Listening to Indigenous Voices – Belinda Huntriss

To hear a person’s life story is always engaging. Belinda Huntriss told her story at the James Theatre last month, with frankness, humour and no shortage of self-questioning. A Worimi woman born and raised in Gloucester and now with a career in Aboriginal education, Belinda was speaking as part of the Listening to Indigenous Voices program hosted by Paterson Allyn Williams Science & Ideas Hub and Reconciliation Dungog.

Belinda’s mother was aware of her Worimi heritage, but Aboriginality wasn’t much talked about in the home or in the Gloucester community. It wasn’t until Year 5 in primary school that Belinda became aware of her heritage, and as she grew older she came to resent that sense of difference.

“It had a negative impact on who I was,” she explained. ‘’I didn’t want to stand out, I wanted to be white, not different.”

The racial taunts were painful but it led her to connect with who she was. There grew in her a need to engage with her Indigenous family and story. Through high school there was hardly a mention of Aboriginal culture, and what was presented was more likely about ‘desert culture’ of painted bodies and tribal dances rather than the town life of Aboriginal people on the coast. For Belinda school had little relevance, and there was a time of disruptive behaviour and rebellion.

But she decided she wanted to be a teacher – a teacher of Aboriginal kids. She won a place at university, and with strong parental support made her way through to a teacher-training position in Broken Hill. There a supervising teacher urged her to strive to be a role model.

“It was a light-bulb moment for me,” said Belinda. “I had been teetering between a life of irresponsibility and one that could be ‘on the straight and narrow’.”

Belinda became involved with Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), learnt public speaking, and so was able to find avenues of support to help students through their high school years and beyond.

Belinda is now working in Sydney with pre-school children, and studying further towards a masters degree in Aboriginal education. She sees schools, and students who identify as of Indigenous heritage, as the pathway whereby many parents will be led to explore their own family tree, and link with others doing the same. “It becomes a whole-school journey,” says Belinda. Now in her mid-thirties, married to a Bundjalung man from the North Coast, and with two children, Belinda is one of Australia’s leading figures in the Aboriginal education movement. More than sixty people attended Belinda’s talk, with questions following and many conversations continuing afterwards.

Story & image: Ken Rubeli