Kolouring Kweer and Other Stories
By Maame Blue
‘This yarn is a true yarn…it’s not so much a coming out story, it’s more of a jumping the fence story.’ – Jinny Jane Smith, Queerstories Storyteller
I love a good yarn – a good story. And the Kolour Me Kweer x Queerstories event at Blacktown Arts Centre in Western Sydney in April 2022 had a plethora of them from an all-First Nations line up of storytellers – something I had never experienced before. The stage had been set by Queerstories creator Maeve Marsden and was guest curated by Steven Ross – a Wamba Wamba man from Deniliquin, New South Wales. It was a collaboration and ‘celebration of the culture and creativity of the LGBTQI+ community, one true story at a time’.
The stories were intimate, unexpected and honest. They were queer stories only in so much as that was how the storytellers chose to identify, whilst the content was quintessentially individual. And the stories themselves did what meaningful art often does, reflecting back to the audience the multiplicity of society – an Australian one in this case.
My role in the retelling of this event is coloured by my own story. I am an Australian resident, but I was born, raised and live part-time in London. Oh, and my parents are of Ghanaian heritage, so I am also that, too. There are many more things about me that could add to this notion of a queer story, and if I were to reflect on them here, we would not get to the main event.
Jinny-Jane Smith, a Wiradjuri/Walbunja woman from the Yuin nation and founding member of BlaQ, shared a story about the NRL (the Australian and New Zealand National Rugby League) and her experience of ‘jumping the fence’ from one team to another. The reaction from her loved one was of shock and hilarious ridicule – an allegory happening in real time on the Queerstories stage. Her recounting was filled with warmth, humour – and a reference to a relative who was an NRL star. I read later that 13% of NRL players belong to a First Nations community, who make up only 3.3% of the Australian population; not unlike how 43% of players in the British Premier League are Black, yet we too make up only 3% of the UK population. There are obvious comparisons to be made here, but I will always go back to the story – to the way Smith’s love of the game ended up bringing her closer to the younger generations in her family.
‘I always feel more comfortable in a situation if there’s mob [First Nations gathering] there.’
Gary Lonesborough, a Yuin man and author of the Young Adult novel, The Boy From The Mish (2021) told a different story about his experience as a young man leaving his hometown and everyone he knew, and heading to film school in the city. He candidly described spotting someone that looked like him in a majority white space, and the profound sense of relief and safety that brought him. Lonesborough’s story of venturing out on his own, of being the first to head to university in his family, brought to mind a report released in February 2022 in the UK, which revealed the racism faced by Black students living in university accommodation; how finding and making other Black friends was a solace but still came with its own challenges even when collectively moving through historically white educational institutions. Lonesborough and these other young people have been courageous in stepping into these exclusionary spaces in order to shape the lives they want for themselves.
The bravery of youth was also apparent in Shanaya Donovan’s story – a young Dharug and Gumbaynggir woman who told us about prepping for a high school presentation and how embarrassment was a rite of passage. ‘I feel like you have to be embarrassing when you’re 12 or 13 years old, otherwise you’re embarrassing now.’
Shanaya’s words were delivered with a wisdom and confidence I definitely did not have as a teenager, and we were all reminded of what it felt like to have your future always just ahead, either filled with opportunities or responsibilities, or both. Her words also touched on the power that comes with self-awareness and self-possession – she is proud of her heritage and everything that comes with it, including the struggle with invaders. This left me with a vicarious pride, but also an awareness that since residing in Australia on and off since 2017, my experiences and those of expat friends have indicated that vocal self-confidence is not necessarily highly regarded in the [white] Australian mainstream. It is practically abhorred if you happen to be of First Nations heritage or a person of colour. This is, of course, anecdotal evidence, and perhaps another time I should delve into the historical prejudices that sit behind it, but instead I return to the comparisons I have been drawing between the Brits and the Aussies who share a common discriminatory practice that persists throughout both societies. In this instance, the Aussies value honesty over politeness and the Brits value politeness over honesty – but both are likely to deem your confidence as arrogance, if you are not white.
So, in some respects, I suppose, even one’s pride can be policed.
And on the other side of that coin, Keith Quayle – a Malyangapa and Barkindji man and founder of the NSW Community Advocates for People in Prisons – gave a quiet, subdued but deeply tender reading of a letter to himself. ‘I suppressed you on occasion because I did not want you to bother other people, and in this dynamic, I have bothered you.’ He talked about making himself smaller and, as someone with lived experience of the Australian prison system, he knows what it is to shrink as a Black man.
The mirror of British society is chillingly similar – sometimes just walking down the street as a carefree young Black person can feel like a risk under the watchful gaze of those meant to ‘uphold the law’. Australia, the UK and the US all have a systemically racist problem when it comes to policing and the wider criminal justice system; it reveals itself in different but equally devastating ways. In the last 30 years alone, over 500 First Nations people in Australia have died in police custody; in the same period, 199 Black people in England and Wales have lost their lives in police custody or following contact with the police. This epidemic is pervasive and crosses both countries, perhaps because they are so historically entangled, as most parents are with their children. Unfortunately, the apple has fallen incredibly close to the tree and is already becoming spoiled. But people like Quayle are working within the Australian system to support those affected by the rot.
In the realm of venturing out of Australia, storyteller Zac Roberts, who is a Yuin scholar, shared a hilarious and harrowing story about an encounter with the Thai police, along with a warning: ‘Be careful, and don’t ever travel with your ex.’ The lesson might seem like an obvious one, but Zac’s story was also a peek into the Australian stereotype we are most familiar with here in the UK: that they are a society of travellers, and they travel A LOT. There is something about belonging to a community that is always looking elsewhere, always searching for something else, which to my mind naturally brings forth the question: what is being left behind? For me as a listener on the periphery of Australian society, it is these First Nations stories and experiences that remain. Stories from people with families and ancestors who have lived on the land for thousands of years, before it was colonised, before it was anything except Country.
We need more of these stories – of the everyday, of dreaming, of hoping for something, and of achieving what you want despite being told over and over again that you will never get it, and you don’t deserve it. And somehow, this framework of Queerstories – of being invited to step out of a box into a bigger one that probably isn’t shaped like a box at all – is exactly what’s needed. An innovative type of event that centres the stories of oppressed people, existing at the intersection of complex social structures and a traumatic history, but thriving anyway, in spite of it all.
Photo of Shanaya Donovan by Patrick Boland