Busy chasing my own tale

Sorry for the delayed post. I’ve been very busy. Mostly in my own head. I recently realised the reason why I’m so exhausted all the time is because the brain doesn’t know the difference between what you actually do versus what you procrastinate about.

Dhurag language class has stirred up a lot of mixed emotions and a bit of an identity crisis. Add to that ‘The Australian Wars’ series on SBS and I’ve had a lot to think about.

Almost every spare moment I’m googling the names of my Dharug (and Darkinjung) ancestors, looking up Dharug words in my class resources and commenting and asking questions on a Facebook page for everyone who is related to my ancestors. And I still have to clean, organise, help my kids and work, which to my mind seems far less interesting than discovering if my great, great, great, great, great grandmother really became pregnant when she was just twelve.

In the years since someone first researched our aboriginal ancestry, our totem went from Ibis to stalk to long neck turtle. No wonder aboriginal people have an identity crisis. Turns out one great (x5) grandmother was allegedly Darkinjung and Emu totem, the other was Dharug and long neck turtle totem. But the female totem of my male ancestors family was possum. But all of this is from second hand sources so I’m not really sure. And either way, do I take the totem from the female or male side?

I’d definitely say I identify more with long neck turtles. I grew up in Pitt Town, on Dharug country and remember seeing long neck turtles from time to time. At one point we even kept one in a kids pool for a day before it made its way out. Long neck turtles are cool because they grow algae on them and are all slimy. They have webbed feet and big yellow eyes. They’re tough on the outside but soft inside and sometimes they hide by tucking their head under the side of their shell. I get it long neck turtle, I get it.

Teaching Dharug to the 3-5s at my work is honestly more nerve wracking then I imagined. I feel like other educators will judge me for not being aboriginal enough (this is not the case at all) and the children laugh at me. Ok they laugh because the words are so new and unusual to them but then they want to make up their own and I don’t know how to say ‘you’re being offensive’ to preschoolers. And then I’m back to ‘who the hell am I to identify as aboriginal’ again.

It’s bewildering to me how the real history of my own place of being, that was also that of my ancestors, managed to remain hidden for so many years. Now there is a memorial to the great massacre known as the Battle of Richmond Hill commemorating the hundreds of lives lost there but will we ever know their names? Sometimes the truth is a bit shit but it still deserves to be written. They say history is written by the victors but sometimes the lessons should have been given by those who lost so much but still endured. And hopefully there are some love stories that crossed that great divide and saw in another’s eyes the humanity their rulers denied.