Who controls the narrative matters, while buzzwords and slogans don’t mean a thing

2020 is almost finished. But where do we start to sum up this year?

This year has thrown up challenges for all of us, and although we hear the slogan “we are all in this together” and that this is an "unprecedented time". Is it really?

The recent breakout of coronavirus in Sydney is a case in point with how the story is being told by politicians and the media. In this case no individual is being blamed for spreading the virus, nor is a particular racial or social group being highlighted. Yet, only a few months ago who can remember when two black girls were sprawled across newspapers as the face of the virus? 

In the Northern Beaches case we have ministers congratulating the great work of the people in this affluent, white area. On the other hand, we blame two young girls and centre our negative stories on a group who constantly have deficit stories told by mainstream media and politicians. In addition, in Victoria our “health response” to the virus was to violate the human rights of predominantly Black, Indigenous and People of Colour who live in public housing. 

So when we say that this is unprecedented it is only the virus, not our response. The response is all too common. The virus is a once in a hundred year pandemic but the way we respond to different racial and social groups adds to the racist tropes in so-called Australia. 

Then there is “we all in this together.” I would suggest the use of the “we” solidifies who belongs to the majority group and who does not. It should then read “We, the majority white and privileged people, are all in this together. And they, the communities on the margins, are not.” 

And it is not just the language of the pandemic but other stories and narratives which should be given more airtime. There is the storytelling which continues to remind us to deny our history of genocide, war crimes and slavery, whereby our political leaders are the chief deniers. We are more worried about how we are perceived of committing war crimes rather than actually carrying them out. We are more worried of being called a racist than being a racist and we use spin and storytelling to commit to a history of ongoing colonisation, assimilation and amnesia. 

Unfortunately it is not just the tabloids and racist politicians who perpetuate these stories of whiteness and ongoing colonisation. Well-intentioned organisations and individuals who share stories also play their part, in many cases unintentionally. This often occurs with the aim of promoting voices which are often silenced to reach the white audience. However, by constructing the stories from this standpoint where the target audience is white who’s voice and story is actually being told and who really benefits?

Not only does this type of storytelling appear to provide some obvious risks, there is an issue which is not discussed very often: who holds the rights and ownership of a story. You would like to think that the individual or organisation requesting that story would provide free, prior and informed consent. However, we have found that too often this is not the case. Consequently, the person loses control of their story and unwittingly passes the ownership of that story to a third party. At times this is an organisation who should have their best interests at heart.

But do they?

From our experience in many cases they do, yet they are unaware of the risks of sharing the story. They follow the status quo, a common formula for storytelling which in many cases includes a commodification element. So why and how does this occur? 

Firstly, the people behind the scenes often do not understand the lived experiences sufficiently and are more concerned about reaching people who look like them. This results in a narrative which pleases a white audience and may lead to an increase in fundraising for the organisation and broader coverage. This is not entirely a bad thing but this must first take into consideration what is the impact on the individual and/or communities represented in that story and what control do they have in the development, editing and ownership of that story. 

Too often marginalised individuals and communities receive requests from advocacy organisations to share their stories of trauma using a set formula. With this person already trusting the work of that organisation they willingly share their story and trust the organisation with the control of that story. And at times they will go further and share their story without question with a corporate who funds the advocacy organisation they support. At this point the story becomes one of total commodification where it only truly serves the interest of the corporate donor’s branding story of diversity and inclusion.   

Secondly, many well-intentioned individuals and organisations are unaware of the copyright and intellectual property laws relating to storytelling. And just as in the above example, what occurs is the person and/or community with the story often loses the rights and ownership of the story. This is due to the fact that a story is owned by the person who writes down or films the story unless a prior contract has been initiated. Unfortunately most frequently the only contract that is used has been created by the requesting organisation, for example the advocacy group, media organisation or the corporate. So who do you think this contract is written for? 

It is for these above reasons that we have been working tirelessly on democratising who has this information. It is also why we are formalising this so that the people and communities who are asked to share stories are aware of their rights and can set their own conditions for the requesting organisation to fulfil. 

Further, it is also to ensure all organisations, well-intentioned or seemingly to be, take an ethical approach to how they engage with storytellers and storytelling practices. It means taking a collaborative, community and person-centred approach to how and why they share stories. It will require additional resources in the form of including people with lived experience from the beginning of the storytelling project, not at the end. It will require unlearning white storytelling practices and learning new ones where it is not centred on an individual but rather on communities and racial and social justice causes.

So how do we do this?

At Our Race we have started by developing an initial draft of a Transformational Ethical Storytelling (T.E.S) framework where we included a number of people who have had their stories manipulated by organisations high in social trust. In this we drafted a number of steps to support storytellers and partner organisations who believe in the genuine voice of the storyteller and to value their full participation. 

After realising that Australian copyright law upholds the unequal power dynamics we wanted to explore how a legal framework could challenge this. And through the incredible support of Marque Lawyers who have provided us with pro bono support we were able to develop the first iterations of this framework.

Through further conversations within our team, Colin Kinchela, a Gomeroi artist and storyteller led the way in ensuring this framework was grounded in Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property protocols. We subsequently reached out to the experts in this space, Terri Janke and Associates who have provided their First Nations' legal expertise to ensure this framework has the strength and grounding that any storytelling piece of work needs on these lands we live.

Finally, we have been testing these principles over the last 12 months by delivering a series of webinars, workshops and projects. We have received some incredible feedback from people who are genuine in wanting to improve storytelling practices, including Story Factory who have begun to implement the initial framework into their own storytelling and engagement practices.  

What now?

We have just finalised our first draft of the overall framework which includes the cultural and legal principles which have been developed by Marque Lawyers and Terri Janke and Associates. We are now ready to begin the process of consultation and will start this in early 2021. As part of this we want to ensure this framework is given the attention and wide-ranging consultation and critique we believe it deserves. Most importantly we want to ensure the people with the lived experiences of having their stories manipulated have the opportunity to provide their input.

If you would like to contribute in some way to this project please let us know as we are all currently working under a volunteer capacity and will not be able to sustain this in the long run. We are seeking in-kind support and grassroots financial supporters so that we can flip the power of storytelling together.  

We hope you can join us on this journey.