Many Aboriginal people in identified roles quickly learn an uncomfortable truth. We are not there to lead. We are there to perform.

We are promised freedom to teach culture, connect on Country, and work in ways that make sense to our people. However once the contract is signed, those promises shrink. Risk management replaces relationships. Control replaces culture.

When Aboriginal staff push back, they are labelled difficult. When they burn out, the system shrugs. And when things do not work, Aboriginal people carry the blame for outcomes they were never given the power to shape.

Dear Pauline, “Victim” and “victimhood” are not the same thing. When those two ideas are collapsed into one, reality gets dismissed as an attitude, and “unity” becomes conditional on silence.

When people say “just make better choices,” they assume everyone has the same access to choice.
This article explores why that assumption breaks down when we look at incarceration, child removal, and lived capacity.