lived in Beaudesert, our Mob’s country.
When I think about the people who have shaped me, I often think about my blak matriarchy.
I think about the women who have offered me guidance, who gave me buckets full of love, and who always took me in.
I am resilient, like those women. And I have the same fire that they have. I have their chubby cheeks and deep belly laugh. I share their love for coconut chicken curry and Johnny cakes. I am staunch, like they are.
I am a strong blak woman because that’s what I’ve been surrounded by.
I graduated from university a few months ago. At my graduation ceremony, my Mother wept softly as I received a little piece of paper recognising my four years of hard work. Mum’s tears weren’t just her own; they were the tears of my Grandmother, who got kicked out of school at 13. They were the tears of my Aunty Delma, who was taken as part of the stolen generation and trained to be a domestic servant. They were tears that told the story of a long and hard fight.
This is what blackfellas do. We do things to make our Elders proud. We do things that they never had the opportunity to do. Our Elders have given us everything they could. And now we must give it all back.
My matriarch is my great-Grandmother, Nanette Bene Currie, a Mununjali Elder. Although she has passed on, her activism is the reason a lot of our mob have the opportunities that we do now. She is our trailblazer, our nurturer, our library, and our strength. My fight is found in hers.
She raised my grandma, who, like her, was a strong woman. Nan was my guiding light before she passed. I’ve never met anyone more gentle and more staunch than her. I hope that I am able to leave as big a mark as she did.
The women in our matriarchy were stuck in cycles of poverty inflicted upon us by the colony. Our women were always the ones who would keep all the young ones housed and fed the best they could.
I learned later in life that people who grew up having it easy would struggle to draw from the strength that I draw from, a strength passed on from my grandma to my mother, to me.
Every opportunity I take now is a testimony to the strong women who have come before me. I’m becoming the woman my old people wanted to be but couldn’t, dabbling in their lost dreams and their lost time. I’m trying to pave the way for the young ones so that they can have more than I did. After all, that’s what my Elders did for me. I will always be connected to my old people. We are wedge-tailed eagle, our mob’s totem. We are my great-Grandmother’s dreams. We are our ancestors’ dreams.
For my matriarchy: Nanette Bene Currie, Nanette Virginia Currie, Aunty Delma Currie, Dianne Louise Dux, and Deborah Dux