NT Senator Nova Peris Is The Umpteenth Indigenous Person To Cop Some Awful Racist Shit This Week

If you’re having trouble staying on top of all the high-profile instances of racism directed towards Indigenous people in the last week, welcome to Australia, recently-arrived tourist! Don’t worry, you’ll learn to keep track.

In case you’ve missed a few, here’s a quick recap:

— The Wagga Wagga Citizen of the Year, Joe Williams, was ordered to hand back his award by Wagga Councillor Paul Funnell for not standing during a rendition of the national anthem, shortly before giving a speech explaining why Australia Day was a source of pain and mourning for him and his family.

— Indigenous musicians Briggs and Thelma Plum were inundated with racial abuse after posting on social media in support of Gunditjmara woman Sis Austin, who was herself being harassed for taking exception to a pair of men posing in blackface costumes. Briggs was called a “petrol sniffer”, while people contacted Plum with messages calling her a “filthy half-breed”. Meanwhile, friends of the two men in blackface are themselves expressing support by — you guessed it — dressing up in blackface.

In a subsequent poll conducted by Ballarat newspaper The Courier, more than two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents said they didn’t find Aboriginal costumes racist. (For those playing at home, BuzzFeed Australia Indigenous Affairs reporter Allan Clarke has compiled an exhaustive history of blackface controversies in Australia, as well as some historical context on the practice that helps explain why Indigenous Australians find it offensive.)

— Acclaimed Indigenous actor Ningali Lawford-Wolf, star of Last Cab to Darwin and Sydney Theatre’s upcoming production of The Secret River, was left stranded outside the Sydney Opera House after rehearsals as four separate taxis refused to take her as a passenger.  Lawford-Wolf was forced to ask a group of non-Indigenous people to flag a cab for her.

— In a Fairfax article on Monday, former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett revisited his love of golliwogs, also known as blackface-in-a-toy. Kennett is known for referring to one of his golliwog toys as “Buddy,” apparently named after Indigenous AFL footballer Buddy Franklin. By his own count Kennett has more than 40 golliwogs, many of whom are named after real-life Indigenous people.

— Indigenous writer and comedian Nakkiah Lui pointed out the offensive and unthinking nature of a piece of performance art that hijacked a Sydney Day of Mourning protest on January 26. About halfway through the protest, two artists interrupted speeches by Indigenous mothers and children at Sydney Town Hall by unveiling their naked bodies, painted with the Australian flag, and symbolically wiping the paint off each other.

“You used the Invasion Day march as a photo op…Invasion Day is a day of mourning and a day to protest the oppression and inequality of Aboriginal people,” Lui wrote to the pair. “What it is not is a place for you to conduct your ego driven artist project. What it is not is a space for you to place yourself at the centre to be congratulated as a some kind of white saviour.”

— Indigenous former football player and boxer Anthony Mundine pointed out the casual racism on display in the now-infamous video of footballer Mitchell Pearce, now best known to most as the guy who simulated sex with a dog after aggressively harassing a woman. In the video, which has since gone viral, three people — Pearce himself, the person filming him, and the woman who rejects Pearce’s advances — made derogatory comments about Aboriginal people, calling Pearce by the name of his Indigenous teammate Blake Ferguson in reference to the fact that Pearce was drunk.

–

How many’s that now, like six? I’m almost certain there are some more floating around, but it’s hard to be sure because new ones keep bobbing up all the time. It’s like a racist spin-off of Whack-a-Mole, only in this version you have no hope of ever winning.

Which brings us to today’s update. ALP Senator for the Northern Territory Nova Peris is probably one of Australia’s most all-round accomplished people: she was the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal, she represented Australia at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games level in not one but two sports, and in 2013 she became the first Indigenous woman ever elected to federal Parliament.

She often dovetails her work representing the NT in Parliament with efforts to call out and combat racism, and to that end she’s begun posting some of the more colourful correspondence she receives in the post. Here’s a sample, from earlier today:

#Racism @ItStopsWithMe pic.twitter.com/FkBXIiq0Eg

— Senator Nova Peris (@NovaPeris) February 2, 2016

In case those pictures are difficult to see, here they are as standalone images:

“Who would want to vote for a Stupid, Dumb Bastard, Stone Age, Backward, Brainless Braindead, Brainwashed Black Bitch,” reads one, while another refers to the “Brainless Black Bitches of the Australian Coon species”. Peris shared another letter, written in a similar style, on January 27, in which the author hopes to see her “put back where you rightfully belong, crawling on all fours out in the deserts of central Australia, pissed out of your mind and scavenging for food scraps while looking up your own arse.”

Peris shared another letter, written in a similar style, on January 27, in which the author hopes to see her “put back where you rightfully belong, crawling on all fours out in the deserts of central Australia, pissed out of your mind and scavenging for food scraps while looking up your own arse.”

RACISM – @ItStopsWithMe pic.twitter.com/52uIgLvZFr — Senator Nova Peris (@NovaPeris) January 27, 2016

So that makes seven since January 26, I  guess. Add it to the list.