Ep 3: Lore meets Law with Larissa Behrendt

Host Blue Lucine (00:01):

We The City is recorded on Gadigal land. I pay my respects to the traditional custodians, the elders past present and emerging. Art. Activism. Identity. Diving deep with one artist a week, we meet the individuals who use their art to make change in the City of Sydney. Who are they and what's their story? Stick around to find out on We The City. Hi, I'm Blue Lucine and in today's episode of We The City I speak with Larissa Behrendt. Larissa has recently published her third novel, After Story, and is not only a writer, but also a filmmaker, distinguished professor and a lawyer. Larissa and I discussed the synergy between her creative work and legal work and how they inspire and inform one another, and why it isn't necessary to follow a single path. Here's Larissa.

 

New Speaker (01:14):

Larissa. Thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (01:20):

It's a pleasure.

 

Host Blue Lucine (01:21):

You are many things. I know you foremost as a documentary filmmaker, however, you have also published three novels, the latest being After Story in 2021, you've published textbooks such as Indigenous Studies for Dummies, which you recently updated. Is that right?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (01:39):

Yep. Second edition.

 

Host Blue Lucine (01:40):

And, uh, you also do legal work. You went to Harvard law school and you are a Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (01:49):

Yeah, that makes me sound very old, but yes I am.

 

Host Blue Lucine (01:53):

Baby face. Distinguished Professor.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (01:55):

. Thank you.

 

Host Blue Lucine (01:56):

I did wanna ask you first to tell us a little bit about where you grew up.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (02:02):

Well, I had in many ways for a family that didn't have a lot of resources, uh, a very idyllic childhood. I was born in Cooma, so I spent my first five to six years in the country. And then we lived on Norfolk Island for a couple of years. So by the time I moved to Sydney, I'd had quite a bit of experience at different environments. Uh, and then I grew up from that time in Sydney, I grew up in the Sutherland Shire, which many people perceive as being very white and it was true. My brother and I were the only Aboriginal kids who identified at our school, but there was a large Aboriginal community there. And, and there was a little diaspora of kids. And then we spent a lot of time coming into Redfern, where my father was very active with the community and had a lot of friends. So I had a, a kind of great mix of good set of friends in the suburbs, but we were very connected to the Redfern community since that time.

 

Host Blue Lucine (03:05):

Can I ask Larissa, what kind of kid were you in primary school? How would you describe yourself?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (03:11):

Um, oh gosh. I think my brother and I became pretty close because we had that experience of moving and anyone who's had to do that when you're a kid and you have to make new friends when you go somewhere and it's very disruptive. So we'd had that experience going into close knit communities as outsiders. And I, I think I kept a little bit of the outsiderness in that I wasn't an outdoorsy person. I was always a reader and I was always interested in ideas. And in a way, you know, I think the kids I grew up with were all, you know, good kids, although there was a lot of, of the prejudice and racism of the time around us, but my parents were very politically active and I was very influenced by their politics. And my dad very much involved with the Aboriginal rights movement and the anti-nuclear movement.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (04:07):

My mum, very strong feminist and actually quite an advocate around gay rights as well in her own way. You know, all of those issues were things that I felt strongly about. So I think people thought of me as a bit of a weirdo because I was so engaged with politics, but I did know what I wanted to do. And I often found a lot of solace and kept my own counsel in terms of always liking to read, I would be a kid that was more likely to be in the library at lunchtime than out playing a sport with other kids.

 

Host Blue Lucine (04:37):

Uh, you talk about your father kind of being involved in activism. What role did your Aboriginal identity play in your childhood?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (04:47):

It's an interesting question because we were really lucky I think, that we grew up at a time when still a lot of people were very embarrassed about being Aboriginal and a lot of people hid it for very good reasons, particularly the generation before mine and onwards. Uh, so in the sense that both of my parents were always honest about our identity and my mother who was not Indigenous was always really strong about making sure my brother and I were really proud of it. Um, so if we were being teased about being Aboriginal in the playground, she would comfort us by saying something like, well, you have to feel sorry for people like that, cuz they don't have a culture like you do. And when I look back on that, I think that was extraordinary that she would even think that way because it was not usual of her time. Uh, but it meant that for us, we always knew it was a positive thing and we felt sorry for people who couldn't see it. And I don't remember a time when I was ever embarrassed or uncomfortable or ashamed of being Aboriginal. And I think now that was a real lucky thing I had. I feel like that was a privilege in my upbringing. In fact, I didn't even know there was anything negative about it until I heard other people say things and I couldn't understand what they were talking about.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (06:03):

So that, that in its, in its own way was really formulative because of my father's activism and my mother's caring insight and empathy. I was able to at a very early age, start to understand the history of my own people about the Stolen Generations policy and dispossession and massacres, all of those things that weren't taught in schools. Um, I could see the ignorance of the kids around me and how their ignorance fed the racism that was so endemic. And again, not that they were bad people, but that was the time I felt like even from my early time in high school from about 10 11, I was already really politically active. Uh, had a very strong sense of social justice. Dad was always, he was a great out in the street street march- I thought that's just what you did on a Saturday. If you weren't at the races, you were marching for Land Rights or against nuclear testing in the Pacific or whatever it else it was.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (07:02):

We were marching about. And through all of that activism, we were very connected with the Redern community. And it meant that as a child I'd go to rallies or to meetings that dad was at at the me, you know, the medical service was the place where everyone would meet for everything. So it wasn't just, you went there if you were sick, big community meetings would happen there. And you know, I'd just run around with the other kids, but a lot of it seeped into me and I heard all of the, you know, really great speakers and thinkers of the community, the Chicka Dixons, the Gary Foleys were there in my childhood and as I was growing up, so all of that I think really shaped me. So both having the cultural heritage and then the political heritage obviously had a lifelong impact on me.

 

Host Blue Lucine (07:48):

That's so wonderful to hear Larissa and makes a lot of sense, knowing you as an adult, the richness from where you've come, how old were you when you moved to Sydney and where were, where did you first live?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (08:00):

So I think I must have been about seven or eight. I'm very bad at remembering how old I was and now I've come full circle. Cause I forget how well I am now as well. Um, but I wouldn't have been more than that. We'd had the two years on Norfolk Island. So it was the first time I'd ever been to a city like Sydney. I don't remember coming here before then though when we were in Cooma we would go to Canberra, which obviously looks really different. I remember the vast amounts of grass and the big white buildings of Canberra. And of course Sydney's nothing like that. And I actually even remember flying in over it and seeing all the red tiled roofs. And it was just something like, it was such a strange idea to me. I had no idea what a city was like.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (08:44):

We lived in a little unit when we first got here until we mum and dad bought some little bungalow in a suburb just down. So my brother and I shared a room for quite a little time when we arrived here. So it was very cramped we lived near a train line. It was noisy in that way. It was a bit of a shock though. I have to say I started of Oliver Twist. So I had this different idea. I thought that the city was gonna be a bit like, you know, Victorian London or something. And it wasn't quite that. But having said that there was a very big difference between what it was like, where we lived in the Sutherland Shire and then going into Redfern, which really was slums. At that time, it was a very poor socioeconomic area. I saw poverty there that I'd never seen anywhere else.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (09:31):

And it just looked different. We didn't have much, but we still met people who had less than we did. And it was a very smart thing. My mom would do whenever we started complaining about what we didn't have. She'd put us on the train and take us into Redfern and, and, and show us people who had a lot less than we did for me. There was the suburb we lived in, which still had trees and open spaces and was fairly safe and Redfern, which at that time was not as safe and was very poor, but rich, in other ways,

 

Host Blue Lucine (10:03):

Looking at Sydney as a whole and your life growing into an adult, are there any places that hold a lot of significance to you that have a special day or a memory that you wanna tell us about ?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (10:18):

For me, if, if I think of where those deep memories are, it's the things like those meetings at the medical service, the sense of community that we had there, the aunties particularly, and a couple of the uncles that I met, one of my dad's really great friends was a fellow called Brian Syron, who was the first Aboriginal person to direct a feature film when he directed "Jindalee Lady" back in the eighties. And he had been over to Stella Adler school in New York and came back and worked at the Black Theatre and did the first black playwrights conference. And when I got older and dad decided he no longer wanted to send me either out to Walgett or to Wallaga Lake mission for the holidays. Cause I think he was worried, I'd end up like many of my female cousins and be pregnant before I finished high school.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (11:04):

He'd send me to uncle Brian and I, I had those great people. Bobbi Sykes was another, who was a really big figure in Redfern. And she was one of the people who was at the Tent Embassy, the original Tent Embassy. And she had a little apartment in the water tower, which overlooked Redfern. And I spent many days with her hours with her, she'd have these long nails and file them while we did the crossword. She was the one who said I should go to Harvard and helped me apply people who were really instrumental in shaping my life were very big part of the Redfern community. And even today, a lot of my favourite aunties are from that community. And then on top of that, you know, I had these moments where I was there one day with one of my cousins and we heard the Prime Minister was coming and it was this kind of crazy thing.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (11:52):

Like it was a time when taxi drivers wouldn't stop in Redfern. And we were like, what's the Prime Minister coming down here for? And we went down to see like, let's go see the two-headed snake and the Prime Minister delivered the Redfern park speech. So there we were on this historic day, not knowing that was what was happening. And so, you know, I have like just so many memories from that time. So to me, even though some parts of it are not recognisable. If you look at the where The Block is now, it's physically so different. There's a lot of people there that are still the same, a lot of the same aunties. But I still feel like when I'm there, there's a very strange sense of feeling like I'm home and people who have passed like both Roberta and Uncle Brian that I mentioned earlier. I still feel very much when I'm there that they're there too. So for me, that really has become a part of the city that I'm feel, I feel very connected to.

 

Host Blue Lucine (12:53):

You mentioned Harvard law school. Now you were the first Aboriginal person to actually go to Harvard law school. What made you want to be a lawyer?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (13:03):

I decided when I was about 11 or 12 and I started to understand through my dad's own finding his family, he had been, he'd been brought up in an orphanage and my grandmother had been removed from her traditional country. So we'd had two generations of dislocation. And when I was about 10 or 11, dad decided he was gonna go back and find his family, which he did by finding the material in the archives about his own mother's removal. And on her removal certificate, it said where she came from was a place called Dungalear Stations. He basically just packed us in the car and went out there and went to try and find his family. And, and to me, there was a part of me that understood that the, the people around me didn't know this history and here it was something that just absolutely defined my family.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (14:01):

And I felt like a lot of the racism that we were experiencing was heightened because people were so ignorant of that history. And you know, of course it's different today. We, everyone knows about the Apology and Stolen Generations and we talk about it and it's taught in schools, but that just wasn't the era I grew up in. I guess I just had such a sense of the injustice of it. And it made me wanna be a lawyer. So I had always wanted to be a lawyer cuz I wanted to change the world. It took me a long time to find actually how to do that. And it wasn't always in a in a courtroom, but that's probably where it came from. And in a way maybe I was a bit influenced by my dad who I think would've also liked to have been a lawyer, but didn't get the opportunities.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (14:45):

Couldn't get schooling past a certain age because he was an Aboriginal kid, even though he was very bright. Both my parents didn't get the education they wanted dad, cuz he was black mom cuz she was a woman, but both were lifelong learners. There were always books in the house. If you did something well you got a book. And I think dad would've really liked being a lawyer too. So maybe there was a little bit of that, but certainly no one ever told me what to do. And it was something that had come from myself. So yeah, I, I guess I had that idea first, but in a way I found my way into other things like writing and filmmaking that I, I think can be even more powerful agents of change.

 

Host Blue Lucine (15:23):

Let's talk about storytelling. When did that become a prominent part of your career and, and what made you move into making films and writing? How did that happen?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (15:33):

That's an interesting question because cuz reading and storytelling had always been a very big part of my life, both because my parents were readers and books were treasured in our house and I loved stories and it was a big tradition of ours to always read before bed. We didn't have a television I remember until we came to Sydney, I don't remember watching TV until I came to Sydney. So we were always reading and we come from a culture where storytelling is a big part of how people talk, telling family histories, oral histories was always a big part. My dad did a lot of collecting of that over the years to, to in terms of my professional work I came to it a little bit through my legal work. I guess I worked out early on that you can, if you wanna become a lawyer to change the world, you very easily get caught up being a cog in a system and you're not changing anything.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (16:31):

And that's very much what happens if you're doing the important work of day to day case work. And so you'd need to be taking a different angle if you wanna achieve some kind of law reform. And that's probably one of the reasons why I became very interested in research and academia. Through that research in academia, uh, we formed really powerful relationships. The team I work with at Jumbanna with the communities that we were working with. So for example, the Bowerville community would be one, the families we work with around child removal, a lot of the deaths in custody families we work with they're very long strong partnerships. And I think through that work, you start to realize that there's so much that you do as a lawyer where you're translating somebody's story into the format, that they need to have it to get their case in court.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (17:18):

And then the role that you can play in providing space for people to tell their own story and how much more powerful that can be. Particularly if you're trying to influence policy makers, politicians, decision makers, that heartfelt story is gonna be perhaps more persuasive than if you are putting forward great legal arguments and using the evidence base. And I think that's something I particularly learned from the Bowraville families, watching their activism and seeing when they had the chance to tell their story how much more powerful it was than getting into all of the legals ins and outs of the double jeopardy laws and all of that tedious stuff. The passion that they had, I started to think more and more about that. And it was the case that we would use film a lot as a way of capturing stories. Anyway, we started doing that around the Northern territory intervention where nobody was listening to first nations people about what the changes were like on the ground and they didn't wanna hear it from academics fine, but nobody would give the space for people who are actually living under those laws.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (18:23):

So I did a really big project about voices of The Intervention and that was also a big learning curve for me. And off the back of that, I thought not only is it that important in terms of telling stories, but the other thing about it that I liked that I thought was really powerful was when people would tell a story like that, about what it was like under the intervention or what it was like to have your child removed. It really gave power back to people who were feeling disempowered by the same thing. So seeing the power of that storytelling on people whose lives are similar. And that was a really big influence on me too. And I got really serious about it was something I really loved. And I had that experience of spending that time in my childhood with uncle Brian. I just had never imagined it for me because I was so focused on the legal work.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (19:12):

And I just knew perhaps because of my experiences of, of watching Uncle Brian, be really careful about his craft, that it wasn't gonna be as simple as saying, well, I'm really successful as a Professor. So now I'm just gonna start filmmaking and it's gonna be easy. I decided I was gonna take the craft really seriously and go back to film school. And so I was the only Professor in my class, but luckily I'd changed my name legally. So I had to enrol under Lavarch rather than Behrendt. And I felt a really wonderful anonymity when I was there and I found it really liberating to be starting at the bottom and working up again with something that I felt really passionate about. And it helped me just really immerse myself in trying to understand this as a storytelling technique. And it did actually really increase my ability to think of ways to tell stories.

 

Host Blue Lucine (20:07):

Because now when you look at your kind of career, there's a real duality in your career identity, um, you're kind of equal parts, committed to legal work and creative works. To what extent do one inform the other?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (20:24):

I feel like they're almost symbiotic and I never feel like they're two separate things. Mm-hmm I think some of the best documentary work I've, done's come out of the long relationships I've had with people I've done legal work with when you have a level of trust with the people that you're right, you are doing a documentary with and the negotiation you have around how you're gonna tell the story and how the story's gonna be used and who has control of that story and who speaks for the film after it's done all of those things work better when you have that trust in many ways you can feel when you change careers as a second career, that you're kind of behind the eight ball cuz everyone else is sort of so much younger than you. But I think the one thing I felt I did have is that I'd had a lot of experience seeing a lot of things, knowing a lot of stories, building a lot of relationships.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (21:09):

So I've tried to make the most of that. The storytelling part has made me a much better lawyer. Mm-hmm I think being able to integrate storytelling into the way that I not just advocate for legal change, but the way that I would structure a legal brief. Yeah. I, I feel like storytelling's been a, a huge benefit in terms of thinking about that profession and something that just isn't taught in law schools. Mm-hmm should be one day, but one day, hopefully it will be, but it isn't now. And, and I guess I've started to think that maybe that's the next thing to look at

 

Host Blue Lucine (21:44):

Because thematically there's a lot of crossover that I see in what you explore. So entrenched racism, theft of children in After the Apology, uh, the documentary from 2017 Aboriginal deaths in custody, victims of crime in Innocence Betrayed and After Story, I guess what I'm really interested in is how do you know the right medium to tell a story? What's your process behind that decision?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (22:10):

That's a great question. And I always feel like it's the story that decides. So when looking at particular story, I think there's the first question is, do you tell it as a fictional or a non fictional story? And this is why I love documentary and I do work in drama, but I love documentary because I think real stories are the most powerful and it's still my first passion is documentary. And for me, I think there's always a question of, is this story one that should be told as a fiction or is this some reason that you need to tell it as a non-fiction story? And if it's a, if you're telling it as a non-fiction, if you're telling it as a truthful story, is there a way in which you tell that story by giving a person the space to tell their own story, which probably means it's a film or is there some other way that you would do that?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (23:04):

I think when I look at the books I've written as fiction, I would always say they're probably the ones that are closest to my own personal experience and the choice of making them fiction has been because it to tell them as a non-fiction story would either be too hurtful to people I love or would not be my story to tell. So I think that they are things I think about when I think this is a story. So my second book Legacy was about my relationship with my dad. And it was also about how men like him, who succeeded in a world that was really stacked against them, were highly traumatised in as children, the sort of things that allowed them to be successful when people around them, even their own brothers and sisters were swept up in their own trauma were probably the things that also became very difficult in terms of who they were as private people.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (24:04):

And I would never wanna tell that story as a nonfiction story. I love my dad too much and it's too complex. And I feel like there are, there are ways that you can talk about bigger stories without being hurtful or harmful, but raise awareness by using fiction. And that was very much the case for me. And it's allowed us to have conversations we wouldn't have otherwise had. When I wrote my first novel, it was based on a fictionalised account of my grandmothers and my dad's life. And once I decided I was gonna write it, I deliberately didn't dive into more history. I wanted to really do it as a fiction. And I, I looked at a lot of other sources, the Bringing Them Home report evidence to, to make that. And, and my dad would always tell these cheerful stories about his time in the orphanage.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (24:52):

He got caught stealing an, a lemon from an or from an orchard or something. But I knew from my reading that life in those places was much more traumatic. So I wrote the book with that experience for the two boys that were going through that basing loosely on him. And he had a younger brother who was in the orphanage with him and dad loved the book. I had a couple of his Navy stories in there that he loved. And I remember one night before he passed away, well, it was really late. And we were just about to go to bed. And he said to me, I still get a chill when I think about it. He, he said to me, "those things you wrote in the book they really happened." And I don't think he would've ever been able to say that to me, to confess that happened if I hadn't have written it in that novel. So I guess it's just a way of saying you're processing things when you're writing fiction that you find really hard to say in real life, of course your broader readership will have a different experience with it. But it did actually allow within my very close family, us to have conversations that we wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. And all of that's been a big part of our own healing.

 

Host Blue Lucine (25:59):

And sometimes writing it through fiction can be healing for yourself as the author. And then the non-fiction films, the documentaries can be providing healing to the families that you're working with.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (26:12):

That's right. And in fact, dad had passed away by the time I was really writing Legacy and I always felt that was a way of me processing my grief, very complex grief about losing him and I look back on it. And I still feel like it's a love letter to him to say, I know you were flawed, but I love you. And I love you not despite your flaws, but because of them. And that's true love. And I, I don't think I could have processed the grief of losing him without having gone through that process.

 

Host Blue Lucine (26:45):

Your third book After Story. Um, well, how did you choose to write it?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (26:52):

It's a complex thing is a lot that you process through writing. And I have to say sometimes you're very aware of what it is that you're processing and other times you're not, but you feel like you, you there's a need. And this, I think this is true as filmmakers as well is we are drawn to particular stories. Start to understand yourself. You start to understand why it is that you are drawn to a particular type of story. And I think for me, that's often comes second not first, not like I'm this person. So these are the stories I like. I'm really interested in this story. I can't stop thinking about this story. And then it's slower to me as to why what it is in that story that, that speaks to me. And in, in a way there were some obvious things with After Story that I felt very aggrieved about as a, as a lawyer.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (27:42):

And I would always say to people, this is the least autobiographical book that I've written, cuz the first two were clearly about my family, particularly the second one about my dad. And here I am very much thinking about things that were both with victims of crime I'd worked with not just Bowerville, but many of the deaths in custody where people have been so powerless for sometimes decades in terms of getting justice, the guilt they feel how unheard they are. And then also having worked in this at the serious offenders review board for a long time, the complexities of people being victims and then growing up to victimise other people, they're very heavy themes. And that sense of justice that you get frustrated by when you're working in that system. And I remember being in a room with one of our families, it was a victim of crime with a very senior member of the legal community, a senior law maker who when the father of a victim of crime had said, "what should I do?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (28:48):

There's no legal remedy." And the, the law maker who had every power to be able to change the, the law said, "well, I think you should get counselling and move on." And it struck me that would never have been said to white parents, of course not. Why would you ever say that to anyone? And, and in a, in a way I could see how that inability to see this man as a father and understand him as a father, just because he was Black was the same thing that I see in my cases where kids are being removed, where they shouldn't be removed, because there's an assumption that Aboriginal parents don't care about their children. And that enrages me. So in a way that was the easy thing that drew me in, but I realised just as I'd finished, almost finished the book. Um, and I was having a chat to my editor about it.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (29:39):

I so doing the, oh, you know, it's the least autobiographical thing I've ever written patter, patter. And I just had this moment, this kind of epiphany that actually I was really writing about my relationship with my mother, which factually is nothing at all what's in the book, but my mother had her own trauma during childhood terrible trauma that she eventually got away from. And I didn't understand that or know that history until I was an adult. But as a child, I could always feel like there was a part of her I couldn't get to that she was closed off and she's a very generous woman. And I lo I adore my mum and I used to always think it was me. That was me that, and, and it affected my relationship with her very badly. Particularly when I was in my teens, I was terrible child.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (30:29):

my poor mum. And then I, I got to learn that history almost in throwaway lines that she said, and then I understood why we never went back to Western Australia. She'd never moved back there even when she separated from my dad. And in a way I, I had to really process a lot of that myself. It's, it's something we've ever been able to talk about. It's not my story to tell, but I feel like there was a lot of in that book that was about me reflecting on, particularly through the character of Jasmine, about assumptions, you make about a parent and then actually it's your own growing up and having to really listen to not assume, you know, everything around you headstrong as you are brought up to be. And yeah, I, I think there was a big part of me in there that wanted to just acknowledge that I'd really struggled with my relationship with my mum in ways that weren't her fault.

 

Host Blue Lucine (31:35):

Just thinking about audience, cuz audience is very interesting. I think when you're writing, let's stick with After Story, when you're writing After Story, did you have a particular audience in mind?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (31:49):

I think I always think there's two audiences.

 

Host Blue Lucine (31:52):

Yeah.

 

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (31:53):

Yeah. I do. I, I know I'm writing for my own community and I guess when I grew up, I had to read books by white people about white people. Mm-hmm and there were a co a couple of books that started to come out that were memoirs, but there was not the literature you see today where you can go into books when there's a whole section on First Nations writing was there Renaissance of it. And I didn't have any of that when I was growing up and nor did we have it on television screens, right? It was just, if you didn't grow up in that era, it's hard to comprehend how white everything was. And even in magazines, you'd never see a brown face. And I guess for me, it's always been a big part of it of telling our stories the way we would see it with our humor and our experience.

Guest Larissa Behrendt (32:47):

And I think it's particularly interesting now that we have such a diversity of experience in our own community. There's so much more to write about and writers like Anita Heiss have been real groundbreakers in terms of showing that First Nations people can write in any genre, they like allowing other writers to not feel like there's a particular type of story that's a First Nations story. And that's always something that I think in terms of audience for me, that's I know that there are people whose experiences I'm writing of who that will hopefully connect to. And it's the same with documentary. And then I think there is a thing of wanting to draw in a non-Indigenous audience. And for me, the, the non-Indigenous audience I pitch to are people who are genuinely interested in Aboriginal issues. And if they knew more about, about it, they'd be more engaged with it.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (33:41):

They knew how to properly engage they would do it in a heartbeat. They sometimes can feel like I don't wanna be offensive. It's not my place, but being able to welcome people like that in to say no, come and see what the culture's like, come and see it from our perspective and people who, if they knew what needed to happen to change the socioeconomic position of Aboriginal people would do it. But hear this mantra from governments, we've tried everything, nothing works, but if, if you can show people what works they're on board. I find that the audience, I like to write to people who are allies, the people who are dyed in the wool, racists don't care what I have to say. And I would never write to change their mind because I don't think it's possible. I think they're a lost cause. And they're not somebody that I would feel comfortable, welcoming into my cultural space anyway, but I think there's a lot of positivities around having that connection.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (34:37):

And probably because, you know, my own relationship with my mum's really strong as a non-Indigenous person, my husband is non-Indigenous. My brother's wife is non-Indigenous the big supporters of us in terms of the work that we do. My brother and I were both supported by my mum and my mum was extraordinary. She would drop us off at Redfern. in time when taxis wouldn't stop there for me to spend the day with Bobbi and or if there was a meeting going on, she would drop us off. So she wasn't one of those people who kind of said, well, I've got Aboriginal kids, so I'm hanging out with you all. She understood. She could leave us with the community and the community would look after us and she could pick us up most extraordinarily thing. And when I go through Redfern, now I love that people always say, "how's your mum, what's your mum up to, how's your mum doing?" She didn't have to push herself on them for them to feel like she was a part of that community. They'll ask how she's doing before they ask how I'm doing. You know, I feel like for me, I've always understood how close tho those connections are. And maybe that's a reason why that's a big part of my audience, too.

 

Host Blue Lucine (35:42):

Just looking at Australia's kind of cultural identity. Why is it important for Australia to have Indigenous storytelling and Indigenous people doing the telling

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (35:52):

Australia is a First Nations country. And I believe that we've been here for at least 65,000 years. And in the last 20 years that figure's gone from 40 to 65. And I know there's work around that's showing that's longer than that. So in a, if we had this conversation in five years time, I'd probably be saying it's 80,000 years that we've had, we've got the world's oldest living culture on this continent. So everywhere you stand, it is Aboriginal land. And one thing that I think's been a real positive in some ways, it's a small thing, but it's been a profoundly big thing. When I was growing up the view was in Sydney, there were no Aboriginal people. And if there were, we were half castes, outcasts, drunks, peripheral fringe dwellers. And now because people do acknowledgement of country everywhere they go, they know there is an Aboriginal nation that is there.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (36:47):

And if you've got people who've been here for just over 200 years out of a 65,000 year, if we say conservative figures, history, you are, you're not erasing that 65,000 years. So I think every time we see non-Indigenous people struggle with that identity. It ends badly for them. They can. It's hard for them to tell that story when they're fighting against the reality of that. So if you look at things like what were called the culture wars or the history wars in the 1990s about were there massacres or weren't there was there a Stolen Generation or wasn't there were children taken for their own good. That was not a telling of history that any Aboriginal person really engaged with in terms of it changing their own understanding of their own history. Sure. There were Indigenous scholars like John Maynard and Tony Birch who engaged in those debates as academics, but as first nations people, those debates did not change our lived experience or our understanding of our own history.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (37:46):

They were completely debates that non-Indigenous Australians were having about what their identity was. That was that. And unfortunately, for us as Aboriginal people, we are one of the lightning rods in terms of the story that non-Indigenous people are trying to tell about this country. And once non-Indigenous people come to terms with the fact that this is Aboriginal land and they have a place in this land and they just have to work out how that relationship works. A lot of that anxiety, a lot of that threat of feeling threatened or shamed will go because when you see people come to terms with the fact that they are living on Aboriginal land, and that is part of the history of the land that they're on, it's probably a lot easier for them to think about their own identity as an Australian. They're not fighting against something that is factually there for them to have to deal with in some way or other.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (38:38):

So when people talk about Reconciliation, I think it's wrong to think of it as though it's about non-Indigenous people and Aboriginal people reconciling about what the history of the country is. There are other things we need to sort out like with the Treaty and the constitutional framework, etcetera, but in terms of Reconciliation, I think it's a bigger project for non-Indigenous Australians to reconcile themselves with what that story is. So sometimes people will ask me questions about that. And I'm like, well, I don't understand because I'm not a white person. So that's kind of them for us, it's been a fairly constant thing. So I think that Reconciliation is a really important part of that process. And so what I would say is for me as a First Nations person, I feel like what we need to work towards is making sure that everyone who lives on this country, whatever their background is understands that it's Aboriginal land. At the moment

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (39:34):

I think the importance around First Nations storytelling being from a First Nations perspective is multifaceted. We've been denied the right to tell that story for such a long time. It is now absolutely appropriate that we tell that story ourselves. As a creative, you are always writing other perspectives. So I write Indigenous characters and I write non-Indigenous characters. I think it's really hard for non-Indigenous people to write Indigenous characters because they don't understand our worldview enough. It's always been the problem. I don't come from the point of view that you can never write that. I know there are other people who take that view, but I think the challenge has been because there's so little deep understanding about Aboriginal culture, worldview perspective and experience. It's very hard for non-Indigenous writers to write them authentically. And we can always, we always, as an audience, smell a rat, right?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (40:33):

Unless it's reinforcing our erroneous stereotypes and you, you still can smell a rat if you are the victim of that stereotyping. So I don't know that relationship is deep enough for us to be able to be confident about storytelling from a non-Indigenous perspective. And I think that's been a big part of the problem. So authentic storytelling really in this country comes from First Nations people because we've lived between those two worlds. So we can write both sides, too few people know what it's like to be on that other side. And then there's an, an interesting cultural aspect to it too, that we are also really aware of. And that's it we have a culture where you don't get to tell any story you want. There's a lot of protocols around telling particular stories. You know, I can write a book like After Story, it's a different thing. There are two cultural stories in that that come from my own culture, but we, we are very mindful about that. And it's become a big element rightly in filmmaking, much more sensitive around getting permissions and protocols and respecting Indigenous cultural intellectual property. Um, so, you know, I think it's probably best at this stage to leave the First Nations storytelling to the First Nations people.

 

Host Blue Lucine (42:00):

I wanted to ask you what it's like being a part of Jumbanna And if you can tell us what it is and the role it's played in your academic career,

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (42:11):

I was very lucky to get the role with Jumbanna and the person who was director before me, uncle Bob Morgan was actually one of my dad's cousins. So in a way it was a family thing and uncle Bob had set up the unit, but there was no research unit. So one of my big things when I came in was setting up the research unit. I ran the whole unit, which also includes the student support part. And it was very small and it was very small for a long time, but I always knew that's what I wanted to do. So I took demotions to keep being the Director of Research. And as they started to have more Indigenous people in academia, and these Pro vice Chancellor Indigenous roles came up, I'd always get head hunted for them. And I thought I was lucky that I knew that's not what I wanted.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (42:59):

And in fact, I have been the least happy in academia when I've gotten further away from doing research where somehow the administration gets more and more, and then I'm not doing the actual work. And every time I've made a decision to basically get a demotion and lose the management administration and come back to the actual work I've been happier. So for me, Jumbanna's been that space. I've been very lucky that I came to UTS. I've been very lucky with the bosses I've had and our, our provosts and vice chancellors that they've always backed what Jumbanna has wanted to do. And that's no small thing cuz we are the only university unit of our kind that are unapologetic activists, right? So we were the only ones that came out against the Northern territory intervention. We are the only ones that take cases to the United nations.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (43:53):

We are the only ones that are actively taking on things, both in a policy sense and in a litigation sense. That's given us a great reputation in our own community. It's also meant that at times there's been pressure put on the university about the work we do, particularly by government. And we've been very lucky that we've got a university that doesn't blink. When that happens. We can point to a number of ways in which our's really influential. If we put in the most recent parliamentary inquiry into deaths in custody that we put a submission in our submission was quoted 129 times. So it's not like we are just activists that does us a disservice. We are advocates. And actually during the pandemic, I got to appreciate the space even more. I've felt at times when my own work gets hard, I get criticised. If you do this work well, you're gonna be attacked by the right wing.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (44:53):

If that happens, you're doing a good job. But when you get those kind of attacks, I've been able to experience that. Being in this space is a culturally safe space. For me, I felt that Jumbanna is like my tribe, one of my many tribes, but it's a really important tribe that the, the people I work with here who are Indigenous and non-Indigenous, but as we are part of a team, this is a really culturally safe space. And I don't think you would find many people working in universities, across Australia, who would describe the place they work in at their university as a culturally safe space, especially not an Aboriginal person. I haven't had much chance to sit down and look at it, but I feel really proud of it.

 

Host Blue Lucine (45:43):

What is it about living in the city that you like?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (45:49):

I know this seems strange to people, but I love it cuz it feels like such a cultural space to me. There's a political history there that I really love. So I've spoken about what that means in terms of Redfern, where I live in the city is right next to Australia hall where the, the 1938 Day of Mourning protest took place. So I walk out my front door and I'm there where that generation before my father's generation were protesting. And I love that I can feel that there one of my favourite walks that I have done a lot because of the pandemic has been to go down to Darling Harbor, walk around bar to what we call Barangaroo now and around to Circular Quay. And all of those spaces were First Nation spaces. Like I can feel that and where the Cockle Bay wharf is, was a women's birthing place.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (46:41):

I feel when I walk around, like when I walk around that place, it still feels cultural to me, the southern part of Hyde Park when the colony first started was a huge meeting place for the displaced tribes and tribes coming up from the south. So that's is issues right on my doorstep. I feel like as a displaced tribe myself, cuz my family's from northwest New South Wales, there's a tradition. So if to me it's always felt very alive with its cultural spaces. Even in the Botanic gardens, there are rock carvings. I've known that long before people started to use the place names. It's been wonderful to see that comeback. And the other thing I love about it is people now know better because of the naming of Barangaroo, some of those figures from the early colony, but I'd always grown up knowing the story of Barangaroo was this great warrior woman.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (47:34):

She was married to Bennelong. She's often described as Bennelong's wife. We call Bennelong Barangaroo's husband. She was a challenger of the colonist. She would willfully defy them. She didn't take their trinkets. She's often described by white men in their diaries as a kind of harpy because she was outspoken. And then another figure that we always grew up knowing about was Patyegarang who was the younger, younger Aboriginal girl who had a friendship with Lieutenant Dawes. So everything that we have that we know about Eora language in his diaries, everything that's in, he was an astronomer or that he came here as an engineer, everything he wrote about the skies, which was his special interest he learned from her. So she was an educator and a diplomat. So I grew up knowing those stories of the women. And to me, they're kind of they're archetypes, but there were always these strong women who were a part of this community and that we grew up hearing their stories. So I think for me, that's part of why we've been been drawn here and I love those walks and it still feels very alive to me,

 

Host Blue Lucine (48:48):

Larissa. I was wondering if you could give any advice to those listening who feel that they are more than one thing and they don't fit into a box?

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (49:00):

The worst advice I ever got was from an elderly white, legal academic, who said to me once, one day you are going to have to pick between being a lawyer and an academic cuz you can't do both. And I appreciate that he was a Relic from another time where you probably did have one pathway and there was one way to do what you wanted to do. But I think that was the worst advice you could give anyone. I think what is exciting about the world we live in is that there is no pathway and there is no one way to be anything. And I guess my advice would be the best thing you've got to guide yourself is your passion. I was really lucky. I found that early. And even if I look like I've got an eclectic career, you can draw it all back to my belief in social justice and Aboriginal self-determination.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (49:49):

It defines everything I do. And I found that early. I not only think it's the best thing to have in terms of how you then decide what choices you make about your career. I think you find the work you do more fulfilling every time, even with a small thing. When somebody says you should do A), because it will be good for you reflect on how little you've enjoyed it. When you've decided there's something you wanna do. Or someone suggests something to you really passionate about, just reflect on how much that has been fulfilling for you. And I say that now with a lot of wisdom, because I had to learn to say no to a lot of things I thought I had to do, or I felt obligated to do. And the more I've freed myself from trying to define my obligations by what other people think I should be doing and define them by what my passion is,

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (50:36):

It's not only meant I've done better work, but I've found it more fulfilling when people say, how do you do so many things in your day? It's because every single thing I choose to do with my day, however diverse is, and however much it is is something I find fulfilling. And I guess as a kind of coda to that, when you get an opportunity and you're not sure if you wanna do it and you think maybe I'm not sure, but if I say no, I'll never be able to do that again. That's just not true. Doors don't close. Sometimes your, the door you close will open up a whole new house. So I'd, I'd say don't ever say yes because you think you'll lose out on something. People will always wait for you. Or sometimes that you, when you instinct says, it's not right for you, that's what's the right.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (51:24):

The right thing is to follow that instinct. You can feel like you say no to something and that's the end of the world or the one thing that you think you want and you need, you don't get. And that's the end of the world. That's the wrong thing. I, I'm not a superstitious person and I'm not a very new agey person, but I do believe that our ancestors do look after us. And if you believe in yourself and find out what your passion is, everything else will take care of itself. So that's my best advice.

 

Host Blue Lucine (51:54):

It's been such a pleasure talking to you, Larissa. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

 

Guest Larissa Behrendt (51:59):

Thank you, even though you made me teary twice and nobody's made me do that in as long as I can remember, but thank you.

 

Host Blue Lucine (52:17):

We The City is Jerboa production hosted by me Blue Lucine. The City of Sydney is our principal partner and we thank the creative grants program. This episode was produced by Blue Lucine and Tegan Nicholls with original music by Matt Cornell. We, The City is recorded on Gadigal land. Sovereignty was never ceded.