Every week, a different guest tweeter takes charge of Croakey’s rotated, curated Twitter account, @WePublicHealth, and uses the account to cover specific health issues or events.
Last week, James Blackwell (@BlackwellJ_), a proud Wiradjuri man and a public policy and international relations academic at the UNSW Centre for Social Impact, wrote for Croakey on #InvasionDay and also tweeted about other First Nations public policy issues, including a Voice to Parliament and supporting the Uluru Statement.
James Blackwell tweets:
Something that really concerns me as a First Nations academic is the sheer volume of colleagues who write articles ABOUT us, without CITING any of us!!
It’s just not good enough, and we all know there are plenty of options to cite! Reference! First! Nations! Researchers!
I want to remind you that we need to do better in amplifying and prioritising First Nations voices, ESPECIALLY our academic work!
We’ve seen today with #LarissaBehrendt the value First Nations people bring! #citeIndigenouspeople #CiteBlackWomen
[Here James Blackwell is referring to Professor Larissa Behrendt’s investigation of systemic racism at Collingwood AFL club – Do Better: Independent review into Collingwood Football Club’s responses to Incidents of Racism and Cultural Safety in the Workplace.
Co-authored with Professor Lindon Coombes, the report recommends wide-ranging actions for the club to address racism, including developing “a process of ‘truth-telling’ as a constructive step to more deeply understand the experiences of First Nations people and People of Colour, their history and culture and the impacts of racism”.]
On the Uluru Statement
Read the Canberra Times article here.
Other news
Final reflections
So today is my last day here [at @WePublicHealth]. So much to tweet, so little time. I do want to bring attention back to the ideas around amplifying Indigenous voices. It is not just about letting us speak. It is about also letting us stay silent. Letting us reclaim our stories, and our voices.
It’s one thing to give us a platform to speak and say things that we need to say. That is almost the easier of the two things I am talking about here. It is another to allow us to remain silent, or even reclaim our silence by letting us reclaim our words. Silence is speech.
There are things that we do not wish to, or think we should have to, talk about. And there are other circumstances where we have spoken, but wish no longer for that story to be out there. Respecting and amplifying Indigenous voices is as much about our words as our silences.
Stay in touch
On Twitter, follow @BlackwellJ_
