Luke Pearson and the Future of Anti-racism
On this episode of New Future, we speak to Luke Pearson – educator, facilitator, mentor, public speaker, social media advocate and Gamilaroi man.
In 2012 Luke founded IndigenousX – a rotating Twitter account that showcases and celebrates Indigenous diversity with a new host every week. Since then, it has risen to almost 60,000 followers worldwide, with over 300 Indigenous hosts on the account who have shared thousands of stories, facts, reports, pictures and laughs with an ever increasing audience.
The much loved project is creating a media landscape where indigenous people can share their knowledge, opinions and experiences with a wide audience across the world.
Transcript
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Welcome to the New Future podcast where we talk to business leaders, researchers and visionary thinkers about what happens next. I’m Kate Raynes-Goldie.
Kate Razzivina
And I’m Kate Razzivina.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
On this week’s episode, we’re talking to Luke Pearson – educator, facilitator, mentor, public speaker, social media advocate and Gamilaroi man. In 2012 Luke founded IndigenousX – a rotating Twitter account that showcases and celebrates Indigenous diversity with a new host every week. Since then, it has risen to almost 60,000 followers worldwide, with over 300 Indigenous hosts on the account who have shared thousands of stories, facts, reports, pictures and laughs with an ever increasing audience. The much loved project is creating a media landscape where indigenous people can share their knowledge, opinions and experiences with a wide audience across the world. Luke, welcome to the New Future.
Luke Pearson
Thanks for having me.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
So can you tell us a bit more about IndigenousX and your journey with that project?
Luke Pearson
Oh, pretty solid intro today. I guess that’s the the fancy sounding version of it. The reality is, I created a Twitter account 10 years ago, like lots of people did with no point. No one went to Twitter to launch a ‘thing’ back then – we were all just tweeting. I built a bit of a name for myself as someone who would, you know, speak speak my thoughts and hopefully offer some insight. This was just after I left primary teaching, so I felt like a bit of a teacher without a classroom. I was very happy to share thoughts and opinions on Twitter. You know, we took on some broader social issues and campaigns, had a bit of success. And eventually I sort of came across the idea of sharing my account, helping to challenge a lot of the negative media that’s out there, and it’s still out there. But at the time, there was a particular lack of Indigenous voices in mainstream media. So IndigenousX was created to showcase Indigenous voices, create a platform where different Indigenous people could share their thoughts without the pressure of having to be a spokesperson for all Indigenous people, which is, you know, quite often put on people in mainstream media interviews. The amount of times I’ve had someone say, you know: “How do Indigenous people feel about this?” And it’s like – there’s several hundred thousand of us, so I haven’t had a chance to speak to everyone about how they feel. Since we don’t share a hive mind, I can’t speak for how we collectively feel. So yeah, just being able to shift that homogenous view, and create a platform that was free for any Indigenous person to say what they wanted to say, at the time was really important and really significant. And eight years later, it’s just grown out of that. And now we do a lot more than just the Twitter account, we run the business as well. But that’s really how it all came about – it was just luck and happenstance on Twitter and a desire to try to do something that mattered.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
And I think one of the features of it is having laughs, and I think it was last week there was a comedian. And so Kate and I are very passionate about the power of play to make a difference. So can you speak a bit more to that?
Luke Pearson
There’s a couple of ways – I think a big part of the laughter is it’s a really well understood way to deal with, you know, ludicrous things, to deal with trauma, to deal with horrible things. Sometimes things are so overwhelming, you need to try to find the humor to be able to process it, without it breaking. And sadly, you know, for Indigenous people in Australia and across the world – we’re no strangers to those sorts of horrendous things either, in social commentary, or government policy or, you know, day to day lived experience. And so laughter becomes a really important way of how we share information, but also just how we process information in a way that becomes more manageable – when you can put a punchline at the end of it, even if the reality of what you’re joking about isn’t that funny in any way, shape, or form.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yeah.
Luke Pearson
That’s a real surviving mechanism. And then, you know, putting my own primary teacher hat on. Yeah, play – you do it to learn, and you gamify, and take it out, and you give a psychological reward system that can just be the fun of play as a learning incentive. And that sort of does tie in with a lot of how individual hosts tell their stories, but also how non-Indigenous audiences engage with IndigenousX. It’s a bit of shaking them out of whatever the expectations might have been from the account, and getting people to a place of saying like – I can have a bit of fun with it, but also understand we are talking about some very serious issues. And while we invite audiences – anyone, anywhere, can follow IndigenousX – if you’re going to engage with the platform and really get the most out of it, then you kind of need to have the understanding of the tone of the space, and the reality that it is a space that privileges Indigenous voices. And I think most people haven’t experienced that, and don’t know what that actually looks or feels like. And so IndigenousX – we really make sure we bring that to the fore every time.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
I think it’s really interesting that you talk about that – the importance of laughter, and playfulness, and humor as a way of dealing with trauma, because actually last episode, we had Dr. Gordon Neufeld, the Canadian psychologist whose work very much looks at the importance of play as a way of processing emotions. And how if you don’t have play with it, looking at research – if you don’t have play, you don’t have a way of dealing with your emotions. I think Kate can speak to this! She’s a big fan of Dr. Gordon Neufeld.
Kate Razzivina
I’m a big fan because he has quite a few parenting courses and programs and I’ve got a six year old son and his research and his courses have been quite eye-opening. I was, I think, like most parents just focused on you know, the curriculum and teaching my child to read and write from age one and all that. But apparently Dr. Gordon Neufeld is saying like: “No – I’ve worked with the worst serial killers in Canada and they’ve all been missing play in their childhood – that’s the common link, they are not not connected to their emotions”. So we should all be playing, and it’s not just parents – even the adults, we should all be playing – that’s kind of the way…
Luke Pearson
Yeah, in my primary teaching days – you do a lot of play, and abstract activities and things to try and get students to a point of learning. And there’s something about just how we’ve structured education in society and how that reflects the society more broadly. But we have like – you do that in primary school with students under 10. You really stop that and you move more into book learning for high school, and then by university it’s pretty much straight chalk and talk. And then obviously conferences, as an extension of that in professional settings, are very chalk and talk lecture model, as well. And it’s like – we actually know that’s not the best way for learning. Just at any age level, we somehow think you grow out of learning through play. And that’s why you have people who do the LEGO creative professional development work. It’s so popular, it’s like – no, you don’t ever actually get too old for play. For some reason, our society told itself that you need to stop doing that at the age of 10. And so we did, but that’s actually a completely backwards way of thinking about it, and you know, playing to the strengths of how humans learn, but not just how we learn – how we enjoy what we do. So if I can teach you the same thing – some people learn – like I can explain it to you, then you understand it. And it’s like – you would have had more fun if we played the game and you walk away with the same understanding. So why not do that, and have more fun as we’re doing what we do.
Kate Razzivina
Exactly, love it. Well, and I guess if we move on to the more serious issues – we’re just wondering what you’re currently focused on. There is all this publicity, the big issue around Rio Tinto – that accident I guess – I’m not sure if it was an accident…
Luke Pearson
No, I don’t think it was an accident.
Kate Razzivina
I don’t think it wasn’t an accident either. It was very mismanaged on their part. But also what’s happening in America around Black Lives Matter. We wanted to find out what your team is currently focused on.
Luke Pearson
Right now, as we speak, we’re actually taking a couple of days’ break for everyone, because it has just been such breathtaking year and there just hasn’t really been any chance to stop and reflect, or stop and just regain strength. So, you know, straight from bushfires and COVID, into Reconciliation Week, Black Lives Matter rallies, you know, the Rio Tinto stuff in the background of that – it’s just been so overwhelming. For us, from the business side, we’re lucky that we are in a bit of an in-between – we’re wrapping up some projects, planning for some new ones. I’m not sure how many people actually know this, but we are known as being a social media space and an independent media platform, but we also run the consultancies, we’re not government funded. We make our own money through doing the consultancy and we’ve got a pretty good Patreon following as well, which helps keep the media going. But we do our training, our speaking. We work with a few larger clients on bigger projects. We kind of do anything and everything to help get the project across the line. We’re mostly working with indigenous organizations or community groups, sometimes Indigenous staff within a larger organization or corporation, where we’re trying to help them effectively convince their organization of why things need to be done differently, or better. So we come in sideways to help with that. As I mentioned before we started, we just did a big online Rec Week project for a company who couldn’t do Reconciliation Week in person, so they wanted to take it online. And that was really good, because I’ve sort of been a very vocal opponent of how Reconciliation has been rolled out over the last 20 years. So it’s nice that more people are starting to actually recognize – it’s not just me, you know, being against all the things – it’s actually saying: we can do better. It’s not that, you know, Reconciliation doesn’t have a place – it’s that what reconciliation has become and what most people think about when we say ‘Reconciliation’ – you know, symbolic gestures, ‘black hand shaking white hand’, ‘walking across the bridge’, ‘let’s all be friends’ stuff isn’t cutting it – we need to lift our game. And so it was nice to have someone come to us and want our help in helping them broaden that conversation. But what that meant was for us a month of making and editing videos and working with people and social media titles and other activities and facilitating Facebook Lives into the evening. So it’s been a very long month. And we’re just getting ready for a couple of big projects. We’re helping out with some research projects with the university and working with one of the Indigenous Peak Bodies around getting some messaging out on some key issues. So that’s that’s what we’re about to go into.
Kate Razzivina
Wonderful.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
And so as Kate kind of touched on , I think like we’re in this interesting moment now where there’s a lot of stuff that finally people are willing to listen, and actually have systemic change. I think that’s been opened up by what’s happening in the States. And it’s kind of like – I’m feeling like this moment where we have willingness to change that I haven’t seen before. Like talking in the States about actually dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department. And so I’m wondering what your take is on what’s happening here in Australia.
Luke Pearson
I think the response to the Black Lives Matter protests – whenever you see big protests roll out in Australia, it’s really interesting to watch the people who speak against the space – protesting is a waste of time, they’re slowing down traffic, or they’re, you know, whatever the reasons are. And this time, obviously, people are saying – social restrictions… And it’s like – other people recently – you’ve asked the kids to go back to school, the social restrictions have been pushed back. And then suddenly, that’s the big reason to speak against the protests. But I think that was an argument of convenience rather than a firmly held belief. But what we’ve learned in Australia and I think in most countries around the world, going through that civil rights history, going through, pushing for Indigenous rights or Black Lives Matter, or whatever it is we’re talking about – protest is the number one way to bring about change. When government looks at something like Black Lives Matter and says, Oh, we have a problem – they’re not talking about Aboriginal deaths in custody when they say they have a problem. They’re saying: people are speaking badly against us. And so for them to get rid of the problem is just to get us to be quiet. Getting rid of the problem isn’t actually getting rid of the problem we’re talking about. And so you know, mass attention – media attention, public attention, public sentiment, and people hitting the streets – that’s how you get change. That has always been how we get change. And so this modern narrative that’s coming out like “Oh, protesting is a waste of time” – that’s coming from the people who don’t want change, and who are fighting against change. So why would we listen to them when they say protest does nothing? Protest does everything, and in fact, it’s really the only thing historically, that has consistently done anything. So I’m hopeful that the sentiment stays, and when you’re saying more people are listening – we have had moments like that in the past, and they have been short-lived. So quite often that sentiment lasts as long as the news cycle lasts, and that’s where for these big systemic issues we actually need that sentiment to stay around when the media goes home. We need people to keep driving at it, and that’s how we get systemic change.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
It’s almost like they don’t want you to protest because it is actually powerful, right? So if they’re telling you not to do it, maybe you’re onto something by doing it!
Luke Pearson
Why on Earth are we listening to these people when they say protest does nothing, when they are the people who don’t want to do it? They are the people who benefit from not changing.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yeah.
Kate Razzivina
Exactly.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
And so you also mentioned that you’ve done some work advising corporates, like around Reconciliation Week and how they work with Indigenous communities, and what we could be doing better. So can you speak more about that? You know, what is that, that we could be doing better, that we’re not?
Luke Pearson
It’s a difficult space to come into, because I’ve got a really good track record of being pretty outspoken in these spaces. So usually, when people come to us to have that conversation, they think they’re ready for it. But a lot of the time they’re not. The space has been spoon fed so much about ‘all you got to do is mean well’, that you know, you’re doing great. Where it’s like – no, actually, if we’re serious about anti-racism work, we’ve got to stop talking about unconscious bias in hiring practices and just talk about racism. We’re talking about racism. And one of the biggest locks to actually being able to do any anti-racism work in any professional corporate setting is a lot of them are like – well, we don’t want to have the word ‘racism’ mentioned, we don’t want to have the word ‘white’ mentioned. We don’t want to talk about whiteness and white privilege, or white fragility, or any of those manifestations of what we’re talking about. They want to do education, like people go -yeah, the way to fight racism is education. It’s like, in part. But actually, no, you need a lot more than that. You need rules, and processes, and accountability. So you know, when someone in a professional setting – like when I was teaching, and the teacher says: “Oh, well, I’m too scared to do Aboriginal perspective, because I don’t want to do it wrong, and I don’t know how to do it.” We need to stop that being about the feelings of that person and say, well, that’s actually a professional responsibility. That, to me is the same as a primary school teacher saying – “Oh, but I don’t know maths. So I don’t want to teach maths. I don’t want to do it wrong”. It’s like – that’s part of your job, learn how to do it. And from an institution, from that higher level – it’s like if we recognize that a huge number of our staff are actually professionally negligent and professionally incompetent – doing core, essential parts of their job, then we need to address that systemically. And until we’re willing to actually come in and say: This is a crisis. This is unacceptable that we have people in these professional settings saying: “I don’t know anything about Aboriginal people culture, I don’t know how to do anything”. The moment the word ‘Aboriginal’ comes in, they just collapse. That is unacceptable. And it’s not about – well, let’s have a wrap, let’s have a Welcome to Country at our conference. It’s like we need to do a mass upskilling of our staff across the board and we need to do it urgently. Because it’s Aboriginal people as clients, as community members and staff members who suffered because of that professional negligence.
Kate Razzivina
Hmm. Absolutely.
Luke Pearson
Taking us out of that feeling – “look, I’m a good person, I want to be a good ally”. It’s not about us being friends and walking across the bridge together. And it’s not a criticism of you as a human being when I say that you don’t know this stuff, and you should – it’s part of your job. That’s not saying you’re an evil person. That’s just saying: at the moment, you’re professionally negligent, you don’t know how to do this essential part of your job. And so let’s work together to up-skill you. When you put it in that framework – that, to me, is more honest about what we’re dealing with. But also when it’s in the values, it’s about you being a good person. Well, you get to choose how much of a good person you are – you know, it’s very much like anything you do in that space is ‘good on you’. It’s like no, there is a minimum standard and a minimum professional state. We just usually don’t actually implement it and no one is held accountable when people don’t meet that standard.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
It’s almost like – the work has been made kind of like – it’s very safe. And so it’s not confronting, and I think it needs to be confronting for there to be change, because I think that’s how change happens. Right? It feels scary, it feels confronting.
Luke Pearson
We’ve been lucky though, that we’ve been able to do some of that work. Because we’re not government funded, we have no limit in what we can do because of that. But obviously, for the professional setting, if we’re going to have that conversation throughout a corporation, they’ve got to be willing to invite us in to do that. Otherwise, we can say what we want on a podcast or I can write an article saying what I want. You kind of hope that starts more conversations to lead to change. But the ability to actually go in and say – this is what you need to do, and have an organization say ‘yes, this is what we need to do’ – that’s unfortunately quite rare. But when when we have had that, that’s when we can help get results.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
And make a difference. Yeah, I’m really hoping that this larger global conversation shift is going to make organizations more open to doing that deep work that actually is going to move the needle in a real way.
Luke Pearson
Yeah.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
And when we were talking about doing the interview, I think you had a very interesting perspective on creating a manual to working with white people.
Luke Pearson
It’s been a bit of a running joke of mine, but it’s one of those jokes – I’m actually serious. One of the things that have been generated over the past few decades and consistently written and rewritten is: how to work with Aboriginal people, how to work with Aboriginal communities – documents and guides. And noone’s ever written a ‘how to work with white people’ guide for Aboriginal people. And I use that as an example just to to show where the mindset of the space is at. It’s like: Aboriginal people are a problem that needs a particular solution. And white people can be trained at – like, here’s the guide for how to fix Aborigines – you know, that mindset, it’s so outdated, it’s so condescending in many ways.And that’s not to say there isn’t some great stuff in some of those documents. But the fact that we have them is weird. And when we look at Aboriginal dropout rates in a whole bunch of different sectors in employment – you know, for me, I was a teacher for only three years – you know, the business that I’m building with IndigenousX, there’s four of us full-time now, and most of us have a story of how we didn’t fit in those spaces we were working in. But we fit in well at IndigenousX and we’re thriving in an Indigenous employment environment, working with non indigenous clients a lot of the time and but we we struggled to thrive in the spaces we actually trained to be in, because you’ve got to navigate all of these other things outside of your job. And so you know, for me as a teacher, if I had have had a ‘working with white people’ guide that was like: understand you’re going to deal with a hell of a lot of racism and you’re just coming out of university. Well, in university, you can debate in a lecture, you can, you know, you can win the argument by writing a good enough essay. In a workplace scenario, if you experience racism and you call out racism, that’s probably going to cost you your job. That’s not something we teach young Aboriginal people in university.
Kate Razzivina
Hmm.
Luke Pearson
And that’s the reality and so while ‘working with Aboriginal people’ document is this nice, fluffy, very worth sounding document, that ‘working with white people’ document would be pretty brutal. And I think white people collectively would really struggle to read that and see the realities of what Indigenous people deal with working in white structures, whether that’s a university, whether that’s in schools, whether that’s in the private sector.
Kate Razzivina
Yes. That’s pretty heartbreaking. Yeah. And look, do you feel any of that played that impact in this Rio Tinto disaster, that there just wasn’t enough training there that they didn’t approach the issue systematically?
Luke Pearson
Good example and that, I mean, they lost their RAP because of this, but the fact that we’re allowed to have a RAP in the first place – a Reconciliation Action Plan – in fact, we have these corporates who are allowed to just consistently pat themselves on the back for token gesture stuff while they get – because the Rio Tinto one blew up, but it’s like – they’re not the first group who’ve done that. That’s been an ongoing issue for a very long time. That happens quite regularly – the destruction of sacred sites and ancient sites. This was not a one off, but I think a lot of people out there who are responding to Rio Tinto this time – like it got loud enough that they heard it. But this happens multiple times a year, and always has. And so it’s not just Rio Tinto – it’s every group who does anything remotely similar to Rio Tinto, and not just mining, but construction. The building of a road 1 they’re going to take out the sacred birthing trees or other sites where artefacts are found, and you know, a new road, a new hospital, a new school, a new whatever. That’s the history of Australia is built on the disruption of those sites. So Rio Tinto are in no way alone in that category. But the fact that we allow these corporates to go – Yeah, we’re champions of reconciliation, and we’ve got an Aboriginal employment plan and whatever else. And they actually a lot of the time receive Indigenous funding for their programs. It is mind boggling to me. The fact that we pay organizations to say we’re going to hire Aboriginal people, and we let them access Aboriginal funding to get money to hire Aboriginal people. No, you should hire Aboriginal people because you should. And if you’re an organization that’s existed in Australia for several decades, you used to have a policy of explicitly not hiring Aboriginal people. And explicitly not letting them into your stores or letting them into your university. So rectifying that history is not something you should be paid for.
Kate Razzivina
Absolutely.
Luke Pearson
So the whole state is geared backwards to be about minimum effort. And that’s it – for a corporation, whether it’s a billion dollar one, or smaller, it’s a good income stream to get that Aboriginal money by clicking a few low hanging boxes without actually doing any real, systemic work.
Kate Razzivina
And do you feel there’s any hope? Do you have you seen examples of companies that have managed to turn this problem around internally?
Luke Pearson
There’s always better and worse examples out there. I don’t want to name any individual company, because unless I’ve had the opportunity to go from top to bottom, it’s hard to say. But I think, it goes back to what I was saying earlier – we need to raise the minimum standard and actually formalise it and go – no, if you’re going to do this, this is the minimum expectation, and you’ll be held accountable to that. When things are in policy, and in law, and those are actually enforced, and someone is actually checking, then you see change. But when you’re an organisation at the moment, that’s like: well, we would like that to happen, but it’s not happening, and we want to do better ourselves – there’s heaps of places to go. There’s heaps of things that people can do to raise the bar, and finding meaningful ways to bring in that expertise – we can give you that insight. You know, creating spaces where Indigenous staff can actually point out some of the solutions without fear of losing their job for speaking the truth about the realities of their workplace situation. It’s very difficult to create that. But common example is: a lot of organizations will say – we want to increase our Indigenous employment, so we’re making a spot for two Indigenous trainees – you know, some 18-year-olds, we’ll train them and over time, they’ll help us become, you know, they’ll decolonise us or they’ll make us be less racist just by existing. And it’s like – when you bring in those two 18-year-olds who are at the bottom of the pecking order, and you train them up into your organisation, it’s going to be very hard for them, or it’s going to take a very long time for them to get to a point where they could affect that sort of change. And having worked in the organisation for 20 years, they’re going to be indoctrinated into that space. And they’re going to know the realities. Whereas it’s like – if you want to increase your Indigenous employment, yeah, most organizations in the country – you could go hire a very qualified,, very experienced Indigenous CEO tomorrow, if you want. Why are we always talking about getting in trainees when you could hire in senior management tomorrow, and empower them within your organisation to affect real change?
Kate Razzivina
Exactly.
Luke Pearson
So the whole conversation is just skewed around ticking boxes and patting people on the back. I don’t even think most organisations – we have the conversations that go around in Australia with those organisations – like we really want to do something, what can we do? It’s just not in their radar. It’s just not part of the vocabulary – to raise the bar. And so the more people can engage in the space, can read from Aboriginal writers and academics, can see what’s happening internationally, can engage in the space, and raise their own bar, and make themselves accountable within their own organisational systems – then you will start to see results. But you know, something I often say and I sort of hinted at earlier – for an Aboriginal staff member to speak out against racism is more dangerous to their career than it is for the racist person to be racist. And because we look at racism in a ‘values’ space, you’ll see that the non-Indigenous manager say: “well I know them, they’re a really nice person, they can’t be racist”. So, one, they can be really nice to you because you’re not Aboriginal and they can still be racist, but it’s also, you know, saying something racist, doing something racist, having a culturally unsafe workspace, doesn’t mean that every individual involved in perpetuating that is this evil, horrible person sitting around fighting against Aboriginal people. That’s just the norm of Australia. Australia established itself as a, you know, overtly white supremacist country not that long ago. And the whole nature of white thinking at that time was built around the white Australia policy, whites only – you know, old scientific racism ideas. And as a country, we’ve never really actually dived deep into those topics to understand them and see how they affect the country today. And they say: “but that was so long ago”. Yes, but today is always just a series of yesterdays leading into the next day. And problems like that don’t go away unless you really overtly address them, and talk about them, and undo them. And we’ve never really done that in Australia.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
I’m thinking of the AICD, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, which I think issued a challenge to boards to have a certain percentage of women on the board – I think it was 30 or 40%, which I think they got pretty close to. But I feel like this is a great call to say, to bring in, you know, Indigenous leaders and actually, that’s a challenge to the leaders that are listening. Imagine doing that and the change that it could make.
Luke Pearson
Yeah, and not just at a single level. I think some organisations do try to have representation on boards, but a lot of the time that’s a long way removed from – if we’re talking about a large national supermarket chain, I am speaking vaguely, there’s literally only two in the country. But the disconnect between that boardroom and the experience of someone working on the floor or someone working in corporate or someone working – is quite often a long way removed. So we’re talking about multiple structures at multiple levels. When you bring in the right person with the right expertise at that board level, they can help establish those structures. But unless we’re willing to actually empower people to say – we are talking about significant change, in a way that should be seen as actually achieving what these organizations themselves say they want to achieve in their own policies, in their own communication. So it becomes that challenge of like: are you actually serious when you have an anti-racism policy, or Aboriginal employment strategy, or a Reconciliation statement? Like are you actually true to those words, and do you want to live up to them? Or are they just words and you’re just doing that for social capital? And if that’s the case, we’ll stop saying it. But if you’re actually serious about it, which you would hope some people are, they just lack the skillset and the vision to know how to manifest it. Then go and get that expertise. This isn’t a new thing. This isn’t an impossible task, but when you have a group of people sitting around with no experience in any of these spaces, saying: how can we close the gap – you’re probably not going to come up with the best ideas because you haven’t done the work. So go and get the people who have done the work. Ask them for the ideas, and then when they tell you something that might not have been what you wanted to hear, do it anyway. Because they are the experts. You don’t go to the doctor with a broken arm and go: “I was just hoping it would only need a bandaid. So I’m just gonna put a bandaid on it and go home”. That’s what we do with Aboriginal expertise in these spaces. “Oh, that sounds a bit full on. I don’t think I want to do that. So I’m not going to.”
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yeah, and that’s how I feel – maybe this is me just being an unrealistic optimist, but looking at some of the conversations on Twitter about Black Lives Matter – there’s been a lot of pushback from people calling out brands who’ve made a statement, but then not actually, it’s just like what you’re saying – of just saying, like getting the social points, but not actually doing any of the work. It’s all talk, and no action. And they’re calling them out, which, you know, I think that seems to be happening in a way that hasn’t happened before. Are you noticing the same thing in Australia?
Luke Pearson
What I would say there is it’s always been happening. It just hasn’t had the visibility.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yeah, it’s happening in a really visible way. It seems to be happening in a way – it’s visible because a lot of people are doing it – like it’s reached kind of a tipping point, I feel.
Luke Pearson
That’s it. It’s coming in more people’s spectrum. But the work has been ongoing since forever.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yes.
Luke Pearson
It’s just these moments and that’s what I was saying before, you know – we’re having this moment now and in America you are starting to see some calls for some serious systemic change, even if just locally, not nationally. National Leadership obviously plays a big part in that. But in Australia, we’re not quite seeing – we’re seeing the same sort of conversations. But it’s very hard in Australia to get these conversations through to a point where we actually sit down and say, okay, we all agree there is a problem. Now, what is the solution? Because so much of Australia is built around denying the existence of these problems. And so I think it might take a bit more work for us in Australia. And again, Indigenous people – we’re only 3% of the population nationally. So that limits the amount – building a critical mass becomes more difficult. Social media and other independent media and great to help get those words out there. But it is a different situation in Australia. And yeah, I find there’s- I wouldn’t say more opposition – there’s plenty of people in America who want to deny the fact that racism exists or that your slavery was even that bad. So we’re not unique in that sense, but it seems to be a bit more embedded in the national psyche – that denying. The fact that we don’t even use the word ‘slavery’ when we talk about Australia’s history. When we had that blackface on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, it was like – we don’t have a history of blackface in Australia. It’s like – yeah, we do – a long one. And yes, we had slavery in Australia. And yes, it was an invasion, and like, these really basic – they’re not matters of opinion, they’re matters of historical record. You can go like – Yeah, no, that was the thing and here’s the thing. We still can’t even have those basic conversations at a national level in Australia.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yeah, even just the controversy about Australia Day – changing the date. Kate used to live in, and I live in Fremantle – they changed the date. But I think federally, it was like mandated that they had to put it back. And just that fact – that just blew my mind, that even just a simple, respectful thing like that is “controversial”.
Luke Pearson
And so comically, hypocritical – and that’s where the laughter comes back in – Australia is the nation of freedom and you can do whatever you want, and we celebrate that on Australia Day. And it’s like – ok, I would like to celebrate that on a different day. And it’s like – no, you must celebrate it on this day. It’s like – cool, what a great way to celebrate freedom. So yeah, I find all of that stuff just painful. And yeah, that’s an example you can say, my writing – I sort of shifted over the years of calling to change the date. And then I think there were too many people who jumped on board going like: yeah, let’s change the date, and then we’ve fixed everything. And so I stopped calling for change the date and said: no, we actually need to change the nation. And changing the date is a symbolic gesture to say: we understand how problematic celebrating a national day on that day is. So we’re not going to do it. But that act in and of itself doesn’t address all of the problems with Australia’s national identity and the realities of how often we fail to live up to the rhetoric we put out about, you know, justice, freedom, a fair go for all. We fall well short of that mark, in a way where people who protest against Australia Day – you know, conveniently – oh they hate Australia. It’s like no, we’re actually calling for Australia to be better than it is, to be as good as it claims to be. And yet – for calling for that and saying that we’re not there yet – we get framed as ‘oh they just hate Australia’. No, we hate that image of Australia that’s being celebrated, hate the fact that it’s happening on this day of all days, but it’s actually out of a desire for better.
Kate Razzivina
Exactly. So to to wrap things up a little bit, Luke, what are the top three things that non Indigenous leaders need to know for anti-racism work as we move into this new future? What are your top three things that come to mind?
Luke Pearson
There’s so much that needs to be done and they’re all interconnected in their own way. But I think some starting points are, as I was alluding to earlier, recognizing that this isn’t something to be seen as as a superficial tick-a-box gesture trying to either build social capital or to access Indigenous funding. This is actually important work that needs to be done from the ground up and it’s not something that you can do with a once a year Reconciliation morning tea. This needs to be done daily.
And moving on to the second part of that – it’s not for them to sit in a room and go: this is how we’re gonna solve these problems, but actually going to the people who’ve been doing the wor. Go to those Aboriginal people, organisations, academics, consultants – whoever it is – who understand the problem that you’re facing, and who can help you find the right solutions. And so empowering Aboriginal people to actually do what they’re advocating for. And stepping back a bit and saying: yes – like I was using with the doctor analogy – we’ll take on the professional advice, and we’ll understand that it might be more work than we thought. And it might look differently than we thought. But if we’re actually serious about achieving that outcome, that’s the work that needs to be done.
And I think the third really needs to be accountability frameworks. In any professional setting or any government setting, if people in the country are doing something that is really bad, then you make that thing illegal, and you enforce the law against it. And you shift behaviors, through that process, and in part with your own community education and awareness, but ultimately, there has to be a level of accountability that says: you’re not allowed to do this. And if you do this, there will be a consequence, because we actually don’t want people to do this. And so at the moment, just take racism more broadly – you quite often will have someone who has no understanding of racism, who is suddenly the judge, jury and executioner of whether something was racist in a professional setting. And not just in one-on-one interactions of someone making a racist comment, but when you have institutional racism, it’s actually embedded through process and might not be overtly racist, but becomes racist in its implementation, in how individuals use their discretion to implement it. So, for example, whether a police officer gives someone a ticket, gives them a warning, or kills them – that’s a pretty wide range of discretionary power. And so there needs to be those parameters and that understanding and the people who are investigating it and making decisions, have the knowledge, have the skills, and are empowered internally within an organisation to actually implement a decision. You know, at the moment, we still have: if someone does something racist, let’s send them on some anti-racism training. That does not fix the problem. And so, we need to actually embed systems that if we’re serious about doing this – you can tangibly see – this is how people are accountable all the way up to the top, and this will happen, or there is the same as we have for sexual harassment or anything else – you can’t do in a workplace. And if you do, there will be consequences.
Kate Razzivina
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.
Luke Pearson
Thank you.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Thank you so much for this – for sharing your wisdom and time with us. And if people want to get in touch with you, and do some work with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Luke Pearson
Oh, they can reach out through the website. So we’re on IndigenousX.com.au. I’m on Twitter, as LukeLPearson. No relation to Noel before the people listening ask. But yeah, so we’re out there, we’re pretty easy to find. And we’re always happy to have a chat. And we’re looking for people who are willing in having these conversations and actually doing some of the work to create real change. So more than happy to hear from anyone out there who listens to this and thinks that’s, that’s something we came to work on and talk about.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Excellent. And of course, you can follow the Twitter account as well on IndigenousX on Twitter.
Luke Pearson
A rotating account, so a great way to hear from different Indigenous people. And the idea being – some you’ll agree with, some you’ll disagree with, but you’ll understand there is diversity of thought and experience out there.
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Yes, very important. Thank you so much, Luke. And if you want to find out more about this podcast or get in touch with me or Kate, you can head to creatinganewfuture.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a five star rating on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this podcast. It really helps us to get the word out about the New Future.