Dr Lilly Brown Thank you, Gemma. That was just such a powerful introduction. I am Dr Lilly Brown. I am a Gumbaynggirr woman and I also have ancestral connections down to the South Coast. Through my father’s family we are Donovan and Marshall people and very early on in the last century a lot of my family travelled thousands of kilometres north from Yuin Country up into Gumbaynggirr Country, which ended up being the place where many of my foremothers and fathers called home and it’s now also the place in which I belong.
I’m currently on the unceded lands of the Yawuru and Jugun people, in a place called Rubibi, a small tidal town which many people know better as Broome, up on the northwest coast of WA [Western Australia].
I am currently the CEO of Magabala Books, which is an Aboriginal not-for-profit publishing house. It’s a community-controlled Aboriginal organisation, one of the most remote publishing houses in the world and also nationally and internationally acclaimed. So, I really resonated with what you said: the importance of keeping our stories alive; countering the genocidal violence that’s occurred here on this continent.
I am the mother of Yawuru children. I am not Yawuru myself but my partner and kids are Yawuru, Bardi and Gita. It’s a real privilege as an Aboriginal mother to be able to grow my kids up on their Country, because I know that many of our foremothers didn’t have that opportunity over the last two centuries because of colonisation and the things that people had to do to ensure the survival of our families for generations to come.
It’s an absolute privilege to grow my kids up on a Country that has nourished their people and their families for thousands of generations.
I’m also the co-founder and director of Shifting Ground, which is a First Nations women-led collective. In a conventional sense we could be understood as a consultancy but we really exist to support First Nations people, and particularly women and queer folk, to get the resources to get their land back. I keep on thinking, ‘How do we create a business where people can get paid to live their best lives as self-determined First Nations people?’
The last almost two years have been really tough. I don’t just mean since the most recent iteration of the genocide in Gaza. I also mean since the ‘No’ referendum, where over 60% of Australians voted ‘no’ to have a Voice to Parliament recognised in our constitution. I find solace in my children at the same time as I just mourn so deeply every single morning when I wake up, the fact that there are so many other mothers and parents and carers across the world that don’t have that privilege.
Why I responded to the call that Genevieve and Aseel made? I had been watching this most current iteration of the genocide begin and finding myself nursing my son to sleep and sobbing for children and parents in Gaza and feeling this overwhelming fury and rage that I had the privilege and the resources to keep my child safe. The injustice for me was so animating. When I saw the callout I was like, ‘I need to come together with other mothers that are experiencing this moment like I am.’
I think that for people who have, in the fibre of their being, this survival history where you know that decisions have been made to ensure your presence in this current moment, that’s part of who we are as a people. Often we don’t have the privilege of really knowing those stories, but how do we honour the mothers in this context? In a moment where you’re feeding and nourishing another human being, you’re giving so much of your body, of yourself. I needed to tether myself. Rubibi is a long way away — it’s 4000 km away from Naarm. I could see these people coming together and I was like, ‘I need to be there for this. I need to get the energy from somewhere to weather this most recent storm.’
Wejdan Shamala Thank you for that, Lilly and Gemma. I’m Wejdan, Arabic for ‘conscience’ and I’ve been grappling my whole life with what I feel is my predestination. We have very strong connections to names, so it’s something that is very intentional in our communities and when the grief is too much, I blame my parents for their choices of name. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life trying to reconcile with this and trying to live what it truly means to feel for others and to care for things outside of myself.
My family is half from Gaza and half from Qalqilyah in the West Bank. I have never been to Palestine, unfortunately, which is really difficult both for myself and for my discussions about Palestine, because it triggers a lot of questions, including things like, ‘Why don’t you live there?’ which is so multi-folded. I can go back as a ‘Western person’, but what that means for a life going back as someone who’s recognised as not being from the land is a whole other story.
I work in education; I run women’s circles; I advocate for animal rights; I write; I try to grow spiritually; and I try to have that common thread between all the different things that fill up my time at the moment.
Why I responded to Aseel’s call about taking part in Motherhood in the Colony? There wasn’t a single emotion at the time that wasn’t flooding my veins. I had just learned of my pregnancy in the same moment that I started seeing videos of mothers carrying pieces of their children and at the time it felt like doing something was better than doing nothing at all.
We can talk forever about how we define impact and how impactful art is. The name Shifting Ground really resonates with me: the belief that when we speak, we are shifting the energy around us, and that’s a start. I know it can sound like fluff but then I remind myself that no, it’s much more powerful than that. The world at the end of the day is a culmination of our intentions. The more vocal we are about that and about shifting that energy, the more there is a possibility for that to be translated into action.
