Page 15 - Comites Aboriginal Italian People in SA

But here’s where these statistics might discomfort us, or they might awaken us. The ‘others’ are not ‘over there’. They are part of us. We are part of them. We are mobs and wogs.
Italians stood beside and against First Peoples. Blood was mixed—through love, through violence, through shelter, and through shame. Growing up being picked on for being a wog or picked on for being Aboriginal. Or for both. Take your pick. The double whammy. And yet, if allowed the freedom to shine, the double wonder.
Com.It.Es. SA’s dedicated work with the ABS 2021 Census data shows that most Aboriginal-Italians are under 40 years of age. That fact heartens me: are younger generations and their parents shedding the racism, taboos and trauma of past punishments, such as the Stolen Generation, through forming inter-racial intimate relationships? Are they more boldly embracing their mixed heritage without fear that their Aboriginality will be scrutinised, dismissed or discriminated against by their Italian and wider communities? Is there an increasing number of Aboriginal-Italian relationships in the last few decades, or is it a more just political and social environment that’s finally allowing cultural safety, pride, and multiple community belongings?
Yet there’s something even more profound in this work when we pause on the glaring absences, the tensions, it exposes. Who did not tick both boxes? Yin Paradies, of Wakaya, Chinese and Irish descent, has written about a refusal to “tick the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander box”, a refusal grounded in mistrust. How will this information be used against them? And what of those who do not wish to be recognised, fearing ostracism? And what of those who do not know their Italian or Aboriginal heritage? What cruel truths lie buried with older generations when Italian community surveillance—misogynist, patriarchal, and racist—cast ‘miscegenation’ as una brutta figura, una vergogna?
Com.It.Es. SA thank you for providing necessary answers and making us confront necessary questions. As Gumbainggir activist and academic Dr Gary Foley reminds us: “You need to look in the mirror... do the work”.
Each number is a life, a story: of anger and apology, of remorse and reckoning, of terror and triumph. In a forthcoming book, Mobs and Wogs, a few of us, Aboriginal and Italian, will try to tell a few of those stories. In the anthology La Terra by Ascolta Women (2023), some contributors shared stories of Aboriginal- Italian connections woven through their family histories. Let these Com.It.Es. SA statistics encourage you to unpick the knots and weave a vibrant, truthful tapestry of your stories for future generations.
Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli AM