Bla(c)k Lives Matter in Australia

Warning: This article contains the names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.

I

Mine is one of many Black lives in Australia.

My story amplifies the global truth that Black lives often do not matter enough or at all.

In this piece, I speak from my own experiences, practices and relationships. My perspectives are moulded by my journey. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land where I now live, work and dream. I acknowledge that I stand on stolen Aboriginal land. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

II

The spelling of 'black' without the 'c' is to reference the traditional owners of Australian land. The term 'blak' has been used since early 1990s, and continues today, by Indigenous artist-activist scholars and community members, to reclaim historical, representational, symbolical, stereotypical and romanticised notions of Blackness. This particular spelling is also associated with Creole and Aboriginal English language rules.

Bla(c)k in Australia represents the lives, histories, culture and identities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, African Australians, African migrants, African diasporic communities (be they Caribbean, Latin American, American, Canadian, European), South Sea Islanders and Pacific Islanders. On a national level, Black Australia usually refers to over 500 different First People clan groups and or nations. They, also known as blackfellas, are the traditional owners of the continent known as Australia. Locally, "Black Australians" acts as a continuously

Richard Bell and Emory Douglas, We Can Be Heroes, 2014.

Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 240 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Collection of the Art Gallery of NSW.

expanding umbrella category and includes various non-Aboriginal communities of which African migrant communities are the fastest growing. The histories, paths and challenges of these bla(c)k lives are different in content, intensity and impact. They come together through shared black identities and histories of resistance to colonizing powers and structures of white supremacy.

The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) in the USA began in a response to the vigilante murder of Black Americans often at the hands of police. It grew into a global movement with 40 chapters worldwide. Since 2017, the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia has provided a platform from which local organizations, community groups, activist, artists and agitators engaged various social, environment, and humanitarian issues. And much in the same way the names Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Sandra Bland hold significance to Black Power movements in the USA, Birdz, a Batdjala rapper, points out that the "murders of Mulrunji, Elijah, Yock, Hickey and the Bowraville children" and the indifference of White Australia that hold a special significance to Aboriginal lives in Australia.

"We say Black Lives Matter but shit, the fact of that matter is, we just Black matter to them, this shit keep happening."

—Birdz

Black Lives Matter is a global movement that has provided another opportunity for freedom fighting and community-led activism in Australia. Both the United States and Australia share a history of inequality and violence that disadvantage their Black communities. Black people in both economically rich countries are dying at disproportionate rates at the hands of police officers, vigilantes and medical professionals.

Black Americans negotiate belonging in a colonizing country they were kidnapped and forced to build. For Blak Aboriginal Australians the fight is for self-determination and sovereignty over their land. There can be no justice without having control and access to their lands. Thus, in addition to the struggle to reform the prison system, end deaths in custody, stop the taking and/or killing of their children, Blak Australians are fighting to restore their right to land, to stop the closure of their remote communities and to gain political and personal power.

Black Lives Matter is a powerful political statement in both of these countries. It provides a global and pan-Bla(c)k solidarity against white supremacy. In Australia this sense of solidarity must include careful appreciation of the particularities of oppression and the necessity of Aboriginal self-determination as a...