Australian Indigenous artist Brenda L. Croft writes about the challenges of native identity for fair-skinned Aborigines. Her sentiments echo my own.
"I am fair, I am aware that I am not what people are looking for when they want something black, something real, something authentic, something truly Aboriginal, but I am here. I am aware that as I look through magazines they are not of me, for me. The models white and pure, or black and foreign, and/or exotic, not from here not of me. I turn on the television and the advertisements make me feel that I have travelled to some other country, I am not at home. I see reports of our people and we are down again, so far down it is hard to see daylight. When observed, when exposed, we are mere microbes, lucky for some space, alien to white Australians, unknown quantities. Sad, sorry, other peripheral, not their problem. I travelled overseas and was amazed at how I became the exotic, the foreign, the other. Displacement, the other side. By placing myself behind the camera I am taking control of my self image and images of ourselves. I cannot, do not, take sole responsibility but challenge and attempt to reverse the expected. My mother marrying my father, white dress, black suit, the negative makes me laugh, the story makes my cry. Reverse roles. Look at me/us and do not see through me/us. Acknowledge me/us. I am right beside you."
July 1998
