[MUSIC] Joel Sherwood Spring, a young Wiradjuri man, is filmed in this video at the Block in Redfern. Joel spent much of his early childhood at the Block, and went to Murawina Child Care Center, a pre-school run for and by Aboriginal people. Joel recalls the strong experience of community and identity he gained from growing up surrounded by Aboriginal peoples' cultures and activism in Redfern. At the same time, he reveals some of the challenges he has faced as a fair-skinned Aboriginal person. And how his experiences of school and living in the city had an impact on the formation of his identity as an Aboriginal man. Joel talks about activism in this video and comments on how some non-Indigenous people are eager to address issues affecting Aboriginal people, but fail to talk to and listen to them. Joel leaves us with some insights into his hopes for the future such as language revitalisation and the strengthening of community. >> My name's Joel Sherwood Spring. I'm a Wiradjuri man from up in northern New South Wales, but I grew up in Sydney. I'm studying architecture. I'm standing in front of a memorial put up, an artwork by Reko Rennie in the Block. This is where myself and a lot of other Aboriginal kids grew up. And yeah, Redfern's a pretty significant place. Growing up in Redfern, I went to Murawina pre-school on Eveleigh Street. I spent three or four years there. And this place, being so entrenched in Aboriginal culture, it was an Aboriginal place. Every single house on Eveleigh Street then had an Indigenous family in it. And it felt like a place where there was a community. As a group, you could play out on the street. We existed in a very beautiful kind of Aboriginal bubble within the city, and we lived and breathed it. And it was something that I felt it has been hugely important and fundamental for my development and my own identity. It's weird now, looking at a place where we used to play and have a lot of fun and a lot of laughter, and now seeing it completely empty. In all senses, it's like a husk. I think I find a lot of strength in my Aboriginal identity, that it took me some time to kind of come to terms with. I think for a while it was something that made me confused. Having an Aboriginal mother and family but also having a white father and their family meant that you experienced kind of two different poles, and it's not a unique story in Australia. Growing up in the city, your identity is kind of one bolstered by a sense of like absence. There's a knowledge that you don't have access to certain parts of your history and certain parts of your culture. And I think that being fair-skinned was another separation from that in a lot of ways. For a lot of the time, it never came up how I looked, until I guess you grow a little bit more self-aware of those things, become a bit more self-conscious about that. It's a funny thing about community in that way. There's not really a lot of questioning when you feel like you're from there. But I think growing older and becoming a little bit more aware of myself, and moving back to Sydney, for one. I became a lot more conscious of my white skin and how that kind of gave a certain level of separation, in some ways, between my own identity as an Indigenous man but also other people's perception of me. I was never brought to question that identity when I was younger by my mom or my family or any other Indigenous person that was a part of our family group or anything like that. I can remember a lot of people back in school commenting on "yeah, he's Aboriginal but he's not really", and I always thought that was quite funny because it's something that you know. And I always had the opportunity and the privilege to understand that about myself from my family and the people I grew up with. The challenges, I found, growing up as a light fair- skinned Aboriginal man, was there's kind of a dual sense of expectation. You feel guilty in a sense in a lot of ways not being judged for being Indigenous, even if you feel like you are, which is quite isolating. But then further, there's another sense of actually not having kind of a physical presence as an Indigenous person. That is also something that I think I had trouble dealing with when I was younger. Not so much now. I think I've seen it's a lot more about what you do. This is about what you are as opposed to how you look. Unfortunately, I feel like in terms of today as opposed to maybe 20 years ago, activism in the Indigenous kind of rights movements and stuff, especially in Sydney, seems to be a bit of a guilty pleasure of a lot of people. It seems like there's a lot of people who want to play their part in affecting change in Australia right now. And they get on board with the Indigenous issues in a similar way that we get involved with a lot of other things that we know are wrong. But I think the difference between those things and maybe other issues are a lot of people feel that they can voice their concerns about Indigenous culture. Or Australia's relationship with Aboriginal people without actually talking to Indigenous people at all. And maybe it's just my own position of privilege in a way of knowing so many Aboriginal people and being so connected to this part of my identity. But that if you want to have a discussion about an issue you talk to the people who are involved in it. And how can you hold yourself responsible or accountable? How can you be sure that you're doing what is necessary and important if you're not talking to people? I mean, don't let your guilt get in the way. There's no time for that. There's no time for that. I think my hopes for the future are putting land back in people's hands. If there's going to be a conversation about how we help foster and consolidate Indigenous identity and strength in Indigenous communities, it starts with that. It starts with that, so simply. We can't think about de-colonising Australia without affecting the point of colonisation which was the dispossession of the land from the people who owned it. I think what's really empowering is the idea that we're going to be seeing more and more language in the city. And I think that's amazing because fundamentally the place names and the language used by the traditional owners of this place are the real names of these things. And there's not just a level of like romantic nostalgia in the language. The language is indicative of a world view and a way of engaging with the landscape and thinking about the land. And I think that that's really, really, really, really positive. When you see Indigenous people engaging with Indigenous practices, it makes sense. I would just like to think that hopefully by the time I'm having kids that when I do they have the opportunity to be more Indigenous than I am. And that there's resources for that and that there's a strength in the community that allows for that. [MUSIC]
