“I’m Sick Of Seeing My Family Die”: Watch Nakkiah Lui’s Frustrated Stand Against Racism
The writer, actor and activist was recently interviewed by The New York Times
This post discusses domestic violence.
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Writer, actor and activist Nakkiah Lui has opened up about the devastating effects that racism has on Indigenous Australians, in a frank and emotional discussion with a writer from The New York Times.
Lui is one of three young Indigenous people who spoke with Times reporter John Eligon as part of an investigation into racism in Australia. Published earlier this week, Eligon’s article examines the appalling inequality affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, including disproportionate levels of incarceration, suicide, poverty, unemployment and addiction.
“It has been 50 years since Australia’s Indigenous people won the right to be counted in the national census and to be covered by federal laws, 25 years since the High Court provided a way for them to reclaim land that colonisers took,” Eligon writes. “But many of Australia’s First Peoples continue to encounter both discrimination and despair.”
In a three-minute video clip published on the paper’s Facebook page, an emotional Lui describes the feelings of shame and worthlessness that racism can cause. “There’s only so much of being told that you’re an alcoholic, that your Dad’s an alcoholic, that your people sniff petrol, that you’re useless,” she tells Eligon. “That starts to build a little seed in you, and it grows.”
Lui recalls feeling those feelings after she was assaulted by her partner. “I was so scared when the police got there,” she recalls. “I felt so ashamed. I felt that because I was Aboriginal this happened to me.”
“I don’t think that as a community Australia realises that each Aboriginal person is a person and an individual and they have feelings,” Lui says. “And unfortunately, when you have a culture that is so complex in its oppression but so simple in the way that it says ‘you are less’, then people will feel less, and we will treat their lives as less, and then nothing will ever change.”
“I’m lucky, but I’m sick of seeing my family die. I’m sick of losing family members. I’m sick of having the same conversation again and again.”
You can read Eligon’s article for The New York Times here. His time in Australian was also the subject of an episode of Foreign Correspondent on the ABC, which you can view online here.
Nakkiah Lui has previously written about racism and white privilege for Junkee. You can read that here.
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