“Aboriginal Women in this Country Have a Sacred, Special and Unique Story to Tell”, a keynote speech from Emma Donovan
Spoken at the One of One International Women’s Day Breakfast, in partnership with AIR’s Women in Music Program, on March 8th, 2022 in Naarm/Melbourne.
My name is Emma Donovan, I’m also known to my family as Emma Councillor, Mum, Aunty Ems, Fox, or Niecy Girl.
Before I begin this morning, I would like to pay my respects and give an acknowledgment to Wurundjeri and Boon wadang People and extend my love to the Kulin Nation.
More for having me live, work, raise my children and create on this special country. I come and live here always as a visitor to this country and local clans.
My clans on my mother’s side are Gumbaynggir people of Nambucca
Dhangatti people of Kempsey. Both are on the mid north coast of NSW
My Father’s people and clans are from WA — Southern Noongar families on my Nan’s side being the Bibbulamn and Wardarndi people, and My Dad’s Father’s people are Naagujaa of Yamatji Nation.
I want to begin this keynote with remarks and comments said to me over my years in the music industry that has been fuel for me, and has helped me to continue to be who exactly I want to be in the Music Industry today. Not only as a woman in this industry, as an Aboriginal Woman, as a Mum and a role model for younger women and not just black women but for all women and especially for my nieces and my two daughters.
These few comments and statements I want to share with you in this keynote, also validate and reflect a lot of my lyrics I write and are the reason why I continue strength and overcoming in my messages in my songs; it’s the core integrity of what I put out in my music.
I was in Canada a few years back, and I was asked to perform at Banff Arts Centre, I was also asked to run a music workshop with other local Aboriginal Women from that country. I took a few male musicians and I asked one of my players to sit in and play in the workshop.
When I started this workshop, I followed my protocol as an Aboriginal woman from Australia and began by acknowledging country and more importantly introducing where I came from, and my clans and family.
I began telling my story before I wrote music with the women, this started a huge conversation I carry with me today.
There is something special when women get together in general, Black or White, whatever colour, we have an understanding of each other, it quickly can become a sacred and special space.
I have a strong connection meeting other Indigenous Women like myself, there are so many similarities, and the exchange is always amazing wherever I go. I learn more about the history of indigenous mob from all over, and I’m honoured to learn. It’s that time I have to reflect, yarn and talk more, and grow myself and take back to my community and share.
One of my male musicians made a comment, saying that the event was one the most draining experiences he has had. He said ‘How can a music workshop be like a counselling session or more like therapy?”
I didn’t know what to say, I was gobsmacked, I shrugged it off at the time of the trip, but something made me never forget that comment.
It made me feel something, it was like a turning point, because I knew in that room or space how special it was, and how much knowledge there was in that room. I didn’t feel like I was in another country either, I immediately felt so closer to home, just by meeting these sisters. I felt in a safe space.
When I first started writing lyrics, I couldn’t even share them with anyone. I kept lots of lyrics to myself before I ever shared with anyone as it was too personal. Writing was kind of like a diary for me. I first started writing in a band called Stiff Gins with two other Aboriginal women — Nardi Simpson and Kaleena Briggs — and at the time I was 17 years old. I wrote because I was in a safe space to express how I felt at the time. I learned to let go on many topics and half of the songs I wrote and collaborated with in the band came out of classroom assessments with the TAFE course we all Enrolled at together in Redfern.
It was a time to write how us three women were connected to music voice and our people, relationships and just about anything fun going on in our lives at the time. It was a new skill I had learned from simply being together with two other Aboriginal Women. Coming from this band I had just come out of my family band The Donovans and started exploring different genres other than the music I grew up on other than Country Gospel music.
Over the Years I have written differently. My writing, I can say safely, has saved my from a lot of things in my life. I was in a domestic violent relationship for five years shortly after leaving that Stiff Gins, and coming out of that relationship I taught myself to heal through my own lyrics and words I wrote for myself. I was in a dark place, and deep, and for ages these lyrics was always help me to keep sane.
I’m not here to go over all the hard times in my life or relationships but there is something about being able to sing and share and be heard and being able to write about it. In the end songs can simply write itself, especially if you have lived the experience. That’s the vessel I have to move out and forward in my life, sometimes when I just can’t sleep, I know I have to write, It’s a natural thing I do till I get songs write. I love it — it’s my life.
I grew up with two very vocal women in my life. Being vocal for me is something I learned from a young age and mostly from the women in my life — my Nan was loud and commanding, just in conversation, or when footy barracking.
My Mum had brothers, five of them — so she was used to being vocal and she had to speak up to be heard amongst the men. She was very good at this.
I grew up as kind of a shy girl, I was quiet at school, but outside of school, I spent lots of time listening to music in my home and buried myself in my mum’s country collection of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton.
I knew just about every Tammy tune by the time I was 12 years old. It was my mother who encouraged me the most to sing. She would take me to Tamworth Country Music Festival from when I was 11 years old.
Growing up I felt like I had my fair dose of country women singers showing up in my home and telling country stories about their husbands, relationship, these were mighty strong women in those times of writing to be messed with. Today I am blessed my Mum shared these women with me.
In my recent Albums with The Putbacks I have discovered grief, with the biggest loss in my life, losing the matriarch of my family, my mum to cancer. It’s been 4 years since her passing.
During the last year of my mother’s life, I nursed my Mum, and I became a mother myself to my first daughter. Learning to navigate through my life has been my biggest challenges to date. I’m being honest when I say I am still currently finding my feet, and I know planting my feet here in Melbourne closer to The Putbacks in the last years has been an amazing start. This has given me the chance to write and to share and more importantly I am close to six brothers -The Putbacks, who give me my safe place, help me use my voice, and my freedom to write anything I want. If anything, this relationship with this band has built me up and made me work harder at being a good writer and creator for my music and recordings. That’s what I know a good relationship is about. It’s a shame it took me so long to find it, but I do know now what I know because of these years and fears.
I always imagined and dreamed up the thought of having my Mum for support in this industry helping me with now my two daughters I am raising. It’s a struggle at times, but there’s these two little girls I’m responsible for and more importantly I have these two lots of ears now listening to every song I write so I am very conscious more so today about what I want to pass down to my music for them, or I guess what I want to leave for them.
I sing and write in Gumbaynggirr and more recently I have started learning more in Noongar language for the mob in WA. I write in these languages because music has been a platform for me to discover my language and empower and contribute to my community more. I never had songs in language growing up, so we recently wrote some kids songs for ABC Kids — identity, strength and traditional nursery rhymes in language.
Half the battle of gigging now is my personal logistic for my children to understand they are in a safe place when I am invited to gig or do other work around my music. They are both 5 and 3 years of age. Very small.
This music scene is a hard place to have kids around, especially when you have a 1 or 2am set times, and more recently 3pm sound check when my daughter is finishing school. It’s her first year of prep.
Having other women in my music life, especially management, who understand what is important to me as Mother, I would not get out the door. My manager literally puts on the ‘Mum cap’ around our diary before I do!
Having and knowing amazing musicians in this industry who are mums is important for me. I’ve seen a lot of mums on tour before I had kids and I use to think how are they actually doing that?
Same time, I was dreaming up having kids of my own, and somehow trying to do that. I thought ‘will it ever be possible for me to do?’ Being a mum in the industry, I’m not apologetic. We have a job the same any other Mum does, it’s all I know how to provide for my kids.
Just saying, because I sung right up until I had my kids and there’s no maternity leave for singer songwriters and single mothers at that!
I think about that comment in Canada, I think about the issues I live and face in my community on the daily as a Aboriginal mum and woman, and my writing leans more on conversations and messages to connect and have an understanding. I choose to write music for myself and other women to have more ways of overcoming and ending heavy relationships with domestic violence and just getting through everyday battles in life. I write with the hope that it connects in a tiny way somehow. This is what feeds and sustains me, cleanses me, this is all I know how to do to continue me on the right track.
I think about some of the Musical influences in my life and I think of one Aboriginal Woman: Aunty Ruby Hunter.
Her solo Album came out through Mushroom in 1994, I was 13 years old. Aunty Ruby wrote music that changed my life still till this day,
It wasn’t really about her songs for me when I first saw her on Rage, it was more her image. I thought geez there is a black women like my mum or my aunties on the tele singing these songs that mean something:
Womens Bussiness
A change gonna come my way
Kutjerdi Lady so far from home you are a
Down city Streets I would run
Let my children Be, Let Them Free,
Kurong Boy Kurong Girl Living in a brand-new world
She wrote of kinship, community life and being a mother and partner. She sung about the beautiful soul of a Aboriginal Woman equal with the hard times, shameful times, time when she felt sorry, gurraam, in her life but she still shared it and recorded music from it.
Through Aunty Ruby’s music she makes me feel unapologetic for me as an artist. I feel like I have permission to sing up that story between a hard place but also a simple place about family connection and memory. When I heard her music, I looked for the safe places in the music industry to tell my story. With the support of my band, The Putbacks, I’ve been given a safe place so I can continue making the industry a safe place for our mob and voices to be heard, and more importantly sing my story without any apology and pride. Ruby had made a huge path for artists like myself, and I will always acknowledge her and credit her for that.
I heard a white woman do an acknowledgment to country the other day hosting the Australian Music Prize Awards. The woman ended saying loud and proud that ‘White Australia Has a Black Future’
I want to finish by repeating that quote from her,
“White Australia Has a Black Future’.
And finish by saying that Aunty Ruby Hunter has been an exceptional artist for me to learn from and in that time when she was out there wasn’t many other aboriginal women like her doing it. Clearly nothing like we have today with our beautiful sisters, Emily Wurramarra , Deline Briscoe, Jessie LLoyd from Mission Songs Project, Kee’ahn, Barkaa, Thelma Plum, Alice Skye, just to name a few.
Aboriginal Women in this country have a sacred and special and unique story to tell, I’m proud to be amongst my sisters, and continuing our songs. I am proud to share who I am with you today.
Thank you for listening to my words today and for supporting and listening to my lyrics.
Emma Donovan is an acclaimed Indigenous Australian singer and songwriter best known for her work with soul bands, The Putbacks and The Black Arm Band project. She has also toured and recorded with Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, Spinifex Gum, Christine Anu, Yothu Yindi, Jimmy Little and Paul Kelly among others. On her mother’s side, Emma is part of the famed Donovan family of singers of the Gumbaynggirr people, of what is now known as Northern New South Wales. On her Father’s side, Emma is of the Yamatji people, of what is now known as Western Australia.
