This is my data, and
This is my Sovereign right.
No more whitewashing
Let Truth be told

Dear Australian Whitewasher,

Why do you find it difficult to understand ‘my kind’ and ‘my people’? Is it because of a whitewashed Australian popular psyche? My kind, you know the fair skinned ‘not real Aboriginal’ kind. Yep that is me the fair skinned one with a dark-skinned mother. The one you tried to make feel different and displaced. Sorry (not sorry) to disappoint but I do not feel different or displaced from my Yamaji cultural mob. I feel the exact opposite – strong, Yamaji, proud, grounded and defensively supportive of my culture. You continually tell me in meetings, in media, in print, online and in person that I should be grateful for being rescued by your definition of civilised people’s and a civilised society. You wrote and spoke that my people, First Nations-Aboriginals- Yamaji, were to die out and our culture and skin colour bred out to hide many true Australian history truths. I emerge from the Australian mindsets of ‘soothe the dying pillow’ and the ‘half caste problem’. I was 21 years old in 1984 when Western Australian Lang Hancock mining land thief said “the half caste is where most of the troubles comes I would dope the water up so they were sterile and breed themselves out that would solve the problem…” (Leschinski, 2012). This was only 37 years ago a white man’s solution was to make ‘my kind’ sterile not have any children and for my lineage to end with me. The intention was always about making ‘my kind’ disappear and making my ancestors culture invisible and taking, owning, and keeping the land.

      Therefore            I write / I protest /I talk/

                                                I tell my story … I am being me

Yours Truly, Charmaine – A Strong Surviving Yamaji Woman.