Faktorovich: What types of strategies have you used to help suicidal prisoners reconnect with their Aboriginal roots?
Collard-Spratt: We’ve talked; we go outside when I work in prison. It’s just all Aboriginal people in the circle, so it’s a safe place. We listen to each other without judgement. I’ve introduced Aboriginal games that we play. We reconnect through Dreaming stories, through music, and through art. They get a strong sense of belonging sitting in that circle where we are all equal. No one has more power than anyone else. We come to that circle all equal. Because when you’re in the prisons, all the white people have all the power. When you’re in that circle, you must listen to each person; everyone is important. It strengthens their Aboriginal identity, and it helps give them hope. In those environments you need to know there’s hope for the future for you. Even for me, meeting these girls, I’m honoured to work with these beautiful Aboriginal women.
Faktorovich: Do you engage in activities like dance and art with them? Do you lecture them about traditions? Do you lead discussions, welcoming them to open up about what they know about their ancestors?
Collard-Spratt: Yeah, we talk about culture. I don’t lecture them. We just share.
Faktorovich: What type of assistance do you think helps people who have suicidal thoughts in prison the most?
Collard-Spratt: Just letting them know that people care and that they belong, and to know that they’re loved. I think this is the most important thing because when you think you’re nothing, that’s when people get really down. We need to reinforce that they are important and precious. I share my own experience about when I didn’t want to be around anymore when I was a teenager; that I’ve been there and I’ve survived it. I tell them that they can survive it too. They need to believe in themselves and I tell them to give themselves positive self-talk. With all the negativity out there about our mob, we need to know that this is our country and that we belong here. I’ve seen a difference in the girls after sharing this. Even at high schools, I see this working.
Faktorovich: Can you describe the process you went through to instigate the Link Up! Multicultural Festival and the first Sorry Day March? Did you find funding for these events? Did you organize and plan them? What were the biggest challenges you faced while putting these events together? Rhonda describes meeting you at one of these events, an Aboriginal art course, in 2012, and you proposing to write her life story afterwards. What struck you as particularly interesting about Rhonda? How did you know beforehand that her story could fill a book? What advice would you give to somebody who wants to start a similar event?
Ferro: I contacted dozens of bicultural workers in the greater Ipswich region, including those working in primary and high schools, artists, performers, cooks, migrant settlement workers, and invited them to participate in an eight-week program of workshops. Storytellers from different cultural backgrounds visited schools. These stories inspired the creation of eight culturally specific archways, which the students, led by artists of that cultural background, built. Bicultural workers created cross-cultural costumes for children to perform a fashion parade at the festival, cooks from many different backgrounds met each week and shared recipes to create tasting plates for the day, musicians from different backgrounds wrote a new piece of music and stood under the arches on the day performing with the major instrument from their country (this included the didgeridoo played by a local Aboriginal man); importantly too, choreographers taught classrooms of primary school children a traditional cultural dance and the children performed these dances throughout the day together with cultural performance groups who lived locally in Ipswich. I applied for and gained funding from the Queensland State Premier’s department to fund a small payment to each workshop facilitator and to cover the cost of materials. The Link Up! festival day was run by the Ipswich Events Corporation who ran the entire Ipswich Festival. For National Sorry Day in 2000, I collaborated with the Indigenous Community Development Officer at Ipswich City Council, and together we contacted all of the Aboriginal corporations and support agencies in the region, promoting the march and garnering participants. I got a few portraits of Aboriginal leaders donated by a local artist and raffled them off, and I organized an Aboriginal rock band to perform at a park, the final destination of the march. We also provided a free sausage sizzle. Again, I applied for and received funding to cover costs through the Premier’s Department. That was the biggest Sorry Day ever held across Australia. It was two years after the tabling of the 1997 “Bringing Them Home” or “Stolen Children’s” report, which for the first time had highlighted the plight of Australia’s Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. The year 2000 marked the end of the so-called Reconciliation decade in Australia. Yet our then Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologize to the First People of our country. It took another eight years before PM Kevin Rudd finally said sorry in February 2008.
I don’t find it difficult to organize such events. If a person is difficult, I simply move on and find another person who is willing to help. Often too, you have to accept that people usually don’t give you exactly what you had planned, but you must be grateful for what they do give because sometimes it’s much greater than you imagined!