When at first, we were supposed to choose our strand in From Screen to Street Studio class, I was looking forward to Gender and Sexuality because it was something I felt connected with, but another group already took it so my group and I ended up with First nations. As being an international student and not having much knowledge about indigenous Australian history and pacific island culture I didn’t imagine that the messages the movies/documentary we would talk about were exactly the same I felt connected in the Gender and sexuality strand. Being a woman is challenging for all cultures but especially for indigenous women, for them being in a minority group, they suffer huge discrimination and are marginalized by society.
Not just in indigenous communities, as this happens in my country, Brazil, sexism is something very present and so do toxic masculinity. When they say men don’t cry, they can’t demonstrate their emotions and there are home activities that “are” entitled as women services/activities, men struggle with themselves as they are supposed to act in that way and I believe this is one of the reasons why domestic violence is still so present in their communities.
When you grow up with domestic violence at home and you see this happening in the neighborhood, and no one talks about it’s hard to contest and go against that as people think that is acceptable. This is what happened in the documentary Not Just Numbers (2019), Shirleen Campbell, the co-coordinator of the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group (TWFSG), watch her mother and her two aunties die because of domestic violence and that makes her wake up and decide to take an action creating the TWFSG group, with the support of her elders and mentoring from Aboriginal rights campaigner Barbara Shaw.
