With National Reconciliation Week winding up for another year, I wanted to highlight a timely and powerful new short film, Change Direction, which delivers a stark truth Aboriginal suicide rates, particularly among young people, continue to rise. And on the line to tell us about that the film and the campaign that's built around it is one of Australia's leading Aboriginal psychologists, Dr Tracy Westerman. Hi, Tracy, Oh, thank you so much for having you on the show. Ah, it's
a pleasure, it really is. Now the campaign goes beyond awareness, isn't it. It's a call to action to support the Western Westerman Jillia Institute. Tell us about the institute and your role in it.
Yeah, okay, so I volunteer in Julia, and I actually started the Junior Institute, I guess out of frustration with the lack of government action on Indigenous child suicides. And for the listeners that don't understand the context here is that in Western Australia, my own home state, we've had four government iries into Indigenous suicides, mostly around the Kimbley, and when I started the scholarship it was really looking
at those four inquiries. The last one was thirteen beautiful young Indigenous young people took their own lives from the Kimberley and when I read the reports, they all concluded pretty much the same thing, and that was that children were literally dying due to a lack of access to culturally confidence services and I guess on the complex treatment side. So I just went it looked like and fix this. I'm a psychologist, I'm an Indigenous one and from a
remote community. So I self funded the Doctor Tracy Westerman Indigenous Psychology Scholarship Program, not really thinking, to be honest with all that it was going to grow to the excess as I thought, I'd probably fund one scholarship and that would be it, But Australia sort of had other ideas and now was actually funding sixty four, most of whom I've now graduated. So the Change Direction film, the great part of it is that it literally gives people
something to do. Often you see campaigns and people go, Okay, that's good, what do we now do? So institue is sorry, you'll figure so.
What does your director change Direction campaign do than?
Basically, what it does is it takes people into a reality. And I think for a lot of people sadly they don't really understand relate to the experiences of indigenous people in the country. So the film just very beautifully takes people on our journey and so essentially what we're doing is really inviting Australia into what starts off as a
painful journey. But I guess most people who have seen the film you don't really predict the change, and so what's really lovely about it as you take people into that pain but also get them to understand when you actually do have that help, that you can actually get out of it as well.
So in a way, the film follows the whole process.
Yeah, absolutely, And to be honest, when I first watched it, I didn't predict what was coming because it's so clever and it's just so brilliantly done. It's literally a poem that goes into dark spaces and then literally you start reading it backwards and the actor is the main us for Drea Jackson. It just goes backwards and then things start to lighten. But what it's actually about, obviously, is about the answers being in culturally competent services and that's what we've always known there.
You wrote the poem featured in the film.
So tell us about No, I didn't write I, which I'd love to take credit for a beautifulde of fearer who's done it.
Tell us a bit about it.
Yeah, So essentially what it does is it goes into the beautiful actor for Edrea Jackson, who essentially goes into some dark places and says, look, my country tells me that I'm invisible, and it's very negative and it actually explains I guess what it's like to feel that way, to feel as if there's no hope. And then suddenly halfway through it switches and it literally goes backwards into hope and light and that there are people that care
and I can actually change this in me. And so it really is a I guess a visceral experience bill that you go into this, you know, feeling of what it would feel like, and then literally it changes to go backwards and you feel like there is actually hope at the end of it, which is just very brilliant.
Actually, So where was the film shot.
I think it was in Adelaide. That was done by the wonderful Warwick the Wornton, who of course has become incredibly famous and of course you know, from a remote community himself, so he had a passion to do something about Indigenous suicides. And then Jackson Long, who was a creative person behind it, literally spent twenty months banging down doors. So he's just been incredible in terms of his will
to do something about it. And then I sort of came along when they heard of my work because they were looking at someone like an organization to donate whatever money they raised from it, and it became, you know, very old. It became very obvious that there was a really good synergy there in terms of getting people something very clear that they could do.
Now, what statistics can you provide us about the unacceptable rates of Indigenous suicide?
Yeah, it's kind of heartbreaking, And I guess the thing that you know is the statistic that probably separates arguably Australia from all other developed countries is the age at which our young people are taking in their lives. So it's really for Indigenous children, we have a six times the likelihood of dying by suicide and non Indigenous children.
And a statistic that's probably the most sobering and heartbreaking is that every time an Indigenous child dies in this country forty percent of them will do so by suicide. And I've said this many times. Children's suicide just does not belong in a center. A yeah, kind of. I guess when you're getting into those teenage years, you're sort
of getting I mean, obviously heartbreaking. We we've had suicides of children as young as ten, but when you're getting into those teenage years around thirteen to fifteen, then the statistics get even worse. So we are looking at that particularly particular vulnerability around the teenage years.
Traca, What do you want Australians to do when they see the film or visit the website? What outcomes are you looking for?
Oh, it's a really easy one. I mean, this is probably the easiest from the campaign in that we are already taking care of this. We're put a hand up. We don't have any federal government funding. I volunteer every single day. I'll never take awage from Juilliet's. They've registered charity. We've had our students graduate at eighty percent compared to twenty percent for heavily funded universities. And they're coming from our springs, the Kimberly, They're coming from the highest risk community.
Seventy percent of them first in their families to go to university. So we're literally making people who would never have had hope in their lives become psychologists. So it's an incredible program. And so literally all you have to do is donate every dollars tax deductible and we're putting our hands up for it. Seemed quite simply we are saying we've got this, We're happy to take on the
most complex issues in Australia. You just literally have to get behind us and know that every single dollar goes to putting another indigenous psychologists in the remote community.
So what can we do tra see as every day Australian it's not just as part of Reconciliation Week, but throughout the year, what can we do to make a difference on this issue?
Yeah, I guess the answer to that is that just for all public attention tool, we find it really difficult and it's great to be on shows like this, we find it really difficult for anyone to pay attention to
this crisis. And as someone who spent my life on this, you know, it is actually really difficult to get media to pay attention to this, and of course we rely on the media to explain to people while we have such heartbreaking rates of suicide, and to get that message out that these are Australia's children and we should all be affected by this equally, and to just pay attention and just just get involved.
Really, but you've got to do a bit more than just raise a wenness, haven't you. Because White Ribbon Campaign and all of those try to do that as well. You've got to get people to do something as well, haven't you.
Yeah, And I guess that's where the Juilliar Institute comes in. That I've had, you know, lots so do lots of public presentation and so many people have come up to me and said just that that we've never known what to do, and this actually gives us something to do that we can donate money and we know that this is actually going to changing generational trauma, generational risk in our highest risk communities like our springs, you know, like Derby,
like you know, Mount Eyes a Plate. We've got psychologists coming from those communities who ultimately will stay there and we're skills building from a ground up. So this is really going to achieve massive change, or it already is achieving massive change in the country.
So it kind of aligns with and complements existing government mental health programs.
Yeah, it does. However, you know, Julia is kind of not beyond is outside of government. We have no government funding for what we do, and I think that's actually a good thing because we are truly grassed for its activism. We are truly about getting business as usual isn't solving this crisis. So what we need to do, we're quite on orthodox. We we for example, picked students, picked students who I'd regularly reject students to have distinctions, so I
don't pick students who will get there anyway. I'll pick students based on how many more gaps they have to close. So we're getting the most disadvantaged. But what that means is that likeals never leave, right, Yes, so they Yeah.
So if any of our listeners would like to know more or view the film Change Direction, what should they do?
They just get onto www Dot change Direction literally and you can see that there. And you can also, you know, if we would be massively grateful if people would donate some of their dollars, and bearing in mind that no public donations one hundred percent of public donations go directly to our scholarship program. Nothing goes on paying you know,
you know, admin or salaries. That's why I work for free, so to make sure that every cent goes directly into getting another Indigenous psychologist in a remote community.
Now, before I let you go, how happy if you've been with the way National Reconcilient Sitiation Week has gone in general?
Look interesting enough. I was interviewed a couple of weeks ago on ABC and I said, I think had without getting into the politics, will have to get into the politics of I guess the election for a lot of Aboriginal people has been almost like a moral victory, and because we're sort of heading down a path of you know a lot of negativity in terms of Indigenous issues, particularly after the referendum, and I think a lot of Australians probably you know, probably had really, to be honest,
not a really good sense of what they're no vide actually meant. And so I think, you know, the rejection of what dare I say, the right wing rest wreck around, you know, people being really negative about Welcome to Country, and you know, the attacks on Indigenous organizations and so forth. Certainly the Indigenous people that I interact with all day, every day, and there's thousands of them than I do.
There's been a sense of people can breathe now, and I think now O Pray would have given a differn answer four weeks ago. But I think you know the fact that Australia has repudiated, you know that real negative in negativity and right wing approach to Indigenous issues has certainly helped significantly.
One of Australia's leading Aboriginal psychologists, doctor Tracy Westerman, thanks so much and God bless you Tracy. Godess