fighting for the future: Taylah gray
Taylah Gray is determined to change the world- even if that change is never witnessed by her. As she enters the final year of her PhD, this already qualified lawyer and change agent isn’t stopping. The race is on for her people, who suffered long enough until colonisation. Does that make her angry? Yes. She’s on fire. And she’s using it to put out systems of oppression that are rooted in the law - property law, to be exact.
Taylah has a lot to say on Native Title and is in fact writing 100,000 words in the subject for her PhD: “Native Title and dispossession have the same address.” If it sounds loaded, it is: Taylah is pointing a cannon right at the entire system.
The conversations for this project are led by the subject - what Taylah wants to talk about is how to bring some version of equality back to her people. And she knew what she had to learn to do that. Her thesis is just one of her many slaps at the status quo, which she is determined to uplift to a place of decency.
That’s a far destination from its current location, deeply founded in what Taylah calls the Language of Savagery, a concept initiated by American indigenous scholar Robert Williams, which is where our conversation starts.
“It’s in Western literature that goes back to both the early writings of Homer. He writes in The Odyssey the Iliad; you know they are the earliest works that we're aware of at this stage. But in those stories, they talk about this concept of a savage who is half human, half horse. And you have Westerners who basically discover these savages, living up in the mountains.
“And the Westerners are like, okay, we, we need to civilise these creatures. We need to cure them. We, we are the superior race here. We need to show them, and this is where this language of savagery was born out because anything that opposed western civilisation was automatically given this lens of being a savage.
“I've taken that concept and I put it over Native Title because when we look at property laws, the western concept of property and indigenous concepts of property are two completely different things. And they often conflict because when you look at western property laws, even the word sovereignty; that's not an indigenous word and that's problematic in itself. That comes from, you know, I think that might even come from 14th century writing. So I can't remember the actual date, but what sovereignty represented, it's kind of countercultural to be honest, because it represents boundaries and excluding people from the land. Totally counter to the Indigenous perspective because we, we don't necessarily exclude people from the land. Of course we had our boundaries, you know, where women couldn't go or men couldn't go. We had men's business and, and, and women's business. But we shared the land and one thing we never did was fight over land.
“And so, and when we look at Native Title, this whole Native Title scheme was born out of Western ideologies. And I mean, it's not Freehold Title - that's completely different to Native Title. So the difference between the two, the highest title you would have is Freehold Title. That's where you purchase a home, you buy the land, you buy the house, you can exclude anybody from that house. You can build whatever you want. You can transfer the title, you can sell the title, but native title's a little bit different. Native Title is only access to use the land.
“There are some sacred sites, here on Wonnarua Country where you've got women's business and a women's kitchen and you've got even Miami Cave, which is a significant Aboriginal cultural site, but it's on private property. Look, it's not [the owners’] fault. It's the way the western system has set up property laws for Aboriginal people. That's the actual issue. It's not the buyers purchasing the house themselves. That's what I really want to emphasise.”
Taylah is addressing the race question right to its face – and she acquiesces. We cannot be accountable for the actions of our forefathers. But we can damn well change the future through our own actions.
“When I had a look recently at some of the plantation cases, I think it might be here in some outback of New South Wales. There's plantation basically where the government has bought Freehold Title land. Right. Which is the strongest title you can have because you can buy, you can purchase, you can sell, you can transfer Freehold Title. And what they've done with that land. They've put plantations on there for crops and the government has actually purchased this land purely for plantations. And nobody, nobody knows about this. Nobody bats an eye over it, the government buying back land for these particular purposes. Yeah. And I think one of the answers is Freehold Title for Aboriginal people in the same way that the government buys back land because we've been deprived economically as well to purchase these large amounts of real estate.
“So we can build on the land, we can sell the land if we wanted to, but the main thing is building our own enterprises on the land because Native Title doesn't provide for that. You look overseas at what the other jurisdictions are doing, like the Apache tribe, which is now in Mexico, and the Native Americans. Basically, they had, I'll try and put it simply, they had a treaty, the First Nations people, they had a treaty with their government. And the government granted land on trust to them.
“So, it created this trustee and beneficiary relationship, which is known as a fiduciary relationship. And what happens is when the government breaches that relationship or harms First Nations peoples’ rights in any particular way, First Nations people can take them to court because it's fiduciary law. We don't have that in Australia, we are First Nations people in the state. So, what happened is, during that treaty, the government granted large amounts of real estate to the Apache tribe. And what they did with that land, they built ski resorts, they built casinos, they built, you know, homes.
“Today, that enterprise is worth over $1 million. Like imagine First Nations people had land on trust or freehold title and what we could build? It would be so good for the Australian economy. People want to see Aboriginal culture. To do that, you know, we could do all that. But we don't have access. I mean, what we do have is Native Title where we can only use the land and then get the fuck off it.
“You know you can't purchase native title.You've got to go to the court and prove that you had a continual connection prior to when colonisation arrived and after colinisation has arrived. It's so difficult, especially when we're removed from our country, we have the Stolen Generations, we have environmental issues. And it becomes really difficult to prove that continual connection post-colonial interference as well. But essentially, the difference getting back to that is many titles can only be claimed by the Crown. Crown land is government land, so you have your national parks, you have your football field, things like that.
“These private corporations own prime locations. You've got these water companies that own a large sum of the shoreline and all that shoreline with the beaches. There are sacred ceremonial grounds, burial sites there for First Nations people. And you've got large corporations that own that land. On all of these sites, you get all of this, like, white detailed history about what's happened. I don't see anything.
“You look at the names that these places have, these new names. And let's just start there – changing these colonial names back to the traditional names. There's power in language, too. I mean, that's the whole point of the law. It's language.”
It's another form of erasure, surely. But Taylah isn’t even asking for plaques. What she wants is so far beyond the recognition of existence. It’s a culture where her people are thriving – not just slotted into the constitution of this country for convenience. And she is fighting for the forever equation.
“Where do I see myself? All I see is land back, where we have strong communities practicing our sacred indigenous ways, where we're growing organic fruit and vegetables, and we're not homeless, and we have food and we're just thriving on our lands. That's, that's where I see myself, but we can't do that unless we have Freehold Title under Treaty. That's the end goal.”
“I love what the Māori people say, in New Zealand, they said it's a promise between two people to take the best possible care of a child. And I think that's so beautiful. I think, you know, all the trauma that's been inflicted upon First Nations people. We don't need Reconciliation Action Plans. We didn't go to another country and steal children; we didn't murder or massacre people. We've been here the whole time. And I really like the concept of the Treaty rather than reconciliation and their bullshit action plan. This treaty says, let's take the best possible care of each other now doesn't matter about before. Let's work on now.”
“I don't see myself as a leader. I see myself as just as an advocate advocating First Nations people’s rights. I'm just, I'm just a student of land rights. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“It just comes from the heart, I think you just you're born into it, I think it goes back to you know, growing up in country. We always talk about trauma and the disadvantages, but I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about the love that I've gone from like, we had communities everywhere, me and my brother and cousins, when we will say everywhere we could ride from the north side of Dubbo the west side of Dubbo and we wouldn't ever have even imagined because we just had family everywhere. We had connections everywhere. And I Imagine if we all stayed together. How do we all stay together? We do that if we have land, and we have community?”
I ask her why they aren’t together now, and it’s not just displacement ala globalisation. It’s a direct colonial influence on a culture.
“A lot of reasons. Social housing is obviously an issue. People were dying at young rates. I mean, my father passed away tragically from a heart attack just a little over a year ago. That's really young, 57. He passed away and the year before that my aunt passed away at 60. That's the longest known uncle to me for 60. And then prior to that my uncle, Uncle Stan died from a heart attack and then my Uncle Rock died from cancer. Why is this happening? Western foods, Western medicines, Western ways of doing. The stress on our hearts, our hearts can't take the Western diet because of their foods that they've propagated and they're trying to propagate on, you know, Native Title land. They're not built for it. There are food animals like cows like cattle and sheep that are destroying the soil. We don't have access to our traditional foods, our traditional medicines, our homes. We don't have mental health hygiene. We don't have any of that.
“I guess, with the train the chains of trauma, there'll be a generation that wakes up and says, I'm going to break the chain. And I think my father was that person. For me, it definitely was me as my father because he showed me what community love was and showed me what it is to be a proud indigenous woman.
“I moved away, as well, because I'm like, I need more. I want to be a lawyer. In these Western worlds, you've got to move to the cities.”
And her goals are big – but not necessarily on the courtroom floor. I ask her how she thinks she will make her impact.
“I love teaching, I'd love to end up there. But I think in the long run, like a 10-year run, I'll probably want to be in Parliament. Get there and make sure our voices are heard.”
I mention here how she is a true leader.
“The leadership term, I mean, it creates a lot of emphasis, you know, envy and jealousy around leadership and who gets it. I don't see myself as a leader. I see myself as just as an advocate advocating First Nations people’s rights. I'm just, I'm just a student of land rights. Nothing more, nothing less.”