Antonia Burke grew up battling internalised racism as an Indigenous woman.
Back then I wished that I could have scrubbed my skin until it was white and be called a white woman. I wanted to be as far away from being Aboriginal as possible because of society. That's what it had done to me. You know, because I felt like if I looked like that and I spoke like that and I dressed like that and I did these things that they do, then they might accept me.Antonia Burke
In this episode, Yumi Stynes talks to Indigenous community advocate Antonia Burke about what inspired her powerful healing and self-acceptance, how she overcame generational trauma, and the fight to protect her home.
Hosted by Yumi Stynes, SEEN is a podcast series about the trailblazers who persist and succeed without positive role models in mainstream culture. You’ll hear from the likes of leading tech creative Tea Uglow, activist Tarang Chawla, academic and writer Dr Amy Thunig and more as they share their stories of resilience and courage.
Follow SEEN on the SBS Audio website or app, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host: Yumi Stynes
Producers: Mandy Yuan, Laura Brierley Newton, Marcus Costello
Sound Design and Mix: Ravi Gupta
Executive Producer: Kate Montague
Theme Music: Yeo
Art: Evi O Studios
SBS Team: Caroline Gates, Max Gosford, Joel Supple, Micky Grossman
Original concept by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
Transcript
Yumi STYNES (Voiceover): Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this episode references people who have died.
This episode also includes some references to traumatic events
If anything comes up for you, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line on 13YARN.
(Theme music)
Antonia BURKE: Back then I wished that I could have scrubbed my skin until it was white and be called a white woman. I wanted to be as far away from being Aboriginal as possible because of… society. That's what it had done to me.
STYNES (Voiceover): On today's episode of SEEN, we're going to get an insight into what it’s like to wish you could scrub away your own identity.
You’re hearing the voice of proud Indigenous woman Antonia Burke.
BURKE: I felt like if I looked like that and I spoke like that and I dressed like that and I did these things that they do, then they might accept me. I won't be different, I'll be one of them.
STYNES (Voiceover): We’re going to hear about this strident leader and Indigenous community advocate, and what triggers in her a turnaround so powerful that it inspires a whole movement.
BURKE: If you're going to do a mining project, you have all these different sections of it. And each one has an environment plan. There's a page that says relevant stakeholders to be consulted.
They completely ignored Tiwi people didn't tell them. And they had a drill rig drilling off the coast.
STYNES (Voiceover): We’ll also explore a topic that seems to keep coming up in this season of the podcast — breaking generational cycles.
I'm Yumi Stynes and we start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we record, the Cammeraygal people, Gadigal, and Larrakia people, and their Elders past and present.
(Music fades)
Antonia Burke’s story begins in far northern Australia.
BURKE: So I was born in Darwin and mum and dad met about 12 months before I was born. And at the time that they got together, my mum had just come out of a really, really traumatic 23 years.
My father is from Tasmania. He's English Irish background.
And my mum is an Indigenous woman from a place called Borroloola in the Northern Territory. She was removed from there at 12 days old as a part of The Stolen Generation. They sent her over to the Tiwi Islands to a place called Garden Point. The traditional name is Pirlangimpi. And she was raised there by the Catholic missionaries.
STYNES (Voiceover): When Antonia's mum was 18, she left the mission.
BURKE: She was sent down to Sydney to work as a maid, a slave for white families that were also a part of the Christian church. She was just treated as something to be used to benefit others. And then she had her first child. The family that she was with said that she couldn't keep the baby because she was unwed. So they made her give up her first child.
She actually went back to the hospital every single day, um, for weeks asking them to give her son back. And they said he was already gone, but he wasn't. We later found out when we reconnected with him that he was there for up to six weeks in that hospital.
STYNES: No way…
BURKE: So they could have given him back.
Yeah. And so mum came back to Darwin and she was, you know, it just compounded the trauma that she'd already experienced in the institution. The violence, you know, the sexual abuse, the domination and control and disconnection from her mother and all that that entails.
(Solemn music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Back in Darwin, time passed, and Antonia's mum had another baby. But her joy was short-lived. The baby girl became desperately unwell at 7 weeks old and she asked the flying doctors to take the infant to hospital in Alice Springs.
BURKE: They wouldn't let my mum get on the plane. They said there wasn't enough room. But we know that was racism, because there was room. And, so they took her baby on the plane and she spoke to the nuns and she said, “Look, I need you to call the hospital in Alice Springs to find out, you know, when they're going to bring my baby back or can someone take me there.”
And, the nun looked at her and said, “We're sorry, Cecily, but your baby died on the plane when they took off.”
And they just buried her in an unmarked grave in Alice Springs, didn't even let her come and bury her own child. And they didn't tell her.
She blamed herself and she thought God was punishing her for leaving her first child. So she internalised it all and blamed herself.
(Music fades)
STYNES: That sounds like there's so much trauma embedded in the histories of your parents, particularly your mum. How do you think that affected you, Antonia?
BURKE: Because of my mum's fear of being removed because of the government legislation throughout her entire life and the way they would inflict their dominance and control on, on her.
She lived in fear, I think, of me being removed from her as well. But what that did for me was I remember... When I was little, my mum, if I stood out the front to do something or say something, I just would remember my mum pulling me back behind her and saying, “Shush.”
Be quiet. Be small, you know, don't, don't bring attention to yourself. And what that did to me was I had to suppress the way I was and how I felt.
And then on the other hand, I had a father who was teaching me to be independent from the moment I could function my hands. Like he tells me stories that he used to throw a ball at me, to see when I would catch it, but it would hit me in the face, you know?
And that's how dad taught me. Like he would literally throw me in the deep end of the water and that's how I learned to swim — sink or swim. So that's how I approached life. And on one hand, I was being told to be quiet, be small. Protect yourself, be safe, come back here. And on the other hand, I was being projected forward and, you know, “Don't you be like all the, all the other Blackfellas,” dad would say.
(Gentle music)
So it was really conflicting for me and I never really knew who I was.
STYNES (Voiceover): “Be small, don’t be Black, protect yourself, be independent.”
Antonia grew up with so many conflicting messages that she distilled them down to one — Work hard. Excel. Be excellent.
BURKE: By the time I was 31, I was very successful in my career. I would get into a job, any job, and I would work my way to the top in some capacity, or become, want to become the best at that job.
People often say to me, you were just so driven, you know, anything that was put in front of you, you’d just pick it up and run with it. You know, the hardest worker, um, the hardest trainer. When I was playing basketball, I'd turn up before everyone, run 10 laps before training started, stay at the end and train harder and waiting for that praise to come.
“Yeah, you're good. You've done your job. It's okay. You can stop now.”
I remember a lot of the time I'd look at other people and it was usually white people and I'd go, how come they look so happy and they've got all their stuff together.
You know, why can't I have that? Is it because I'm Aboriginal? Are all the things that my dad said true? Is, you know, what I read about myself in the media and the way Aboriginal people are talked about, is that why I can't find that happiness? Is that why I don't have the life that they have? And I believed that that was true.
(Music fades)
STYNES (Voiceover): Believing you’re destined for failure no matter how hard you work and how hard you train is brutal.
But among it, there were some soft moments.
BURKE: I was in a relationship for about five or six years. And that relationship was coming to an end. And I’d made the decision to separate. And two days later I found out I was pregnant.
(Gentle music)
STYNES: Dargh...
BURKE: And so all of a sudden I'm sitting there and I'm ecstatically happy because I've just realised I'm- I've got the baby that I've been wanting. And so I'm like ringing all of my family and everyone. And then I went, “Oh, that's right. You've just decided to separate.”
STYNES (Voiceover): Antonia had a beautiful daughter and did her best to co-parent. But I can tell you from personal experience that being a single mother is not easy! Antonia felt the urge to be closer to her mum so she left her job and moved back to Darwin.
(Music fades)
STYNES: When you, um, showed up with a baby... did that trigger terror in your mum?
BURKE: No, she was so happy. She had this dream of being a grandmother from when I was about 22 years old. She was asking me to have babies because I was her only daughter. She's like, “You're going to make me a grandmother? You're going to make me a grandmother?” So she got her baby.
STYNES: Aww.
BURKE: She was happy.
STYNES: Aww. And did you feel like that was a healing process for her to be able to nurture your baby?
BURKE: Oh, absolutely… my mum was amazing when we had the, the baby, you know, I didn't have to lift a finger. You know, I'd fall asleep with my baby on my boob and I'd wake up to her outside, you know, with my sheets being washed and, and my dinner being cooked.
STYNES (Voiceover): At this point Antonia's mum had gone back to study and was working in the health clinic back at her home on the Tiwi Islands. She would make regular visits to Antonia and her daughter back in Darwin.
It was still sometimes… complicated.
BURKE: But what I realised later on when I was doing my healing work and unpacking all of this was I, I was jealous! Of how amazing my mother was with my daughter. And I kept thinking, why couldn't you be like this for me?
How come she gets all the love and the goodness and I didn't? And I had this resentment when I would watch her with my baby. And she was being so like, I'm not joking. She was so overly protective that I had to say, “Mum, it's okay.” And there was a moment where I had to remind her that she was my baby. Like too far. It's okay. I got this.
STYNES (Voiceover): When we talk about intergenerational trauma, this is it.
The experience of motherhood opened old wounds for Antonia's mum — the memories of the babies she had lost. For Antonia, her daughter brought so much joy, but single parenthood brings on money stress like nothing else.
BURKE: It was beautiful being a mother and it was great being, you know, with my family and that sort of stuff. But I found myself in financial hardship, like really, really financial hardship. You know, I- I just remember waking up one day and I was like, “I'm here again.” Like that feeling is back, that there has to be more than this. Surely I'm not going to wake up every day wondering if I've got enough money to pay for my rent and my car and electricity and baby food.
And that went on for two or three years and there was this voice that came in the back of my head and it was like, “Look at you, you've become exactly what they said you'd become.” A single mother with no money on a pension.
(Gentle music)
And it hit me really hard. It was everything that I'd worked so hard not to be.
STYNES (Voiceover): Overcoming this narrative was a huge motivator. Antonia moved back to Brisbane for an entry-level job in the mining industry.
BURKE: One of my friends came to me and she said, “Hey, look, we've been advertising for this job. We can't get anyone. Would you like this job?” I just said yes. I didn't even know what it was. I knew that it was using the skills that I had.
And so I was working in the office in Brisbane, just doing admin. And it was good money. I could pay my bills. I was paying off my debts, you know, I could afford the things that I needed and give my daughter the things that, that she need- that she deserved.
And, because I was really good at it. They kept giving me bigger roles and more work. I realised that I could make a lot of money there. And I just wanted to dig myself out of the hole that I felt like I was in. And so that's what I did. And then I got asked to do another job and then another one and then another one. And each time I took a new job, it was more and more and more money.
And then I just got greedy. I wasn't paying bills anymore. I was living the life of luxury, that I was watching all of those other white people live. You know, the question that I kept asking myself, “Can I have that? Can I have these things? Can I live that life? Can I make myself look like that?”
And I could, on the outside — but on the inside, I was sick. I was, I wasn't happy.
(Music fades)
STYNES: It's very seductive, isn't it, to have money?
BURKE: It actually is. (Laughs) Cause it's fun, right? While you're doing it.
STYNES: It's fun for a minute and then you do start to have to sit with your values a bit as well. Did you have any like moral conflict about the work that you were doing for these big companies?
BURKE: Absolutely.
STYNES (Voiceover): At this point Antonia was working for one of the largest oil and gas companies in Australia. Santos. Remember this name, because it's not the last time you'll hear it.
BURKE: We worked in this big building. It's in Turbot Street in Brisbane. I would turn up to work, and there would be Indigenous mobs down at the front door, protesting to save their country. They were Gomeroi people. And they'd have the signs and they'd be chanting at the front.
And I remember seeing them and I'd go, oh shit, don't let them see you. Cause they'll see Black woman walking into the building with Santos uniform on, they'll go at you. So I'd turn around and I'd walk around the back of the building and go in the back of the door. So I knew there was something not right.
You know, and I remember sitting with myself one night and I was thinking, “Why am I feeling like I can't face them?” You know, it's just a job.
STYNES: Did your mining company employers leverage your Indigeneity?
BURKE: Of course they did. It's another statistic for them. You know, they, they promote it in their newsletters and to their investors, “Look, we're employing Indigenous people this month, we hired three more!”
STYNES: And you were dyeing your hair blonde, like you looked like, a power suit wearing kind of glamorous young woman. Did you feel that your Indigeneity was something that you needed to kind of counteract or was it something that you wanted to emphasise?
BURKE: Back then I wished that I could have scrubbed my skin until it was white and be called a white woman. I wanted to be as far away from being Aboriginal as possible because of society. That's what it had done to me. And when people would, when I'd tell people I was Aboriginal and they'd say, “Oh, you don't look it.”
I'd go, “Thanks.” on the inside! You know, because I felt like if I looked like that and I spoke like that and I dress like that and I did these things that they do, then they might accept me. I won't be different. I'll be one of them.
STYNES: Were you ever one of them?
BURKE: Yeah, I was really good at it. But I was constantly reminded that I wasn't — through racism. You know, and it had hurt. It really hurt in the core of my, of my soul. When someone would say something bad about Indigenous people, I'd feel it like, “Oh, they're talking about me.”
STYNES (Voiceover): Hearing yourself talked about like you’re invisible is one of the most dehumanising experiences imaginable.
And even when people understand who you are but still feel free to denigrate your people because they think that you, yourself will be in agreement with that racism — well those are new levels of pain.
After years of work burnout and cultural disconnect, Antonia wasn’t well.
A friend suggested a healing retreat.
(Gentle music)
BURKE: The first time I ever felt like I was seen was when I looked at myself.
I had to look in the mirror and see what I'd become… And that's what they made me do at this course, right? And I got to say all the things that I wanted to say about myself. “You're a sellout, you're a dominating, you're controlling, you think you're better than everyone, you're shit at relationships, you destroy everyone that stands next to you and put all your pain onto them.”
You know I was so desperate for love, yet I was so lonely on the inside. And then one of the elders said, “Imagine what it's like being your daughter.” She was 9 at the time.
(Music fades)
And it kind of snapped me into this other place. And I looked at this elder and I, I wanted to slap her in the face. (Laughs) You know, “Don't you dare bring my daughter into this. I'm a great mother.” And I said that aloud.
I said, “I'm a great mother! It's everything that I live for. Cause I don't want her to be me, you know, I don't want her to be raised in the same home.” And they said, they said to me, “Well, she is, isn't she? You're just like your mother.”
And I just remember this massive awareness and they said, picture your daughter standing in front of you right now. Oh my God, it makes me cry every time I think about it. And I could still see her face. I remember looking down as though she was standing in front of me. She was shifting from foot to foot with her arms crossed with her fingernails in her mouth, chewing, looking at me nervously, wondering if she's doing the right thing.
And I saw myself and I just, I, it broke me. I was like, oh my god, everything that I've worked so hard not to do, I've just done to her.
And that was my breaking point.
(Gentle music)
It's like I'd been carrying these big, massive, heavy rocks on the inside, but not knowing what to do with them or how to release them.
And they all came out and my body felt like it was going to lift off the ground. I had this beautiful euphoric feeling and I started laughing and there was this little pang that came that I'd never felt before and it was happiness.
STYNES (Voiceover): “It was happiness.”
Experiencing joy, was a huge turning point for Antonia.
Soon after, she started working with an organisation that focused on bringing Indigenous culture into the education system. She was surrounded by amazing Aboriginal educators and academics and the process of reintegrating her culture was truly underway.
But there was one more thing to do: return to her home on the Tiwi Islands.
BURKE: It took me two years to go home. I, I had so much shame around who I used to be.
(Sounds of waves)
And so I went home for Christmas. It was the first time I'd gone home and I realised that. I didn't have an Indigenous name. I'd never been given a Tiwi name. So usually every baby that's born gets given a name from one of the Elders. There's a certain person in your kinship system who's responsible for that. They see you, they see your soul, who you are, what you're like, and they give you a name that reflects that.
Everyone else had a name. Even my daughter had a name. And I didn't have one. And my mum's sister came to me and she said, I've got a present for you. And she pulled out her phone and it was this old man giving me my name. He was saying it in language and it was Dardawunga Impajimawu. And he was saying it over and over again. And my auntie was teaching me how to say it. “Dardawunga, Dardawunga”
“What does it mean?”
She said, “it means Clapsticks, the rhythm of ceremony.”
I was like, “Wow, I got a name!”
And then my mom's next door neighbour, he carves things out of wood. And I went over to him and I said, “Can you make me some clapsticks? That's my name, Dardawunga.”
And he goes, “Oh, yes!”
For the next two days, he sat on his veranda and he's carving me these clapsticks and he bought them over.
(Sounds of Antonia’s clapsticks and waves)
BURKE: And that was the moment when I felt like I was allowed to practise culture. Like I was worthy of it, you know?
(Clapsticks fade)
So when I got back, I was facilitating this forum where 280 Aboriginal women came together to camp under the stars out on Country and talk about being strong women, protecting Country and what that means. And while I was out there, this woman comes up to me and she says, “Are you from the Tiwi Islands?”
I said, “Yeah.”
She said, “How do you feel about what Santos is doing?”
I said, “What do you mean?”
STYNES (Voiceover): Santos, who she’d once worked for, seemed lifetimes away from the Tiwi Islands.
BURKE: And I, I remember looking at her face and it was like this "Oh shit. Am I going to drop this on her here now?” And she gave me a business card and she goes, you should ring this guy and he'll tell you what's going on.
And I went, “Yeah, well can you just tell me?” She goes, “No, no, no. Let's go and enjoy the day.” And so I left that place two days later and I rang the number on the thing. And there's this guy, Jason Fowler, he was a campaigner, environmentalist and he starts telling me about Santos' plans. And I, I said to him, “Well, what do Tiwi people think?”
And he said, “I don't know. We haven't been able to get there. We don't know anyone there.” I said, “Well, why didn't you just go there? Book a fishing trip, something! Get to the Tiwi islands, ask them what they think.”
I got back to Darwin two days later, I jumped on a plane and flew back home to our little community. There's only 350 people there. And I was asking everybody around the whole community, “Have you heard about this? Have you heard about this?” And every single person said no. And then I told them and they said, “You better bring those people here, those environment people. We want to know what's going on.” I said, “Okay, I'll go and ask them.”
(SFX people in room / meeting)
And then within a couple of weeks, we were there. And we went to a community meeting once a month on a Monday our community has a whole of community meeting.
And I brought these, you know, environmental mob to come, scientists and people who are really passionate about protecting Earth. And, um, they get up and start talking and, people couldn't hear them. Community mob were looking at me like we can't hear, you know.
I remember this thing, like this big, massive feeling behind me. It's like, it's like someone was nudging me from behind going, “Why are you letting them talk? Why are you giving your power away?” And I'd never stood up in my community before — ever! I had this imposter syndrome and then something just said, you have to stand up right now and tell everyone.
And so I stood up and I went, “Hey Jason, give me a minute, sorry to interrupt.”
And then all of a sudden this thing in my head was like, you know, this better than anyone, you know how this whole system works. You know exactly what it looks like, you know exactly how they're going to do it. You know how they're going to come in with their big fat chequebook and try and buy people off. They're going to try and divide you mob. So you're all fighting each other while they progress with all of their environmental plans to get approval to do it.
And so I told everyone what was going to happen. And then all the Elders and the, you know, everyone, the people standing up and going, we don't want this. And all of a sudden everyone was activated, you know, and they said, we need you to help us stop this.
(Hopeful music)
And that was the moment where my community saw me because I'd never done that before… And I really felt seen in that moment because people were listening. And they wanted me to help them do something about it. And that's how it started.
STYNES (Voiceover): Returning home meant embodying power, but in a completely different way to when she was wearing corporate suits and buying expensive consumer goods.
Antonia Burke was being seen. In the way that mattered to her.
(Music fades)
BURKE: I'm a, a practitioner of a Indigenous mindfulness practice, it's called Wayapa Wuurrk, which means “connected to earth”. So I was sitting on the beach and I walked out to the tip of Wulawunga. There's these beautiful big red cliffs where we get our ochre from. And so I, I climbed up to the edge of the cliff.
And I said to Ampiji, “Ampiji, I'm here to be of service to you. Whatever you need to do, I will do.” But because of my human nature to, to drive things forward and, and come up with a plan and a strategy and organise everything. I had to put it down for a minute because I didn't know what to do.
And all of a sudden I just felt Ampiji saying, “It's okay. If you surrender right now and trust me, I will show you the way, but you have to listen. You must listen. I will bring the right people and the right things at the right time. And if you follow me, we'll do this together.”
And I went, “I'll do it, I'm ready!”
STYNES (Voiceover): Big companies can operate with brazen impunity if those in their line of sight don’t know their rights.
Antonia understood how it worked.
BURKE: Santos had never been there to consult or tell people. Right?
If you're going to do a mining project, you have all these different sections of it. And each one has an environment plan. And then you've got to consult people about this activity. So in this environment plan, there's a page that says relevant stakeholders to be consulted.
And it was everyone else, except for the people who live right next to where they're going to do it. They completely ignored Tiwi people, didn't tell them. And they had a drill rig drilling off the coast.
Meanwhile, we're in court, at the federal court for Tiwi people to be considered relevant people, to be consulted about what was happening. And we won. And they had to pull the drill rig up. They had to stop operations, pull it out, tow the drill rig back off the coast of Darwin here. And it had to sit there until they came and did consultation with Tiwi people.
And that was in September last year, so it's been just over a year since we stopped it. They appealed of course, So we had to go back to court in December. We won again.
STYNES (Voiceover): The case between Santos and the Tiwi Islanders is complex and ongoing but the community continues to do all they can to protect their home. And Antonia will make sure she stands alongside them.
BURKE: What it looks like for me is I'm like the person in the middle.
So I work with my community and make sure every single person knows what's going on. So I'm the communicator. anyone who wants to listen, I go and explain things to them. I take the maps of the project. I, you know, show them things,
But then tell them what you can do about it. So there was always a solution. And I would just give people hope. I'm really good at pumping people up. I'm like the best cheerleader you want on your team if you're about to do something. (Laughs)
We sit, we talk, we do ceremony, we practise our culture, we talk to our ancestors. Just like how people go to church on Sunday, you know, and they go pray to their God and they pump each other up and talk about values and good things to do in the world.
STYNES (Voiceover): Regardless of the outcome of this case - one thing is for sure. Antonia and her community can stand proud knowing that they’ve shown the next generation what it means to put up a damn good fight to protect their home.
STYNES: Can we circle back to your daughter? You were afraid that she was becoming you and that that was a horrible thing. But now that you've changed, is it okay if she emulates you or follows your footsteps?
BURKE: I'm so proud to say Yumi, she's the best of me. She's the absolute best of me and I wish I could go back to 18 and be her, the way she is. And she's just beautiful. She's calm. She's kind. She's grounded. She's staunch. She's smart. And that's how I feel about myself. And she never gives her power away.
(Theme music)
I broke the generational pattern.
STYNES: You did! You're going to make me cry. That's just such a victory. Well done! Oh my God.
BURKE: Oh my goodness.
STYNES (Voiceover): This has been SEEN, hosted by me, Yumi Stynes. And if you would like to help out the show, please share the podcast with some people that you know would love it! Every listen is a tick, every share is a ringing endorsement and reviews go a long way to help us get these great stories out there.
From Audiocraft, Season 2 of SEEN was produced by Mandy Yuan and Laura Brierley Newton. Tape sync is by Nicole Curby. Sound design and mix is done by Ravi Gupta, and Executive Producer is Kate Montague.
The SBS team are Caroline Gates, Joel Supple, Max Gosford and Micky Grossman.
Our podcast artwork is created by Evi-O Studios.
And music is by Yeo.
SEEN's original concept was by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn.
(Theme music fades)
