Speaking Black truths

Bess Nyirringali Nungarrayi Price is an exceptional Aborigine. She stands out against the pack in an Aboriginal industry suffocating with pretenders.

Inaugural Peter Howson Lecture

People think Aboriginal people all think the same. They are wrong.

We have Aboriginal people who live in cities, towns and in the remote parts of Australia and we all have different issues. The issues and needs are totally different. The politics in the bush are so different from the way southern blackfellas think.

They, the yapa, are gullible at times and they accept anything that’s put in front of them, without a question. They are easily lead whether it’s in good faith or not.

Others blame colonization for the reason that our people are the most disadvantaged group of people. But nobody can explain why that is …

I don’t see it that way. All I see is that they are hunters and gatherers and they were vulnerable then and they are vulnerable now.

They know nothing about how everything else operates outside of their communities and how they need to change in order to keep up with the rest of the outside world.

They need to be given the tools and the mechanism to move forward.

We have had so many self-appointed people, black and white, who have decided to be our spokespeople, who know nothing about us and our issues.

They are the people who have been running the show all these years without ever asking us whether it’s okay for them to do so.

They are the ones who want to keep our people in the dark as if we are some sort of stone age people.

Read Bess Nungarrayi Price’s Peter Howson Lecture (pdf) here…

This lecture was first published by the Bennelong Society in December, 2009.