These words ring through the ears of indigenous people as an ignorant question is asked as if they are inspecting a human skull with that of the great apes to find a connection between white and blak. It has always struck a chord with me when I hear the term percentage, as if a Schutzstaffel from French Occupied Germany is spitting the Nuremberg Laws into my face. The opening question echoes with early 1900’s Social Darwinism theory, reeking of terms such as full blood, half-caste and pure to categorise people into sections.
Worrell’s words are insightful yet confronting, into the looking glass of the casual racist rhetoric of the common Australian, from the Murdoch monopoly of media to drinking in the backyard with a jerry can and an accent. From this, down to the individual passage by Worrell it is apparent that common threads weave through the minds of First Nations people. ‘The Aboriginal Equation’ is one passageįrom a 2018 anthology ‘Growing up Aboriginal in Australia’ including the early voices of 51 indigenous people. The position of Indigenous people is diverse with a collective consciousness of a shared experience of intergenerational trauma,Ĭommunity, country and culture. A life dedicated to paving stone roads to the next generation of Indigenous children. Worrell is a learner by nature with a passion for closing the educational gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students to support access to a stable role in society. Tamika Worrell is a Kamilaroi woman who studied on Dharug country on the grounds of Macquarie University. ‘I met an Aboriginal once, they used welfare on throwaway cars.’ ‘Look at this pattern, it looks aboriginal.’ Upon seeing ‘Growing up Aboriginal in Australia’ on the bookshelves of the Daylesford bookstore I reflected upon this piece as a learning curve for my self awareness of aboriginal heritage and white invisibility when I was eighteen.įor privacy purposes some words are changed with a double asterick. This literary analysis was written in my first semester during my time in ‘Contemporary Australian Writing’.
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