Celia’s Camera
Celia is gently spoken and carries herself with a natural dignity and beauty. She has a lifetime of advocating for others, working in her community to improve conditions and documenting life as an urban Aboriginal. Intelligent, opinionated and creative, she is clearly a natural leader, although her modesty does not allow her to think in those terms. Celia was born and raised on the Block in a loving family, and although she has lived elsewhere from time to time — including giving her children a connection to the bush — she always returns to her community in the Redfern/Waterloo area.
UN: Tell us something about your drug use.
Celia: My first drug was petrol when I was 14 or so. I was sniffing petrol with my cousins. My uncle found us one day; he was wild. He said, “if you want to get out of it, use this”, and gave us nyandi [cannabis]. I tried it and I never sniffed petrol again. I used a lot of speed in my 20s. I didn’t get into heroin until I was 30. I was smoking it and I didn’t know anything about it at all, I didn’t know you got sick. I didn’t experience hanging out for a long time. We were on the Block and in those days no-one would let you hang out. You always got helped out by someone. I thought I could just stop. In the past I’ve been in “business” to support my use. After twenty years of using heroin, I’m on methadone, and just use on payday.
UN: So how did you get involved in Aboriginal politics?
Celia: I must have been about five or six when I first realised something was wrong in the way we were treated. My father had a truck for his business and used to load it up with Kooris to take them all to football games. I was the youngest and a girl, so I sat in the front between Mum and Dad. I remember the police always pulling him up. “Alright, all you get out, what’s your names...”. In those days they couldn’t just ring back to base for warrants, so people got away with a lot. But the police stopped Aboriginals all the time. It really dawned on me that there was a lot of racism when the police started harassing my brother. They broke his jaw when he was 16; they tried to say he fell out of a bull wagon. He ended up being murdered in custody. Payback for my father’s advocacy on behalf of the family of an Aboriginal man who was shot by police. They won the case and coppers were sacked. They vowed revenge on Dad and his family. Dad had all his teeth knocked out by police, I remember visiting him in hospital. He covered it up from me, because he was Dad — he was always “everything’s going to be ok, don’t be frightened”. Only as an adult did I ask Mum about that.
Discrimination is everywhere, from not getting picked up by taxis to police harassment. My partner and I went through a stage recently when we were stopped by dogs at the train station every day. They lead the dogs to you. Every day. It used to piss me off, the station would be packed and they would zig zag their way through the station to us. I should have filmed it.
Actually I got a bit of footage of an incident just the other day. There was a brother, just out of jail, he saw all the mob on the street at the train station, he was so happy. Two cops appeared and I started filming. They were like “OK mate, how long you been out?” and they strip searched him. They saw me and said, “Turn the camera off”. I refused: “No it’s a public area”. They hassled me, accused me of theft and went through my bag. The brother was given a 48 hour move on. When he comes back, they give him another one. He hasn’t done anything at all. He’s done his time in jail. There is no reason for it. Sometimes it is overwhelming, you have to stop thinking about it.
UN: I know you’ve won awards for your films. How did you get into film-making?
Celia: I started off with photography at Eora College, taking photos and developing them. Then I moved into video, filming Aboriginal rights marches back in the ‘80s, interviewing people about what was happening and their perception of what was going on — both sides. A friend and I would take turns between interviewing and holding the big video packs you had in those days. She sadly died of an overdose; we were very close. Because I was busy with my drug use I never finished my course, but I still kept filming.
I just love the stories people tell. Everyone has a story. My latest filming project is to do with hep C treatment. I had a friend die the other day from hep C — painfully — and I don’t want that to happen to anyone unnecessarily when there is treatment for it. You don’t even need a biopsy now, it’s less invasive. He was saying “I am dying, do you know I am dying...” but I still didn’t think he would die. I was seeing him in hospital, it was very hard, he was in so much pain. I really want people to know you don’t have to have hep C, you can get rid of it. So I am going to film a video diary of my partner and me going through treatment, then include others.
UN: I know hep C is something you are passionate about - both prevention and treatment.
Celia: We need to protect our young people. With freshies you don’t need to get it at all. People ask me for needles, my used ones, I say no way! Even if they say they have hep C. There are lots of strains! And when I talk about treatment, they say “who wants to do that?” — at least in a group. You get them on their own, they are worried, as they should be. A lot of them are scared of side effects of treatment — like losing your hair! Why would you worry about losing your hair, if you are going to lose your life if you don’t get treated?
When I was on the Block, I used to get boxes of 100 all the time, and go around handing them out. I had little plastic bags and I’d make up a kit with 2 fits, a spoon, a cotton bud and water. People would come and knock at the door. At all hours. Everyone knew.
UN: I know you are an active member in your community in many ways. What are you currently working on?
Celia: Everything we do as Aboriginals is considered political, even if it is just getting together as a community, there is fear attached to us doing things for ourselves.
Lately I’ve been meeting with elder women, because each and every one of them, and I’m included, have got a problem with DOCS taking our grandchildren from our children. Now my child, they had a new machine in Probation and Parole to do urine testing, and they were throwing out false positives. They even wrote a letter on my daughter’s behalf to say this machine has thrown out 3 false positives and can’t be relied on. But DOCS went ahead and took her child. And it breaks my heart. At least he is with my oldest daughter, but I want him with his mother. She went down for a long time. They don’t realise that. She was doing so well, on the [methadone] program.
They’re not bringing families together, they’re breaking us apart and killing us. Our kids go on a destructive path, and it’s hard when you can’t help them, because they’re grown people, they’re not our little babies any more. We need to be there for our young girls. If a child is taken from one person, it affects the whole family, the whole community, all the relations suffer with the mother — and with the child.
So I’ve been getting all the elders one by one, and saying “Auntie, we need to do something!” Each of them has troubles with DOCS, with grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And all the elders in the community know what is going on with everyone, so if someone needs a wakeup, they’ll tell them straight up! We can help the young girls with practical help too. So we’re on the verge of getting a group together in Waterloo and so when DOCS come in and say “We’re taking this child”, they’ll have about 20 women there to support the mother and child. And behind every woman is a big family — what the matriarch says, the family will follow, they have respect. If push comes to shove, we’ll have a big march to keep one child. A big mass gathering of support. DOCS need to be aware that we all raise a child together, as a community. That we older women are there for the mother and the child, helping. And before DOCS approach or take a child, they have to come through us.
UN: Tell me about being Aboriginal.
Celia: Of course I am really proud to be an Aboriginal and I love listening to my elders speak to me about their young days — they’re the best stories. They’ll tell you about their mothers and fathers before they were taken away. The majority of elders have been stolen. There’s not many that lived with their parents.
My mother lived with her parents. My grandfather, Baba [in our language], used to go spear fishing, with a three prong spear and a hole in the ground beside the bank to put the fish in. He did everything with a kangaroo skin around him. He hunted kangaroos for Nan to cook. When I was growing up, my Mum and Nan used to speak their language fluently in the kitchen, late at night when all the neighbours were asleep, with just a candle. It was spooky, it made me scared. But I know now they were frightened and they thought they would get us kids in trouble by speaking it. The government had told them, “You can’t speak your own lingo” for fear of them planning things. People don’t know what our elders went through. So frightened they couldn’t speak when anyone might overhear them, and couldn’t teach us kids for fear of us being reprimanded, so they withheld it from us.
But I really think, the reconciliation thing, we need to work together. We all need one another to get through this. This isn’t our land, it’s everybody’s land. We might have been the landlords at one stage but now we have everybody here to help take care of it as well, so we need to share the responsibility. In our neighbourhood, there are white women that are “auntie”. Our kids call all older women “auntie”, I love that respect they have. It does no good for a person to be angry inside all the time about other people’s reactions. I don’t want my children to waste their energy on bitterness. Because believe me I’ve been there, done it, and it wears you out. I think we have to try and love everyone equally and come together. It would be better if we all unite. We share problems and we need to work them out together.