A long way: Aboriginal woman Linda Burney goes from ‘non-citizen’ to Australian parliament
Wearing a cloak decorated with the goanna lizard, the first Aboriginal woman elected to Australia’s lower house took her seat in parliament this week, saying that as a child she was a “non-citizen”.
Former teacher Linda Burney made history in July when she was voted into the House of Representatives, joining only a handful of other indigenous lawmakers in Australia’s national parliament.
In her maiden speech, she said that her kangaroo skin cloak “tells my story”, as another Wiradjuri woman sang to her in traditional language from the public gallery.
“It charts my life, on it is my clan totem the goanna and my personal totem the white cockatoo,” she told parliament on Wednesday.
The Aboriginal part of my story is important, it is the core of who I am. But I will not be stereotyped and I will not be pigeon-holed
Burney said she would bring the “fighting Wiradjuri spirit” to the capital in Canberra, as she described how far she had come from her childhood in New South Wales.
“I was born at a time when the Australian government knew how many sheep there were but not how many Aboriginal people,” Burney, a former New South Wales state government minister, said.
