Fear that is a barrier to Indigenous reconciliation |
National Reconciliation Week gets attention. But attention is not change.
In workplaces and communities, we are busy planning morning teas, screening movies and recommending books. And while these things can be meaningful, they are not nearly enough.
Because beneath the activity sits something we are less comfortable naming – fear.
With recent public debate around Welcome to Country ceremonies, there is the real fear of getting it wrong. A fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of a conversation that feels, right now, more charged and more divided than ever.
I know that fear intimately. As a non-Indigenous person who has spent years working in this space, I have felt the pull between wanting genuine connection and dreading the misstep that might undo it.
As a child I was bewildered by the lack of acknowledgement of First Nations peoples, their wisdom and sovereignty. I was confused by my own ancestry too, stretching back to the First Fleet, and the complexities it brought.
Curiosity and absence sat side by side. My........