Collard-Spratt: Acrylic paint because that’s all I can afford and we’re not near enough to the country to get any ochre.
Faktorovich: Do you use a traditional Aboriginal drawing style for most of your works, and if so can you summarize what elements distinguish it from other types of art?
Collard-Spratt: I don’t draw, I paint. I just use my own style. When I paint it just comes to me; I get an image. I don’t have to look at another image to get inspired; it comes to my mind and heart. It’s a spiritual thing; a spiritual connection. It just comes natural, whatever I paint.
Faktorovich: During your visit to Uganda you describe how in the middle of your performance about the Aboriginal people and the hardships they suffer, a girl interrupted you by yelling, “You’re so negative!... Just get over your wages being stolen… Get over your people overflowing in jails. The people will think ‘what’s all the crime you were dong to be put there in the first place!’” (chapter 12). You did not respond to this objection, but continued your talk and then went outside to calm down and be alone. Can you respond to these objections now?
Collard-Spratt: No. It wasn’t a Ugandan girl who said that to me inside the room. I was called out of the room by the white lady in charge of the choir. Outside she said those things to me (away from the children,who were all still inside where the performance was happening).
I didn’t respond to her immediately because I had a lot going on emotionally for me then. This African trip brought back many childhood memories of being in the mission, seeing rows and rows of cots, and all the little motherless children. I had a lump in my throat and I was ready to cry constantly. I did eventually say to her, “This is our shared history. Your history and mine. Why can’t you accept it?”
Faktorovich: Why do we need to be “negative” about problems in our society? Are the Aboriginal people being convicted more frequently for crimes they did not commit? Why do you think they are making up a majority of the incarcerated population in Australia?
Collard-Spratt: We are arrested more for public nuisance, drunk in public, bad language, vagrancy, all these minor crimes because of institutional racism. We’re not negative; that’s a judgement put on us by white people. We’re just stating the reality for our people. We live it every day. Aboriginal people are picked on; when they see Aboriginal people, they forget their humanity. That whole colonial way of thinking still exists. And the police or prison guards are never held to account when Aboriginal people continue to die in custody of negligence or physical abuse.
Faktorovich: You describe how you wrote together, as Rhonda told stories, and Jacki wrote down and edited these reflections. Did Jacki ask a lot of leading questions to bring up especially dramatic incidents? Did Jacki do the bulk of the research into Rhonda’s past? Did you guys write most of it chronologically or did you jump around to whichever memories happened to surface at a given meeting? Can you give an example of the best and/or worst moments in your collaboration? Did you ever seriously disagree on something to do with the book?
Collard-Spratt: Never. We worked well together. We listened and always showed respect to each other. Some difficult things, like the reports on my father’s death, were too hard for me to read. Jacki read them and wrote that part, then she read it out to me. Then we worked together to word it so we were both happy. We jumped around a lot. I would remember a fun time in childhood and that might lead to other memories. But I deliberately left some things till last, especially the really hard times, unsure whether to include them, to share or not to share. But working together was all good moments; we call Jacki’s office the story room, and we never have had one conflict. We just talk it through, even though we’ve been through every emotion and many tissues. We worked in the true spirit of Reconciliation.