Image: Romain Saada/TEDx Toulouse, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
‘How do you make the killing of more than 400 Aboriginal men, women and children more palatable?’ I found myself asking Twitter in March 2021. I wasn’t asking for myself, of course, but for the committee of TEDx UniSA who had decided that I was a savage that needed taming if I was to enjoy their platform. You see, last year I had been invited to audition to do a TEDx Talk. TED promotes their platform as a space for ‘ideas worth spreading’, and many talks have gone viral on YouTube. Being an unashamed and very public abolitionist (and a postgraduate student of UniSA), I jumped at the chance to elevate my lived prison-experienced voice and speak truth to power in defence of Blak lives and in opposition to the carceral regimes facilitating the premature death of my people.
I sent my audition tape in. I was excited because I felt like I was on the edge of an opportunity that could spread the abolition message far and wide, as well as bring light to the dark topic of deaths in custody. My audition was staunch. It was bold and I was aggressively abolitionist. I was me, authentically me (after all, it’s all I know how to be). And I waited. It didn’t take long, and the committee contacted me to say yes, they were keen, they wanted my story. I was ecstatic. Ecstatic because when I walked out of those prison gates only two years before, I vowed to spend the rest of my life tearing down the razor wire, the cells and the cages, leaving none of my people behind. So, for the months that went past, I worked on my speech, watched other presenters, read the guidelines, trod the tightrope that TEDx suspends, making distinctions about what is and isn’t okay, specifically trying to take special care with what they call ‘inflammatory or polarising language’, and, in the end, came up with a presentation that I really believed would blow people’s socks off—because it was truth, unbridled truth. The kind of truth that makes you squirm in your chair, but you end up growing at the end. The kind of truth that my Elders ache to hear in this country.
When I proposed this TEDx talk, I did so against a backdrop of perpetual and enduring mourning in our community. Nineteen-year-old Walpiri man, Kumanjayi Walker, had just been brutally killed by police officers in his own home, in his own bed and in his hometown of Yuendemu; and we took to the streets in solidarity with the family and to express our grief very publicly over his death, and in protest of the violence police perpetrate in our communities. Gatherings were held across the country and, here, at Parliament House, on unceded Kaurna land, people stood with red painted hands, listened to family members, and demanded answers, truth and justice.
When I proposed this TEDx talk, I did so against a backdrop of perpetual and enduring mourning in our community.
To this country’s shame, there has been a long history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being killed in custody on this unceded land, and that fact has barely raised a whisper, let alone a roar, by mainstream (so-called) Australia.
So, at this stage, we had recorded more than 400 deaths in custody since 1991, which is the year of the release of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (it should be noted that while the Royal Commission and subsequent recommendations was a watershed document, the work had built on more than two centuries of active resistance and organising by mob, who have fought the enslaving and premature death of our people for years). Our grandmothers, mothers and aunties were grieving the loss of their sons and daughters to every kind of colonial frontier that exists in this country. When I proposed this TEDx talk, it was a time of Blak rage, Blak grief, and perpetual sadness because we have lived in a state of perpetual torment since white men first stepped on our shores.
So, during a global pandemic, while we all stayed in our homes and washed our hands and worried about where we’d find our next roll of toilet paper, George Floyd Jnr was lynched by police on the streets of Minneapolis. Another Black man had been killed and, this time, it was filmed entirely on a passerby’s camera. And from our own lounge rooms here in (so-called) Australia, mob watched a world erupt. We watched our Black brothers and sisters in America rise up and demand justice. We watched them pump their fists in the air and scream Black lives matter. We watched them take to the streets as one of their own had muttered the same words as brother David Dungay Jnr had back in 2015: ‘I can’t breathe,’ as a police officer, an agent of so-called justice and community safety, extinguished George Floyd Jnr’s last breath by crushing his windpipe with his knee.
And then what we saw was a ricochet effect across the world which even rippled right across the seas to this island continent they call Australia. We saw white people rise up and say, ‘Yep, it’s not okay, because Black Lives Matter’…and we paused, did a double take, and thought to ourselves, ‘Which Black lives?’ Because most of us mob weren’t quite sure that our Blak lives or Blak bodies ever mattered, unless in service or sacrifice to the colony.
However, amid that confusion surrounding the hypocrisy of white Australia holding another country to account for the same sins committed on these soils, we, as a Blak community suffering similar marginalisation and abuse, saw an opportunity. This was a crucible moment, an opportunity for revolutionary transformation, and we seized on it—we didn’t create a movement, but we had the chance to elevate our resistance movement that had been ongoing since 1770. We are not new to this, but we are absolutely true to it.
This was a crucible moment, an opportunity for revolutionary transformation, and we seized on the chance to elevate our resistance movement that had been ongoing since 1770.
So it was that abolition became the pre-eminent demand of the movement. People were saying this is not okay. It is not okay that we are murdering and brutalising Blak people behind bars, in the back of correctional services vans, in our police cells and on the streets. And I wanted to hold that momentum in my little Blak hand and release my abolition vision like the proverbial white dove. My TEDx talk asked people to imagine a different kind of justice. A justice free of prisons, policing and surveillance; a future free of punishment, imprisonment and exile. I wanted abolition to move beyond a political vision; I wanted it to become the will of the people. I wanted to implore people to demand revolutionary and transformative community-based responses to violence, rather than rely on a system that reinforces and perpetuates it. I wanted them to seize the opportunity to dismantle policies, practices and institutions that make people ‘disposable’—because we absolutely should challenge the ubiquitous belief that there are ‘throwaway’ people. I wanted them to feel something… and yes, I wanted them uncomfortable.
My talk was blunt—it pulled no punches. It named prisons as a key tool in the arsenal of the settler colonial war machine and abolition as a necessary element of the decolonial struggle. It held the settler responsible, it named them explicitly as complicit in a system that kills (and kill it does). And most importantly, my talk honoured our people. It acknowledged the frontline labour done by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families who have lost someone to this system and their fight to ensure no other family has to endure the same pain. I acknowledged the work of people with lived prison experience and honoured their strength in speaking up, speaking out and speaking against a system which has brutalised them.
I was excited and I was anxious. Anxious because I wanted to memorise the talk, so it was just me and my words on the stage; anxious because I wanted to do my people proud. Then I met with the TEDx UniSA committee. And as I stared into the Zoom screen, I saw my smile fall away, my relaxed shoulders tense and my very being morph unwillingly into the colonial imaginings of a savage that needed taming.
They told me that my language was too harsh, too in your face. They walked me patronisingly through the psychology of changing people’s opinions and how if I used abrasive language, I would literally switch their brains off and they would feel under threat and I didn’t want that, right? They thought I could be more polite, gentler, and more inclusive, because according to them, ‘Twenty per cent of the audience would be international students and they aren’t to blame. ‘
Their words made me feel like I wasn’t Tabitha anymore. I was their angry Blak woman and they wanted to cut my corners off so I didn’t offend their sensibilities, or that of the audience.
Their words made me feel like I was their angry Blak woman and they wanted to cut my corners off so I didn’t offend their sensibilities.
I was breathless. I mean, what? Just what? What in fresh hell was I hearing? So, I pushed back. I defended my voice, my words, my truth. I asked how they expected me to make the colony’s slaying of Blak men and women more palatable for their sensitive and fragile ears. And I asked why they felt that they had no responsibility for the lives and deaths of Blak people in this country. Our country.
I won’t go into the racism, the stereotyping of me into their angry Blak woman trope, the offensive diatribes that pierced my heart like arrows, but I’ll tell you how I felt. I felt nothing but immense sadness. It wasn’t just that I could see that I had no choice but to withdraw, or that this was an opportunity lost to me. I was sad for my people. Sad because even in my attempt to elevate Blak experience with my Blak voice, the lives of my people really didn’t matter at all, unless they fit into some very neat, polite and constrained articulation. Sad that I wasn’t allowed to express my grief my way. Sad that I was not allowed to speak the truth, because it would seem Lizzo is right: truth hurts.
An hour after the meeting, and many tears later, I wrote them a polite email withdrawing. I did tell them that I was offended. Offended not just for myself, a Blak woman with lived carceral experience, but also every Blak person in this country who feels unseen, erased, tone policed and marginalised by colonial committees like theirs. I told them that in their drive to ensure my compliance with TEDx rules, they failed to ensure this was an inclusive, safe and respectful platform for all, rather than the few they seem happy to accommodate. Unsurprisingly, I received no response to my email, only a short Facebook message—not to see how I was after being brutalised in this way (I mean, why would they care about my Blak life?), but a short message saying, ‘We’re looking at getting the team trained and encourage them to learn more. Thank you for giving us constructive feedback, really appreciate it.’ I just laughed as I read it. What was I meant to reply with? ‘LOL! Happy to be of service’? Can you see? Can you see how our bodies never matter unless they are in service to the colony?
Can you see how our bodies never matter unless they are in service to the colony?
I took to Twitter to share my experience. The world of Blak Twitter is mostly a kind of utopia for me. Blak fullas (and some of my non-Indigenous friends) wrapped their arms so tightly around me that all my broken bits fit back together. There were offers for me to present my TEDx on podcasts and in classrooms, and I was buoyed by the love and support for my voice and my story. Right now, though, this is what I needed to say. I wrote this article to release my pain and sadness (after all a problem shared is a problem halved, right?). I wanted to remind everyone of the very real and soul-destroying effects of tone policing, of erasure, and of marginalisation.
I quickly learnt that this was not the first time that TEDx, as a platform, had silenced Black women. In 2017, Mwende ‘FreeQuency’ Katwiwa wrote an article about being asked to cut Black Lives Matter content from her talk. In the article, Mwende says, ‘I spat out that I could not cut “Black Lives Matter” from my talk, since the foundation of the talk was how the Movement for Black Lives and Reproductive Justice were inseparable for me.’ Like me, she wondered whether the TEDx team had even read her draft. Mwende goes on to say: ‘I was frustrated that I had been invited to give a talk on an idea I deemed worth sharing, only to be told that it was not worth sharing anymore.’ This was exactly how I felt. And today as I sit editing this article, seven more of my people have been killed in custody, and I am angry. So angry that their lives and deaths have not even raised a whisper. Blak fullas are again left with the labour of bringing light to this shameful darkness in this supposed lucky country we inhabit. And as Blak fullas, we must resist the calls for civility. Those same calls only exist because they want compliant, silent, noble savages.
As a Blak woman, I know this is not the first and will not be the last time my voice is silenced (and I know this experience is not unique to me. Check out sister Melissa Lucashenko’s talk to hear her views on this exact topic). I know it will inevitably happen again, because I am not the reformed prisoner you all think the system churns out. I am a Blak woman who fights every day to survive a system designed to kill. I am a woman committed to tearing down a nation state which brutalises my kind. An abolitionist who will spend her life tearing down the systems that kill my people. I am angry, not contrite. I am filled with rage, not with remorse. I am loud, and I take up space, and I am unapologetic about it. I am using my survival and all my scars and wounds to dismantle your systems that abuse Blak minds, Blak bodies, Blak lands and Blak waters. And I’m putting you all on notice. You have a choice: you can stand with me and my people, or you can get your foot off my neck, because Bla(c)k people across the world continue to rise. Standing together, we will be formidable.
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This piece was commissioned and edited by Allanah Hunt, KYD’s First Nations Editor-in-Residence, in partnership with State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing project.
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers can submit pitches to Allanah here.
