The FNEC Redlands Coast Museum team. Photo: Supplied.
BY JAN NARY
After years of preparation, Redlands Coast Museum joins a network of more than 2,500 corporate, government, and not-for-profit organisations that have made a formal commitment to reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and later settlers.
The museum’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) proposes creating a comprehensive educational program and a permanent exhibition, covering the Redlands’ Original Time, Changing Time (Colonisation) and Now Time.
The museum’s advisory body, the First Nations Education Committee (FNEC) is chaired by John Close, mental health practitioner and counsellor. John, who describes himself as “a community blackfella”, has connections to the Brisbane regions’ Indigenous peoples and all the way to Yarrabah in far north Queensland, but identifies primarily with his Quandamooka heritage through his father’s line. He has the distinction of having been chastised by Oodgeroo Noonuccal when he was a rebellious child.
His aim, while not denying the shameful facets of colonial settlement, is to seek out the evidence of positive interactions between settlers and the original land custodians.
“When I moved from a country town and started at a state school it was the first time in my life that I’d heard the word ‘boong’. I came home crying every day because I’d been in a fight every day,” he says. “It wasn’t easy but I don’t see myself as a victim; white people do not owe me an apology. The colour of my skin didn’t define my future although it felt like that at the time – but my mother instilled in us that the basic rule is to get up and do something, to find an ideology beyond blaming.”
John says that there’s been a slant to the way our history has been taught, initially in ignoring the outrages that occurred but then reframing the past with the Indigenous people cast as passive victims.
“We talk about the massacres but we don’t talk about how the people fought back – the women as well as the men. One of our weaknesses was that Indigenous people had only a form of ‘local government’ which made co-ordinated resistance harder. Pemulwuy, the renowned resistance fighter, developed tactics and unity through a range of Indigenous tribes. It was an unequal struggle but we survived because of our strong family system; we look after each other, we’re never really alone.”
John identifies a policy intended as humane and supportive as a major problem for the present.
“One of the most damaging things done to and for Indigenous people was the introduction of welfare,” he says. “It was an economic stimulus but it took the man’s role out of the family system. It didn’t just hurt the family, it hurt the whole country. Now we have the third generation of welfare dependence and it can breed an attitude of hopelessness; we just have to look at the incidence of alcohol dependence and mental health problems.
“Many Indigenous people have been told for so long that they had no skills, that they’ve forgotten how to work to their strengths – but there are a lot of positive stories out there that we haven’t found – they’re the stories I’m after. The museum’s RAP initiative is the perfect means for gathering those stories and building on them for the future.”
