As we approach ‘that’ day, one of the most painful on our national calendar, I reflect on my colonial privilege. I reflect on what ‘privilege’ means.
How do I continue to perpetuate circumstances that cause pain or injustice? Decolonisation is a big process, and it asks us to reexamine all that we have captured, appropriated and stolen, all the hurt caused to First Nations cultures all over the world. As non-Indigenous people many generations on from the first waves of colonisation, we can say that it ‘was not us’. But it is. And when we get a chance for change, to make right the wrongs of our ancestors, I believe it is our duty to do exactly that. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing the name of your street. Why wouldn’t you?
When we change names, it reflects our change of values. It says we acknowledge the wrongs of the past, and that we respectfully move forward.
For weeks I have driven past a sign with a love heart at the turn into Hottentot Crescent. It says ‘We Love our street…’ and then it tells the short history of Hottentot Crescent and how it is the common name for Schotia brachypetala, a leguminous flowering tree native to Africa. True. But it is also a common name with racist roots.
In fact, scientists are busily renaming many species from names that contain ethnic slurs. Species like the gypsy moth, and Scott’s oriole – a North American bird named after people with a back story of violent colonisation. Language is powerful. Naming unrelated and beautiful things like streets and birds with racial slurs has a way of softening the impact, of normalising their use. It makes us feel like the slur isn’t a slur anymore. In fact, until the campaign to rename Hottentot Crescent it hadn’t occurred to me the name was even a problem. To me, that’s a problem. We can’t change history, but we can change this.
The street history sign was in response to a motion to Byron Council to have Hottentot Crescent renamed because ‘hottentot’ is a racial slur. It was the colonial term for Khoekhoe people of South Africa. Sadly, the motion didn’t pass, and it got me thinking about how important these little changes can be in signposting – in this case literally – our commitment to being better humans than the ones who came before us.
Hottentot is without doubt a beautiful street; I have friends there and I can attest. It has nothing to do with the name, and everything to do with the people who live there, the majestic outlook, and the beauty of Mullumbimby. The request for renaming asks residents to truly love their street. To give it a name that doesn’t have its roots in pain, exploitation, loss and humiliation.
In researching this I came across the story of the ‘Hottentot Venus’; a South African woman named Sarah Baartman who was enslaved and brought to London in 1810, where she was exhibited in a freakshow called ‘Hottentot Venus’. She shared an exhibit cage with a baby rhinoceros. Her ‘protruding’ buttocks made her the object of sexual desire and she was sold into slavery and used as an exhibit. She was treated like an animal. She was paraded in public as ‘the missing link between man and beast’. She died at just 29 but her body was used in ‘scientific’ experiments for such racist outcomes I cannot even repeat them here.
Renaming gives us a chance to create a deeper embedded story. To tell the world that there are histories we do not want to celebrate or to minimise. There are stories that need to be retold because the colonial retellings are racist and wrong.
Renaming is reclaiming. And it is, in a very small way, an apology to Sarah Baartman. An apology from a tiny street on the other side of the world to a woman who none of us knew.
But now we do. And with knowledge comes responsibility.
And that, my friends, is a way to decolonise.
– Mandy Nolan
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
