Yarn Time with Aunty Glendra

Stories from UTS’s Elder-in-Residence

Aunty Glendra stands by the entrance of Jumbunna with a wide smile and a hand wrapped up like a mummy’s. She brushes off anyone’s sympathetic looks saying she burnt herself making herbal tea for someone, but she still waves me in with enthusiasm, throwing a nod with a flick of her blonde hair to the students relaxing on couches. It is the last day before STUVAC, an air of apprehension sitting heavy over the campus… but not here at Jumbunna. Especially not in Aunty G’s office. 

I tell her I’m writing a piece for the UTS Multicultural Women’s Network and when I ask her what she feels about terms like Women of Colour, Multicultural Women, or Indigenous Women, her eyes soften. I snuggle into the sofa next to her walker when Aunty Glendra begins to speak. 

I think of my Aunties. I think of my Grandmother. Her voice is barely louder than a whisper when she says, 

‘I give thanks that I’m breathing, I thank the ancestors for the life I have.’ 

We pause the interview many times over the next couple of hours so that Aunty Glendra can show me photos of this brilliant, bright life she is grateful for. One photo is of her in a halo and flowing white dress addressing the crowd and she tells me how proud she is of that picture. She says when the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit Australia for the first time, she would sit by patient’s beds and hold their hands, sharing stories. She says the community never forgot that, and in that particular photo she was dressed up as one of the ambassadors for the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation at their gods and goddesses event. She beams as she shows me pictures she’d taken with celebrities and I ask if those celebrities even knew how lucky they were to take pictures with UTS’s very own Aunty Glendra! 

"Oh yes, I’ve got that little award coming up," she grins. We cackle at ‘little’ as the award she is talking about is an Order of Australia Medal awarded by the Crown for service to the Indigenous community of New South Wales. She talks about people a lot more worthy than herself and as her bandage unravels she apologises for the inconvenience of wrapping her burnt limb back up. Humble, with a sense of humour that brightens up the rainy day, she tells me more of her journey. 

Aunty Glendra has worked with the National Stolen Generations Alliance, Metro Migrant Resource Centre, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She adds in, with signature cheeky grin, about touring Australia with singers Kerrianne Cox and Jacinta Tobin. My sisters, she says. 

Do you think about your identity when you approach your work? 

Aunty Glendra recalls an image of being a child and sitting with the ‘homeboys and homegirls’ – children removed from their families and placed in ‘homes’. Against the backdrop of the stunning Blue Mountains, she remembers days on verandas with those she knew were her community. 

To me, it’s all intertwined – your identity is yourself and your work is yourself so what you do is truly what you are. 

Aunty Glendra 

“I remember the first time that my Aboriginality was a shock…” she trails off, knowing ‘shock’ is not the right word but it’s reflective of how she, and broader society, feels about this topic – putting her finger on who she is and what it means when it had been systemically taken from the community over so many years. 

She slips into a story about realising she was an ‘Aboriginal girl’. When she was around 12 years old, she and one other Aboriginal girl were forced to stand up in front of the whole school assembly. Thinking she was about to receive an award she puffed up her chest, curious. 

“So, these two families haven’t paid their school fees,” the principal says, “do you have anything to say?” Her friend was sobbing beside her but Aunty Glendra simply cleared her throat. 

“Oh, it’s really important to pay your school fees,” Aunty Glendra said, “but it’s much more important to feed your children!” 

What is your favourite part about your ‘look’ as an Aboriginal woman? 

We’re not allowed, not expected to get old so it’s my wrinkles. My wrinkles are a gift from the ancestors, it means a life well-lived.

Aunty Glendra 

Aunty Glendra remembers how her intersectional identities informed society’s treatment of her family. When her brother had been dropped to a lower class despite his great grades, she remembers telling her mother, “Mum, that’s because you’re the cleaner and Dad is Blak.” 

With her mother’s encouragement, Aunty Glendra wrote her first advocacy letter – addressed to the very same principal who sought to embarrass families that looked like hers. Aunty G jokes that it was probably a letter riddled with spelling mistakes, but she never stopped having that fire in her belly. 

She says joining Link Up, a program set up to assist Indigenous Australians, is the moment that changed her life. She had started as a bookkeeper and had received a birth certificate in the mail. In the very next envelope, a bill from Births, Deaths and Marriages. The fire in her belly reignites upon recalling the memory and she puffs up her chest like the schoolgirl in front of the assembly. 

“You steal people from their families, and then you make them pay to get their identity back? In the end they made a policy where if you were stolen First Nations, you got your birth certificates for free.” 

I ask how Aunty Glendra keeps fighting that fight and she thanks the youth who have taken up fighting today. 

“At one point I felt like I was the only person that people could ask to do things for my community. We’ve got so many great, young people now working for our fight, especially here in Jumbunna. Now, I say all the time that I’m learning every day.” 

She recalls how it was for her Aunties again, and talks about her Aunty Belinda who rioted at Parramatta Girls and later Hay Institution for Girls – two horrific institutions designed to break Indigenous girls’ spirits after being forcibly removed from their homes. We dive for an hour through articles on the internet – and Aunty Glendra speaks about how her Aunties had been marching for recognition of their trauma and apologies from the state. She talks about the courage of her Aunties informing her own courage. Though she doesn’t riot now, she says her own courage is different: “I have to just keep chipping away for my mob.” 

Aunty Glendra finishes up by acknowledging that there’s great hope, that hope had taken us this far and her journey as an Aboriginal woman is far from over, “as long as there’s breath in these lungs!” She taps her chest with her bandaged hand and at that moment we notice someone outside her office. 

A student that probably wants to yarn with Aunty G. It’s the end of our interview but not the end of this brilliant woman’s story.