Women of a Certain Age

by Jodie Moffat

  My mother and I often talk about life’s quirks that take us in such different directions from what we may have planned. She can’t believe her daughter, who resolutely refused to go to school in her early school years, has ended up with a couple of higher degrees, a career in engineering, and is a member of parliament in NSW.

  I have to admit, there are days when I’m sitting in the chamber of the oldest parliament in Australia, amongst the rough and tumble of NSW politics, and it seems utterly surreal. After all, I am a political ‘outsider’ in more ways than one. I grew up a world away. I moved to Sydney from Lahore with my husband and one-year-old son when I was twenty-eight, joined the Greens in my late thirties, and was elected to take up my role as an MP in my forties. I didn’t come through the so-called political ranks of student unions, party apparatchiks or political staffers, but after spending a couple of very fulfilling decades working as an academic, and in consulting and local government. Engineering is my career; politics, my calling.

  It is undeniable that the gender inequality in my country of birth results in the oppression of women through violence, lack of educational opportunities and limited access to equal work. In my experience, this has fed into the generalised view that Pakistani women have little agency. But Pakistan is a country of huge contradictions. For example, Pakistan had its first woman prime minister decades before Australia. I became more aware of this dichotomy after moving here and realising gender equality is also an issue in Australia.

  This is quite opposite to what I had imagined – I had naively believed that patriarchy and sexism were issues no longer existing in the ‘West’. The Legislative Council of NSW Parliament, where I sit, is a reminder of how much still needs to be done to close the gender gap. There are only nine women members out of forty-two, the lowest percentage of any house of parliament across the country at the moment. This is also a reminder of how perceptions can be so different from reality.

  The culture and values I was surrounded by did not look down on women as they aged, nor did women become invisible. Quite contrary to the stereotype of older women as passive and ineffective, or labelled as hags or witches, I remember my mother, grandmother, aunt and mother-in-law at their most influential, vibrant and independent in their fifties and sixties and even later. And beyond them, I was surrounded and loved by doctors, musicians, artists, teachers and scholars, stay-at-home mums, nannies and house help – a big community of women mostly a generation older than me.

  The notion of a stereotypical Pakistani woman, or indeed a typical Australian woman, of any age, is alien to me. My life’s journey continues to be unconfined by labels. If this were not the case, would I have completed a master’s degree and a PhD as a mother with two young children and in my late thirties? Or gone into politics for that matter, at an age when society deems women to be invisible? Perhaps not.

  Of course, everyone’s life is about give and take, and mine is no different. There have been great opportunities throughout my career, but I would be lying if I said it has all been easy. Moving to Australia and starting from scratch was challenging. I had a husband and a baby son, and dreams of further study. We didn’t have jobs or any friends or relatives in Sydney. It took just one flight across the Indian Ocean to leave a whole life behind and with it the web of connections that had supported me till then. During the first few months in Sydney, I was sure we’d made the wrong decision. The isolation and loneliness made a gaping hole that was filled by my tears almost every night.

  In Pakistan, society is close-knit and extended families often very large. Mine was no exception. My siblings and I were constantly surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles, friends and people visiting our home or staying over (sometimes for weeks). This brought both pleasure and pain as we all learnt to share, negotiate and often give in to the needs and wants of others.

  Embracing Australia as my home has been both challenging and extraordinarily rewarding. I brought with me my idea of a shared sense of living, and discovered the value Australians place on individuality. It was a constant negotiation between the two worlds and I was drawn to both. Lahore comes alive at night with shopping, eating out and visiting friends and family. When I arrived in Sydney, everything except pubs shut down at five pm. As teetotallers we ruled out the bars. Kings Cross became our Lahore in those early days. Pushing our young son in a stroller, we’d walk up and down Darlington Street, enjoying the lights, sounds and movement. Little did we know that the Cross was perhaps as inappropriate a place for a two-year-old as a pub! Over time, Sydney has changed and so have I. The local drinking hole is now a common venue for many meetings. I never would have thought that one day I would be hosting a public forum on legalising cannabis for adult recreational use in a pub.

  Often people ask how I can identify both as an Australian and a Pakistani, but for me it was never a process of making lists of what I liked about either culture and then picking the traits I wanted. It happens as you live life. I don’t like vegemite, but am addicted to peanut butter. Does that make me any less Australian? I love the very Australian (and Pakistani) sport of cricket. Where does that put me on the spectrum of belonging?

  In a post-9/11 world, people have also questioned my sense of belonging based not on my cultural background but on my faith. Recently, a crude caricature of Muslim women has been created by some in Australia. Being a Muslim woman in the public eye, I am told I am not free, that I am under the control of my husband and that every statement I make on any issue is influenced by my faith or motivated by a hidden agenda to change the so-called Australian way of life. I am told to go back to where I came from.

  I’ve been told that white Australia is the real victim here. I get ‘Fuck off, you Muslim turd, and take your halal with you’, or ‘Don’t like it? Well there’s plenty of room in the cesspit you and yours crawled out of’, and more. I am sometimes not wanted in Australia because I’m a Muslim, which makes me incompatible with the supposedly modern and enlightened Australian way of life. But when I campaign for progressive change that most Australians want and support, such as abortion law reform, voluntary assisted dying, or the legalisation and regulation of adult use of cannabis, then suddenly those same people with their narrow views criticise me for not being a good Muslim. Their claims contest and question my ‘Australianness’ at every turn. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

  For some, migrants of any persuasion will never be truly Australian, a strange contradiction in a country where a vast majority came from somewhere else.

  The strong partnership between my husband and I is what has sustained us. Both of us have been able to make a home in a new place and follow a path that is mostly self-determined.

  I love my life and try to live it to the fullest. My husband often nags me for not knowing my limits, for pushing myself too hard. These reproaches come after I’ve been running around and working for days without a break. However, his most recent reprimand came when I complained about aches and pains after playing cricket at the SCG as part of the NSW MPs team against the press gallery and Federal MPs in early 2017.

  He was concerned I might get injured since I hadn’t played cricket for two decades. But I did play, returning to those days with my friends’ brothers in the front yards of our Lahore homes. My husband was there in the spectators stand to cheer me on – the only woman player on either team. It is with his unreserved love, support and encouragement, and the trouble-making streak I was perhaps born with, a streak buffed and polished by the amazing women in my life, that I have been able to boldly take up opportunities that may have been denied to me otherwise. And it is the rejection of these limits that society imposes on women, of what we should or shouldn’t do, or who we can or cannot be at a certain age that lets me be who I am, wherever I am.

  Djana ngayu — Who am I? — Pat Mamanyjun Torres

  Ngayu ngarrangu jarndu. Ngayu Djugun ngany, Jabirr-Jabirr ngany, Nyul-Nyul ngany, Bard ngany, Yawuru ngany, Karajarri ngany. I am Aboriginal woman. I belo
ng to Djugun, Jabirr-Jabirr, Nyul-Nyul, Bard, Yawuru and Karajarri. My Aboriginal name is Mamanyjun, which is a red coastal berry (Mimusops elengi) that grows in the rainforest areas of our clan estates in Jabirr-Jabirr country. I am a strong and proud woman from the First Peoples of Australia. I am connected to Djugun, the original people of the Broome region, Jabirr-Jabirr, the original people of regions north of Broome and west of Beagle Bay. I am also connected to the Nyul-Nyul and Bard, who originated from areas north of Broome, and the Yawuru and Karajarri from areas to the south. I am also Scottish, English, Irish, Filipino and Surabaya-Indonesian on my mother’s side. I am approaching mirdanya, elder-status, and am in the ‘autumn years’ of my life. My children are Emmanuelle, Ramiquez, Gabrielle, Karim and Tornina. I currently have five grandchildren, Joriah, Evander, Kazali, Jivan and Angelous, all boys.

  My mother is Mary Theresa ‘Warrarr’ Barker, descended from apical ancestors Milare and Keleregodo, who gave birth to Ida Mathilde Tiolbodonger, who married Catalino Torres, a Spanish-Filipino, and gave birth to Joseph Torres, my mother’s father. My mother’s mother Irene Drummond is a descendant of Mary Minyirr aka Mary Minyarl (Djugun) and Mary Bajinka II (Yawuru-Karajarri).

  My father, John McGregor, is an Australian-born Scotsman descended from Hughie McGregor who came from Glasgow, Scotland, and Stella Cook from Dandaragan, near Perth, Western Australia. The continuing effect of the colonisation of Australia has meant that I have had minimal contact with this side of my family despite my attempts to be connected. Perhaps this is one reason why I am so passionate about my Aboriginal family lines, their histories and our knowledge systems.

  My life has been an extraordinary one, full of stories of our families’ social and cultural histories, and how we interconnect with Australia’s First Peoples in the Kimberley region, and the Asian and European immigrants who came to live and work in this part of Australia. Many diverse peoples married our womenfolk from the Djugun, Yawuru, Jabirr-Jabirr and other people, thereby creating my descent line of the Torres and Drummond families. I have grown up with a great thirst and hunger for knowledge and am privileged to live in a time when Australian society is more supportive of Australia’s First Peoples, in comparison to the previous generations of my mother, grandmother and great-great-grandmother.

  My great-great-grandmother, known as Mary Minyarl, was a Djugun woman from Ngunu-ngurra-gun, now known as Coconut Well, situated north of Broome, Western Australia. She lived at a time when women were kidnapped off the coast, enslaved in chains and forced to free dive for pearl shell for the early master pearlers. Mary Minyarl was removed from her family clan lands in Djugun country, and taken north into Jabirr-Jabirr clan lands to dive for pearl shells. She was also taken south into Yawuru lands along the coast to collect the large pearl shells with other Aboriginal women. These pearl shells created wealth and influence for early colonial families in Western Australia.

  Eventually, in a southern Asian camp located in Yawuru country, Mary Minyarl met her husband, Abdul bin Drummond from Surabaya. Their son, Karim Drummond, was born on Yawuru country near Yadjugan. Great-Grandfather Karim, known as Injalman, was my grandmother Irene’s father. Karim had a sister, Mercedes Drummond, who we called Great-Granny Matjis. When my great-grandfather Karim grew up, he had to learn how to live with three laws: Aboriginal, Muslim and White Australian. He learnt about Aboriginal law from his mother’s relations and Aboriginal uncles. He learnt about Muslim law from his father’s side, and he learnt about Australian law after marrying my great-grandmother Mary Theresa ‘Polly’ Fitzpatrick and getting locked up for cohabitating with an Aboriginal person.

  The funny thing about the last one is that my great-grandfather Karim was also a ‘native’, but the authorities chose to label him as an Asian, and in those days Asians were prohibited from fraternising with Aboriginal people. But my great-grandfather was indeed an Aboriginal person. I remember seeing on his chest the initiation scars called mugadal when he was performing a healing ritual after I contracted tetanus as an infant. He had a pierced nasal septum and pierced earlobes for the placing of carved items, which marked his status as a man of ‘high degree’ in Aboriginal law. He was also a maban man, a spiritual healer who gave me the gift of a yellow-and-white-feathered emu chick as a spirit-being, that grew into a spiritual protector keeping me from harm. I remember seeing the small golden-white feathers cupped in his hands and hearing the chirping sound of the chick. I was only two years old at the time.

  My experiences with, and inheritance of, Aboriginal spiritual knowledge, and extensive spiritual events throughout my life have given me a strong belief in the power of our ancient knowledge and belief systems. It has provided me personally with many sustaining ideals of family, identity and culture, which has provided me with a passion and a purpose to protect and maintain our cultural practices and linguistic knowledge about plants, people and our environment.

  Before British invasion and colonisation of Australia there existed more than 750 languages and dialects, and just as many cultures, in this land we now all call home. My Djugun, Jabirr-Jabirr, Nyul-Nyul, Bard, Yawuru and Karajarri ancestors from the West Kimberley region of Western Australia saw the world through concepts called bugarrigarra (dreaming histories) and yamminga (ancestral times), both concepts that explain the early history of people, place and language. These concepts embody stories of the creative activities of ancestral beings, where the land is sacred, and the animals, plants, people and environments are closely interconnected. These ancestral creation stories are still held sacred today.

  My identity and experiences have also been formed through the colonising experience, where labels of Aboriginality and authenticity have been constructed by others, often to the detriment of the First Peoples and their communities. For us, this colonising experience has been long, damaging, and brutal. We continue to experience this brutality on many levels in twenty-first century Australia. More than twenty years have passed since the Native Title Act of 1993, where Aboriginal common law rights were compromised to include the right to be consulted only. Even more years have passed since the 1400s when the first waves of invasion began with the privateers under the banner of ‘discovery and empires’ for the kings and queens of their European countries. The mass invasion of the 1770s by the British colonial forces under the myth of ‘terra nullius’ and its treatment of Australia’s First Peoples has created a mindset that continues up to the present. In this contested space, we strive to analyse the meanings behind colonial words like ‘aborigine’, ‘indigenous’, ‘settler’, and ‘settlement’, to name a few.

  The complicated layers of colonial history and its impact on First Australians is slowly being acknowledged by wider society, where many are genuinely interested in rectifying past wrongs. We are all connected to this history. Its continuing effects on future harmonious and peaceful interrelationships within our diverse nation are not just an Aboriginal problem, but an issue for all Australians to face head-on. Together we must make informed decisions about how we are going to respond as twenty-first century Australians to continuing injustices against First Peoples.

  My personal journey has been driven by a commitment to improve the lives of Australia’s First Peoples, as I have experienced firsthand the inequalities that exist. My experiences have been intrinsically shaped by being a woman descended from Australia’s First Peoples. I am a person of colour, of mixed heritage, possessing a strong identity informed by Australia’s First Peoples’ traditions and worldviews, despite my pale-coloured skin.

  My thirst for ancient knowledge has led me along a journey towards nilangany, that is, to be ‘possessed by knowledge’, seeking the spiritual and epistemological pathways to acquire understanding of my ancient peoples and their ways of seeing the world around us. My mother and my brother also felt this need to reconnect with our traditions: my mother participated in traditional women’s law during her life, and my brother became an initiated man. He was the first person in our immediate family since my gr
andmother’s brother mimi Cassmond Drummond went through men’s law during the 1930s, following in the footsteps of my great-grandfather jalbi Karim Drummond in the early 1900s. These continuing connections have meant that my family has lived within and between two worlds – the Western and the Indigenous – and we have benefited from the richness of both.

  As for me, I was privileged to learn from many family members and extended kinfolk, who were informed by First Peoples’ knowledge. This knowledge profoundly affected how I proceeded in my tertiary education choices, and my career in Aboriginal education.

  Knowing both Kimberley Aboriginal Australian culture and white Australian culture has meant that my family and I often take on roles that bridge the gap between the two groups. My past careers as a curriculum development officer for the Tasmanian Education Department in Hobart, and with the federal Department of Education and Youth Affairs in Broome, Darwin and Canberra, are examples of this bridging role.

  Our families, who live at the intersection of so many different identities, have been at the forefront of language, health, education, music, arts and cultural programs. We do this to achieve positive life changes for our extended families and remote communities, as well as to facilitate cross-cultural understandings in the mainstream Australian contexts. I believe that knowledge provides understandings and the power to make informed decisions so you can have a more enriched and satisfying life where you can thrive and not just survive.

  Change is slow, and the achievement for Aboriginal people’s rights takes time against the tide of continuing colonisation and its embedded racism and politics of difference. I stand as both witness to, and a participant in, positive actions towards change. Through the commitment of Aboriginal Land Councils, like the Kimberley Land Council (where I worked in the early 1980s) and their workers, some justice and economic benefit for Aboriginal people has been achieved under Native Title determinations. Recently, government agencies have been working out ways to ‘Close the Gap’ through movements like the ‘Recognise’ campaign. Today we are experiencing the political issue of First Peoples’ sovereignty versus recognition. Through legislation, the federal government is seeking to incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples into the Australian Constitution. Much debate surrounds this recent development.