AUSTRALIA

Mary-Ann
“I became a nurse. I was the first (Aboriginal) graduate nurse at Darwin Hospital. But it was really tough. It was an extremely racist period. (…) I applied for a job at Adelaide University when I learned that an indigenous section had opened. We were given access to university for the first time. This was in the mid-1970s. (…) I worked hard. I won a scholarship to go and study in the United States, in Boston. I did my master’s and my PhD at Harvard! I returned to Darwin to become Dean of the College of Indigenous Education and Research.”

Pansy
"(…) When it opened, the casino at Alice Springs was reserved to conservatively dressed clients in ties, which kept out the indigenous population. Given how few people there are around, the regulations have clearly loosened up since, and today, people go in disheveled, in jeans and bare feet. Most of the clients are Aboriginal women. Women see it as a haven of freshness and peace; this is where, every day, they give up their meager handouts allocated by the government. Pansy lives honorably from her art, which makes her a privileged client. She stopped feeding the machine with her coins for a moment to listen to us with a big grin. Dean ended up getting the message across that I wanted to draw her. That made her laugh."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard