The Red Rattler Theatre hosted a First Nations led Yarning Circle organised by The Blak Caucus on September 24th, where activism beyond the Voice Referendum was discussed. There is privilege in being personally unaffected by the outcome of this referendum, and the institutionalised disadvantage of First Nations peoples continues even if a ‘Yes’ vote prevails. Being Vietnamese and from South–West Sydney, I thought about how people from my communities are so absent from important conversations like these. Our immigrant communities are often distanced by geography and language, but must not be prevented from re-learning the history of where they now live — and the role their communities have played in dispossession. A resolution begins by realising on whose land we live.
Vietnamese inhabitance of Aboriginal land
I have always known Cabramatta as a place of cultural linkage between my grandparents, my mother and myself. It is among a constellation of immigrant–rich suburbs in South-West Sydney by design. The multicultural histories and representations of Cabramatta and similar places in South-West Sydney have shaped the perceptions of immigrant communities in Australia at large –– recently, the SBS series Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta and Punchbowl provided a necessary, new perspective of immigrant communities in Sydney during a stretch of xenophobia that lasted decades. Accordingly, there have been generational adjustments of immigrant families into Australian life. In Cabramatta today, the Vietnamese language that ornaments the decaying temples and storefronts along its streets spell out a dualistic displacement; one continually and visibly from Asia, and the other invisible yet Indigenous to Australia. The latter is an Indigenous aspect of place that has inadvertently been drowned out by immigrant inhabitance. Cabramatta, the name itself, is now colloquially detached from the Cabrogal People; its etymology rests in cabra (an edible freshwater grub) and matta (place or locality) –– though since the 1970’s, Cabramatta has become rather known for Vietnamese organised crime and phở. While it is important to realise the pervasive and decades-old political antagonisms against the Vietnamese community of Cabramatta, it is now even more necessary to realise the community’s role in Indigenous dispossession. Of course, not in the sense of white colonisers such as Lachlan Macquarie, but in a way where Aboriginal history has become peripheral to Vietnamese inhabitancy. For us of immigrant backgrounds, we must realise our position as inadvertent beneficiaries to Indigenous dispossession.
Cabramatta in the age of the Voice to Parliament referendum
Western Sydney is continually depicted as a massive, ethnically diverse population seemingly unaware of its collective voting power. The volatility constantly associated with ethnic Western-Sydneysiders’ voting patterns is drawn from the strong ‘No’ vote on same–sex marriage, and more specifically, falls on the excuse of not being an immediate priority in the lives of ethnic Australians. The enormous question, “how will Western Sydney multicultural Australians vote in the referendum?” has made disadvantaged immigrant communities the spectacle of political campaigns, of whose result the entire country depends. Regardless of Cabramatta’s depiction, an essential point is made –– immigrant communities are lacking knowledge on the Voice referendum and are typically unfamiliar with Aboriginal disadvantages and activism, yet it cannot be solely expected of these disadvantaged communities to acquire the same political awareness as their counterparts elsewhere in Sydney. Practically, it is the role of us all as allies of First Nations activists, to continue conversations of politics and history concerning Indigenous dispossession beyond the referendum. We need to also hold ourselves and our peers to account when support at First Nations rallies is inconsistent. Those of us coming from communities like Cabramatta have a particularly essential role to play –– that is, through education.
How refugees displaced Aboriginal communities
Gentrification plays a significant role in the geographical displacement of First Nations communities. The dominant Indo-Chinese populations of Cabramatta originated in migrant hostels and housing commission developments in which refugees found safety during the Vietnam War. As a consequence, it is plausible that Indigenous communities have been displaced as a new Asian culture and population has since settled. Reactionary issues like homelessness and over-crowded housing remain disproportionately severe for First Nations communities. Though, even before Cabramatta became massively populated by Vietnamese refugees, it mainly consisted of Eastern and Western European migrants –– so gentrification cannot solely be the result of Asian immigration. The most descriptive, archived information available on Cabramatta before colonisation is that the Cabrogal tribe, a subgroup of the Gandangara tribe, lived in the Fairfield area for over 30,000 years. Their peaceful inhabitance was first significantly disrupted by a French landowner Gabriel M. H. Kerilleau, who received a grant of 100 acres in the centre of Fairfield in 1807. Overall, the absence of accessible historical information about the Cabrogal peoples prevents us from forming a coherent hypothesis of displacement. However, gathering from the militant instructions of Lachlan Macquarie in the Frontier Wars; which is also greatly written about by Professor Henry Reynolds, it is probable that the method of colonisation was undertaken through massacre and cultural erasure. While documented history of the Cabrogal people is scarce, information on the settled Vietnamese community in Cabramatta is bountiful, representing a normalised, cultural dispossession of Aboriginal land. A layered sense of dispossession is evident through population density and historical visibility.
Why realising dispossession is so important
I do not intend to solely blame immigrant communities with the institutional issues directly linked to British colonisation. While the Vietnamese and First Nations communities of Cabramatta experience different types of institutional and social racism, it is vital to realise the potential good to come from ethnic solidarity. The erection of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy coincided with the Vietnam War: we share a relatively common history of defiance against the military–industrial complex –– and its perpetuator, the Australian State –– and should prioritise our shared struggle and solidarity. If we are able to harness the progressive political activism of refugee communities with a shared history of displacement due to war, then justice for First Nations communities could accelerate. It all begins with our immediate efforts to educate in a culturally sensitive way; and to decolonise where we come from.
