The Self & The Statistic
Self-definition offers liberation. By this, I believe that when someone is empowered to define themselves, they also define their future.
Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) harbour this potential for empowerment, as environments for both retrospection and advancement. They are the institutions that carry our histories and objects. And for Aboriginal communities subject to fragmentation and trauma, they are a reconnective force for meaningful self-definition. However, through my work in galleries and museums, I have encountered an alarming distinction between how I perceive myself and how I am perceived as an Indigenous person.
African-American philosopher, W.E.B. Du Bois theorised on this curiosity, referencing the racial classifications that delineate society. Du Bois formulated the Colour Line; a divide wherein those on the disempowered side are bound in a double consciousness. A dual comprehension of the Western world and one’s hierarchal position within it, while also experiencing life as one’s authentic self. As an Indigenous worker in the GLAM sector, I often feel compelled into this kind of double consciousness, diverging into an institutional definition and my own self-definition.
Predominant institutional definitions of Aboriginality are idealised, tokenistic and disseminated throughout other places of knowledge that serve to prejudice broader societal interpretations. Within this dynamic, I am required to trivialise my own identity to accommodate the commercial and profitable version of Aboriginal culture. Dot paintings, tribes and dreamtime stories.
By contrast, self-definition is who I believe myself to be, aside from ethnographic categorisation. It is the story I tell as a human who exists within the framework of several intersecting cultures, belief systems and traditions. Further, as a human who hopes to be treated as an employee at work, rather than a convenient tool for some reconciliation action plan.
From my perspective, the GLAM sector is not yet sophisticated enough to represent the parts of me that are Aboriginal, South-Sea Islander, Scottish, Irish, African-American and Australian all at once. I must be either Aboriginal or Non-Aboriginal. I must be on one side of the Line or the Other as Simone de Beauvoir conceptualised. Nevertheless, when working in cultural institutions, my brown skin decides for me like a default setting.
I recall the tourist who grabbed me by the shoulders and exclaimed in a fervour: “I am so happy to meet a real life Aboriginal!” Followed by “Have you assimilated well?” Dumbstruck, I asked what she meant and she rambled on about my long commute from the bush. In this respect, I am never a casual observer. I am a statistic, an anomaly, a real life representative of something mythical and rare. The poor, down-trodden blakfella, who treks in from the wilderness each morning to captivate the masses. I am as much an object on display as the canoes and shields.
Yet to my mind, I wake up in a leafy, inner-suburb of Melbourne. Some days, I take the tram to work at a prestigious gallery. Other days, I study and debate Philosophy at my sandstone university. So, when people supplant my privileged reality with their own stereotyped construct of Indigeneity, I am jolted into acknowledging the chasm between my world and theirs. This is the life of an urban blakfella, as Vernon Ah Kee would have it, learning to connect the disparate parts of my identity. The Indigenous and the Australian. The Self and the Statistic.
For this reason, I hold steadfast in the GLAM sector. I cherish the projects where Indigenous stories are told by Indigenous communities. And I endure the ignorant questions and curious stares. Because in defining myself, I move ever closer to connecting the Indigenous with the world.
This essay was originally written for the Federation of Australian Historical Societies Newsletter, No. 47, pg. 19-20. 2021.