In August 2018, Aunty Dixie Link-Gordon collaborated with UNSW Arts and Social Sciences, Women’s Legal Service NSW and the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence sponsored and hosted a unique forum of 42 Aboriginal, Torres Strait and Pacific Islander women intended to ‘Break Silent Codes’ and share stories of cultural and spiritual responses to the issue of sexual assault and family violence in communities across Australia and the Pacific.
The forum provided a platform for women to discuss the ways in which community, religion, authority and family create silences around sexual assault and family violence. There are many injustices experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait and Pacific Islander communities. For a long time, it has seemed that all other matters of injustice are more important than the sexual assault and domestic violence in communities. Women experience this as a silencing of issues important to their spiritual and physical well being.
Through this book, we share with you the stories of this gathering which has now become a movement of its own for First Nations women across Australia and the Pacific.
It provided a platform for women to discuss the ways in which community, religion, authority and family create silences around sexual assault and family violence.
Silence Is a small space
Silence is a very small space that gets smaller
Silence is incredibly loud, it screams ‘you are alone’
It is lonely
It is dark
It only ever shines light on your insecurities, your ugliness, your hopelessness
Silence has ripped the lips off my smiling face
Silence has me drowning
Silence has me drowning in a small space that fills with water and no way out
Silence has left my body broken and curled into a question mark asking ‘ how much more can I take?’ but silence holds the most power in isolation
My whispers, my thoughts are not alone
Our voices sit in a chorus of harmony, both in morning and rejoicing in finding our hope.
Knowing that I am not alone, I am Shook out of that small room
I tread water, hoping, knowing that together we will reach land
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