We Thank Sissy Austin for speaking to "Our Land"

Sissy was kind enough to allow us to publish her notes from her speech.

My name is Sissy Austin, I am a very proud and a very strong Gunditjmara Woman. I am 24 years old and in my 24 years here on this country I have learnt and experienced enough to know the impacts violence has on individuals, families and communities.

Reclaim the night, is a great initiative and event to highlight the alarming statistics facing women around the world when it comes to violence. Whilst we are gathered here tonight to ‘take back the streets’ this event for me signifies a larger beast and a larger battle. We must not only demand safe streets, we must demand safe homes, safe workplaces, safe public places and safe lands for us all to connect and grow on.

Violence does not discriminate, but I stand here today to represent my women, Aboriginal women, the first women of this land, this country we all live, breath and work on. In this country, Aboriginal women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalized because of Family violence and Aboriginal women are 10 times more likely to die from an assault than our non-Indigenous sisters.

Aunty Deborah Cheetham once said to us at a workshop ‘I absolutely forbid the words Indigenous and Issues to exists alongside each other, there are issues Indigenous peoples face in this country, but they’re not Indigenous of themselves and they’re not of our making’

Violence is one of these issues.

In order to understand the layered impacts of violence for my people, you must understand the history. Violence arrived in this country on the 26th of January 1788, when the beginning of a destructive violent invasion occurred. With over 500 massacres across the country, women being raped and murdered, children being torn from their mothers simply for being Aboriginal and authorities asserting power, control and fear into the oldest continuing culture in the world.

250 years on and intergenerational trauma impacts us more than ever, past government and church actions and policies haunt the walls of newly named departments and agencies, but what will never change and never be torn from us is our strength. My strength as an Aboriginal woman will never escape my spirit forever. I am not just a young woman, I am the grand child of Eileen Austin and the great grandchild of Doris Clarke. I come from a culture of survivors and of fighters.

Aboriginal women experience violence at alarming rates, Aboriginal women have our children taken away at alarming rates, Aboriginal woman experience police brutality at alarming rates, Aboriginal women are the fast growing prison population in the world. As a Koorie woman, there are many forms of violence that call withhold the same feelings associated with word ‘violence’ and yet we are blessed.

We are blessed because we have the power to seek strength from our land. We connect with country on so many different levels. Our body, mind and spirit are only healthy when country is healthy. As women, not only are we fighting for safety, we are fight for the safety of our land. The fight is not just for the physical landscape, it is the spiritual and non-material cultural connections that exist between women and country.