​In the wake of a growing ‘Change the Date’ movement, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, dove deep to uncover what is causing further division; what is distracting us from bridging the indigenous divide and what a connected future would look like. 

 

Over two months, Jacinta engaged her audience at 11 events across the nation. Her audience brought an abundance of challenging questions, and received the honest answers they had been craving. Those who queued to meet her afterwards were gifted with real conversation and a shared connection.  

 

There were a few people who didn’t agree with what Jacinta had to say and made their opinions known with heckling, megaphones and verbal abuse. But there were also more than 1,500 attendees from diverse areas, ages, and walks of life, who were yearning for her insight and perspective. 

 

​Local media jumped at the chance to drum up conflict and published a defamatory attack on Jacinta’s tour; then a week later, on Media Watch, acknowledged that the “ABC [was] wrong on Jacinta Price.”

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Jacinta’s tour tackled many controversial and pertinent topics. She advocated for an Aboriginal person or tribe’s freedom to change their culture and customs. Citing that other cultures and customs have more flexibility to evolve with each new generation - from music, to fashion, to women’s rights, etc. Yet there is a lot of pressure and expectation for Indigenous Australians to maintain a sense of cultural ‘purity’, rooted in a very distant past.

 

One of the most powerful messages Jacinta brought to the stage, was that there simply can not be a single voice representing all Australia’s Aboriginal people. There are some who side with Jacinta’s message and others who oppose her. On tour she advocated that those who agree with her stance on Indigenous issues be free to express their opinions and equally join in the discussion on future progress.   

 

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is an Indigenous Alice Springs town councillor who has come under fire in the media for expressing opposition to the idea that Australia Day should be moved to another date, because of the offence it causes the indigenous community; and for arguing that some segments of the Aboriginal community spend too much energy on being perpetually aggrieved, and not enough on attending to the real issues that the community faces. Jacinta is the daughter of former CLP politician Bess Price, and won the 2011 NAIDOC Awards Artist of the Year.

 

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