Amplify Blog - Connection to Identity
by QFCC Youth Advocate Seleena
Connection…it’s this indescribable feeling. It’s the knowing in your heart and soul that you belong. Belong to your people, to your culture, to Country. That you walk the path your ancestors dream of for your people. To carry over 65,000 years of strength and resilience. In a time where things may feel uncertain, connection will always ground you.
Growing up on my Country in Mount Isa, I am fortunate to be connected to my identity as a Kalkutungu woman. I know the history of my people, my family and it enables me to speak with pride and connect to my community. From my first dance at the tender age of 12 I knew that culture would forever be intertwined with my life. Every speech at school, every conference attended, every program applied for as always been with the intent to share my culture and the relationship I have with my identity.
Through learning and growing, that connection only deepens. Surrounding yourself with good people, caring people only allows that connection to thrive. As a proud First Nations woman, I know that my purpose in life is to fuel the connection of others. To help those who know where they’re going. I love to learn, and I love to learn from those who have come before me and those who are yet to come.
Through mentoring, I have been able to do just this. Create reciprocal relationships full of cultural learnings and sharing. My community-based mentoring in Mount Isa as a Senior Cultural Facilitator for my family’s cultural business Malkarri, allows me to mentor and nurture young First Nations peoples who are just beginning their cultural journeys. We have done a lot of work across the schools in Mount Isa through the delivery of cultural workshops such as art, dance, language, and on-Country experiences. But these workshops are much more than just the hands-on learning of culture, it’s the small conversations sparked throughout. Topics like self-identity, First Nations history, politics, traditions, connection, you name it are thrown into these sessions. The safe spaces I can create through my mentoring for young First Nations peoples and young non-Indigenous peoples is so fulfilling and it’s these conversations that empower the young people I support, is what fuels my spirit.
In September of this year I was fortunate enough to be a delegate at the NIYEC National Youth Summit in Naarm and the learnings I took from that was invaluable. Continuing on into November, I took my learnings from the Summit and brought it back to Queensland where I mentored at the Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program, another life-changing week surrounded by blak excellence. The key learnings I have taken away from both programs is that the connection we hold as First Nations peoples are sacred, and we shouldn’t let anyone compromise that. We are the oldest continuing culture in the world and with our sovereignty, we maintain the right to represent ourselves in spaces that weren’t designed for us. Our cultural knowledge is precious and it is something that can empower everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous if you let it.
Connection binds us to one another in a never-ending cycle of empathy, love and gratitude. It’s something that First Nations peoples have held onto tightly, no matter what may come our way. Connection. Ngai waira thingu, nyini wairra anha – From my heart and spirit to yours.