AustLit
I am Aboriginal. I am Koorie. I am Gunditjmara.
I am also the whitest Aboriginal person people have ever seen, or so they tell me.
I grew up in a family of dark haired, dark skinned women. I was the odd-one-out. Throughout my twenty five years, I’ve read stories about Aboriginal people being judged and put down for their dark skin. Not me. I was judged and put down for my lack of pigmentation: my blue eyes, blonde hair and white skin—not ‘just’ white though, the type of white that only burns!
I became aware of my Aboriginal heritage during primary school in 1998. I was excited and proud that my people were the very first Australians, and I went to school and told everyone that I was Aboriginal: part of the Gunditjmara people from Lake Condah, Victoria. “No you’re not, you’re white,” they’d say. I argued till I cried, but I was just a liar to them. One of the things I’ve learnt since then is that people are ignorant and naïve when it comes to Indigenous culture and history, and that children only know as much as they’re taught. At the time, my friends knew nothing about Aboriginal people: they just thought ‘they’re black, savage and don’t wear shoes.’ I was the complete opposite of that and, therefore, a liar. I didn’t mention my heritage again until high school, in 2003. It wasn’t that I was ashamed; I was scared of the reactions, and I didn’t know how to convince them of the truth.
During high school though, I decided I was done hiding. I still had the same friends, but they were older and wiser, and I felt more confident. My friends didn’t deny my Aboriginality anymore; instead, they mocked me, made racist jokes about Aboriginal people and disrespected my culture—a culture that I didn’t fully understand yet. I tried to argue again, but it didn’t work, so I pretended their words didn’t affect me. Now I understand that that was the wrong approach, since high school I’ve learnt that it’s better to try and educate those who are unaware, even if the attempt is unsuccessful.
In year ten, my high school put together a program for Aboriginal students that taught us about our cultures. We were allowed to bring a friend along too. At the time, I thought bringing a friend was so that we didn’t feel alone, but now I know it was to educate those who wouldn’t otherwise be taught about Indigenous culture. But this situation didn’t last very long: my friends stopped coming with me, they thought it was more punishing than math. In the end, the classes just stopped—I’m not even sure when or how.
Although I’d learnt a few things about Aboriginal art, music and weapons, it wasn’t till long after high school that I started asking my family questions and started to learn about my ancestors, their lives and how we’d got to where we are today. My family is very proud of our heritage, and with this new knowledge I became unafraid—if someone doubted my heritage because of my skin colour, I’d happily put them in their place, if someone reacted, intentionally or not, with a racist remark, I’d tell them that it wasn’t okay and that they should educate themselves.
And yet there are still occasions where I’m shocked at the racism in this country. Last year, at university, my class was discussing Aboriginal culture when my teacher asked if there were any Aboriginal people in the class. I gladly put my hand up and talked about my heritage and culture. Not even three minutes later, another student asked if we had any Aboriginal people in the class. “Ashleigh just told us about her family,” my teacher responded. To which, the student said—in front of the entire class, “No, a real Aboriginal, a black one. Ashleigh’s not black, so she doesn’t count, she shouldn’t take offence”. I was in shock, in fact everyone was in shock. I hadn’t received a racist comment publicly in so long, all I could respond with was “That’s really fucking rude,” before I walked out of the classroom and started crying—not because I was sad, because I was so furious that in 2016 I still had to hear this uneducated racism and was still treated in this way. ‘I shouldn’t take offence to racism against my people because I’m not black’, she’d said. I never saw that girl in class again.
After a long twenty five years of mumbled responses to racist comments, I thank my sister Hayley Millar-Baker, for enabling my voice to be heard through her artwork. Her art practice exposes the racism we Blak fellas experience every day from our friends, our communities and strangers alike. Hayley encourages me to be brave, to be heard, to question the way things are, and to do everything I can to support our people. Because of her, I’m able to stand my ground and voice my pride in who I am.
Ashleigh Millar is a Gunditjmara woman currently (2018) undertaking a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University, majoring in creative writing. Whilst Ashleigh spends her time writing fiction, she finds great enjoyment in writing about her culture, history and life experiences.
As a young girl, Ashleigh spent hours upon hours reading novels but it wasn’t until high school that she decided she wanted to be an author. It was a compulsory class novel, written by Melina Marchetta that sucked her into the literary world and sparked her dream to one day write a novel that will help young readers like Marchetta helped her.
This story is a part of the Growing Up Indigenous in Australia collection, published by AustLit in 2018.