How good are you at throwing a boomerang? Such a stereotypical question! When was the last time you encountered casual racism? Every bloody Uber… “Where are you from?” and I’m just like, “I’m Aboriginal.” And they’re like, “But you don’t look Aboriginal.” And then I’m like, “Well, you didn’t look racist till you said that!” And they’re like, “Okay, sorry, I’m just gonna drive.”

Why is dancing so important in Indigenous ceremonies? What happens if you’re a bad dancer? Wouldn’t know. Dancing is about telling our stories and also passing on our history, so it’s very important that as a young person, you learn those dances coming through into adulthood. Once you learn them, you know them for life. There’s no such thing as a bad dancer. Indigenous ceremonial dance is about the ceremony, it’s not a performance. So you’re not trying to look good for anyone, you’re participating in sacred ceremony. It’s not about being good or bad, there’s no such thing. Yeah, you’re doing it to honour the old people, your mob, yourself, your family. It’s not really about being a bad dancer.

Are you a good dancer? No, I’m not a good dancer.

Is it ever okay to ask someone how Aboriginal they are? I get this all the time. Short answer is no. Can I just answer it flatly? No, it’s never okay to ask somebody how Aboriginal they are. It’s quite, it’s very offensive to ask that question. If you look at our history, there’s a reason why people aren’t 100% Aboriginal, and that’s really heartbreaking. It doesn’t matter the colour of your skin, or anything like that. I guess that’s another stereotype, you have to be black, like dark, to be Aboriginal. And people don’t realise that we lose our skin colour in each generation and things like that. So that’s probably one of the ones we cop all of the time, “How black are you?” You don’t ask somebody how much Anglo-Saxon they are, or how much Irish or how much Welsh. It doesn’t even come into consideration. I think there’s a lot of people at the University who have asked me that, and yeah, I think they just think it’s okay, because it’s a matter of curiosity. Absolutely, a matter of curiosity, and I understand that as well, but to answer this question, no.

I think it opens up to you having to justify yourself and justify how much you are or how much you feel. It’s just kind of taking away from who you really are and your identity. If somebody said to you, “I’m of Aboriginal heritage,” pretty much it should be expected that you just accept that statement. It’s like the coffee, you know, you have your long blacks, you have your flat whites, whatever, you can put as much milk in as you want, but it’s still that coffee.

How good are you at throwing a boomerang? How good are you? Crap. Pretty bad. I won’t even try. I can’t throw anything, let alone a boomerang. It’s such an art skill. Such a stereotypical question! One time I threw it and it came back and hit me in the head, so not that great. And you’ve got to think about it, they were used as a hunting tool, basically to cause an injury to a lower limb of an animal, so we actually don’t have that much of a purpose for them anymore.

What do you think about the commercialization of boomerangs though? Anyone can buy one and throw it. Sorry… I can’t walk into an antique store and see 65,000 identical factory-made boomerangs. I just, I think that’s incredibly wrong.

What is one stereotype that needs to stop? That’s hard, there’s more than one. There’s plenty: petrol sniffing, all blackfellas on the dole, yeah the list goes on. We get stereotypes all the time. I hear it every day, we had one just yesterday, “You get free stuff from the government.” I wish they paid my university degree, I still wouldn’t have a HECS debt, and I wish they gave me a car like people think we get cars or free home loans. It keeps going on and on. All Indigenous people are drunks and that they, you know, live in the bush and they don’t know how to live and they can’t live in houses. We sleep in parks. Like, I sleep in a house. I’ve never lived out bush. The only time I’m sleeping outside is when I’m going bush, going camping and everything. That’s about it. I think one of the biggest stereotypes I agree with is that Indigenous people are the lower-rank in society. Indigenous people can be successful businessmen, academics, anything that they want to be. And I think it’s very important for people to recognise that and to understand that Indigenous people will never just fit into one box. We make up 3% of the population, and we come from all walks of life, and you’ll never meet two Indigenous people who are the same and who have the same sort of mixes of cultural and Western life. It’s just never gonna happen.

What do you do on 26th of January? Yabun Festival. Yabun Festival. Yabun. Yabun. Yabun means to make music with a beat. Every year I go to that. You know that everyone’s gonna be there, it’s a gathering spot. But I also go to the community and have a yarn with the mob at Redfern. They do a protest march. I don’t really do those protests much these days, but it’s still good to talk to the elders about what they’ve gone through and why they’re doing that march, and I think it educates people as well about what the day means. Like, people think 26th of January has always been Australia Day – the first Australia Day was in July, so it’s crazy that we can’t change that date. And it still brings a lot of sorrow to our people, and I think it’s something that’s got to be done, something has gotta change. Obviously, I don’t celebrate this date. I think it’s incredibly wrong to celebrate on this date. I will sit at home watching TV. I mean, yeah, it’s nothing new, you know? You’ll remember what happened, being Aboriginal and everything, you think back on things like that and just process it through your mind. People who march, it’s awesome and it’s great that they’re willing to stand up for what they think should be changed, and they can, they’re happy to show their support that way. I don’t march because I don’t feel like I should be there, but I come to the after thing so that I can support that way and be seen around. I had quite a few debates with my friends about this this year, actually. I don’t do anything. I haven’t really been to many protests because I don’t think that violence or yelling is the way to resolve things, but at the same time, I’m not going to go out and celebrate. But we should change the date. 100%.

Is it the Dreaming or Dreamtime? Do all Aboriginal people believe in the same thing? And what’s the deal with the snake? What’s the deal with Kinyaha? Our ancestors, we say, exist in the Dreaming, but these are our Dreamtime stories. The snake collectively in history is the oldest known religious relic. Cultures all around the world have a connection to a creation serpent, which is what the Rainbow Serpent is for us – slithering through the land, creating the land masses and rivers. No, not all Indigenous people maintain the same beliefs, there are a lot of Christian Indigenous people, agnostics, Catholics, Buddhists. My family’s Catholic, and that just happens when you’re living in such a multicultural country.

What’s the one thing about Indigenous people or culture that others can’t seem to understand? One, I can’t pick one. I could say a lot about this one. Well, there’s a lot that people don’t understand, that’s why we’re here. I think the most annoying thing for me is the “What percentage are you?” question. If there’s anything I could ask people to stop asking, it’s that. Friends of mine always talk to me, and I’ve grown up very middle-class, white Australian. So from 10 years old, I went to a school where I was the only Indigenous child, and I went right through high school, and even now as an older person, a big thing that my friends ask me is, “Why don’t we know about these Indigenous things, these Aboriginal stories?” or “Why aren’t they shared?” or “Why aren’t things marked?” And it’s pretty much, you know, because there’s stories in our lives that we don’t have to share, because they’re our own stories, and it makes the story a little more watered down once we share it with people because then people share it on and change its meaning.

Our connection to the land. We don’t own any land, which a lot of people misunderstand. We’re with the land, we’re one with the land, there’s no ownership in our old ways. Yeah, and with that, you get so attached to it. You know, like, I come from footy circles and everyone blows up every now and then because certain people get homesick and want to go home, and they don’t understand it. But, uh, it’s incredibly hard to be taken off the land. As an example from where I’m from, there’s a particular type of fish that you can peel its stomach out and splay it open and it shows the root system that that fish’s eggs were actually laid on, which then has implanted into that animal’s lining of its gut. That is the type of connection and strength that our people have for the natural environment, and that’s what I feel like mining companies and these big entities that want to pillage the land for their own benefit aren’t really understanding. Indigenous people around the globe, and particularly in Canada as well, have that understanding that we need to think forward for those next generations. It’s not about our needs or our children’s needs, we’ve got to think beyond that. Our culture’s the oldest living one in