MARLON Riley, in his younger days, was drawn almost as far north into Queensland as he could go to trace the roots of his story that reach back tens of thousands of years.
And he’s been as far as Rome to represent his people.
He’s a descendant of the Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal peoples of Cape York Peninsula but he’d spent all his years growing up in Brisbane and, like many others whose communities were affected by the Stolen Generations and other traumas, had lost connection with his story.
“I got to see my country for the first time as a teenager …,” he said. He took time to soak up all he could of his people’s culture and traditions – the dances, the songs, the stories, the lore.
Marlon had been learning about Aboriginal culture as a student at St James College, Brisbane, but his time up north took him deeper.
“Just going up to Cairns and back, back and forwards to calmer waters, it was just learning a little bit of my culture,” he said. “It was a wonderful time just learning from Uncle Lance and the Riley family up in Kuranda, north-west of Cairns, and up in the range. When I came back I learnt a bit more spirituality (as an employee with Brisbane Catholic Education), and with Murri Ministry and NATSICC (National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council). I learnt from being with Murri Ministry and going to NATSICC conferences, learning from different mobs, like Tiwi Islanders, learning their culture, and the Kimberley people’s culture … And there would always be a storyteller, so we could hear some of the Yalanji stories, but also retell other stories, giving messages of the stories from different nations.”
“I was just sort of teaching myself to be a bit of a storyteller …”
He took his story to Rome as a 32-year-old in 2010 when he was chosen to dance the steps of the brolga with five other Aboriginal people from Queensland at the canonisation Mass of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Now Marlon is a full-time “storyteller” himself at Ngutana-Lui, Brisbane Catholic Education’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural studies centre at Inala, and he’s celebrating his 20th anniversary there this month.
As Australia comes to the end of another National Reconciliation Week (May 27-June 3), one of Marlon’s recent conversations could be helpful.
During a conversation about reconciliation and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the discussion turned to the need for Australians to listen to Indigenous people.
A Church leader asked, “Well, how do we listen?”
“You have to feel the story,” Marlon said.
Following on from that, he explains that he senses someone is making an effort to “feel the story when you’re intent on listening to one another’s story”.
“The intentions of it is, like I said, that it’s (Aboriginal) lore. It’s feeling to pay attention to the land, inner listening …,” he said. They say it in a Catholic way, ‘Listen with your heart …’; we’re kind of given to that way that is ‘If you listen to our culture, it’s listening with your heart …’ – because there are disruptions in our culture when it comes to the effects of post-traumatic events of the Stolen Generation and inter-generational trauma. It’s that listening to those particular stories of the effect of that but also understanding ‘these people belong to a Dreaming, they have lore within themselves, and they’re just trying to find their connection with the lore’.”
Marlon’s given time to listening carefully to the stories of the Dreaming and of the Bible.
“We grew up Catholic … We went to church … Mum would take us to church, and we were baptised and all of that at St Mark’s in Inala,” he said.
He said it was a matter of focusing on the key messages that came to him from both the Catholic faith and Aboriginal culture and traditions.
“So it was about how our Dreamings rely on Aboriginal lore to determine how we act, how we behave on the land, understanding the Dreaming of the land, the respect to the culture, respect to the song and dance and the country that we belong to, all passing through,” he said. “With the Catholic way, it was learning to respect the sacraments and the message of the Bible and so forth, and learning to respect the rituals of the Church. So each of them helped me out in both ways to make me one … I always was interested in culture and I guess that’s why I learnt how to listen to other people’s stories …”
Marlon loves his role as cultural tutor at Ngutana-Lui.
“It has the best balance of my culture and my home life and my Catholic faith too,” he said. “It’s very important to me because I want to make sure that we share culture in a positive way so we’re not being stereotyped and being negative. People can be negative towards our culture and who we are as Aboriginal people; I think this is my way of showing people that we went through a lot too, and we want you to understand what we went through (as a people) – you know, the Stolen Generation – understanding the Dreaming culture but also modern aspects of life in general.”
“I feel that it’s my role to help educate in understanding us and be part of the reconciliation and being together so that we’re not having this negativity,” he said. “I don’t like the negativity with racism …”
For Marlon, the signs are hopeful.
“I always say Australians as a people, we get it, we do have the heart to listen to each other …,” he said. “… When it comes to dealing with the politics or the leaders of our country, they’re the ones who bring it down but the everyday Australian, when it comes to the vote, I’m sure everyone’s on board. (With) the Uluru Statement (for example), everyone in Australia, when they understand it, they say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re all cool with it …’ But it’s how the country goes in with writing it as legislation and what they perceive is going to be the repercussions of it (that is the challenge).”
It was the same with the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody, he said.
“We know what’s wrong but there’s the suggestions that come as a result of the investigations, but what comes after is how we write these laws then to protect people,” he said. “It’s our legislation that doesn’t match with our intentions.”
The responses and attitude of young people coming to Ngutana-Lui also give him hope.
“… The culture’s getting more embedded into education,” he said. “I find that in Catholic schools there are immersion programs where these young kids that are in Year 11 and the seniors of the school are learning and feeling, learning and feeling culture. When they are visiting Aboriginal communities they understand the poverty.”
“So our younger people are witnessing this first-hand when they do go into immersions just as well as they would do when they visit the Philippines or a third world country and they understand the poverty, and then they find that it’s their duty – and their calling too, their calling to act upon it. And they’re our future doctors, they’re our lawmakers, they’re the ones that deal with our health and so forth. So that’s where the hope is.”
Reaching reconciliation would be “joyous”, Marlon said.
“I guess it’ll be more relief and more joyous knowing that we have better outcomes,” he said. “Hopefully my grandchildren will have better access to great health, be well educated and have jobs of a higher level than the average job, or we will contribute to the Australian society more than being dependent on welfare and so forth.”
His message for National Reconciliation Week was “just to maintain our culture, helping people maintain and understand our culture”.
“Take your time to learn the culture, and sit and listen, just like Jesus would’ve done with many other different types of people – Samaritans and so forth …,” he said.
“It’s all about sitting down and listening, and feeling it – listening with your heart, is what they say.
“But also acting too. If you feel it’s right and just, then do it, because you know it feels good.”
