An edited version of this interview ran on Indian Country Today Media Network:
*****
In the Australian hit movie The Sapphires, Shari Sebbens plays Kay, a ?white-looking? Aboriginal girl who is stolen from her family to live with Australians who are not indigenous to the country. Stripped from her family and friends, Kay reunites with her cousins to join a Supremes-style R&B girl group that tours Vietnam and entertains American troops during the war. Based on a true story, The Sapphires expresses hope, joy, wonder, and the growing empowerment of four fierce Aboriginal women who seek opportunity despite the barriers of their dispossession.
In an exclusive, 2 part interview for ICTMN, Sebbens is just as delightful as the movie in which she co-stars. Her infectious laughter provided a lovely background sound to our conversation. We talked about important and everyday issues affecting indigenous women ? and all women-of-color. As two women-of-color who happen to be lighter in complexion, Sebbens and I talked like girlfriends who have known each other forever. At key moments, we even started finishing each other?s sentences. And we talked about everything, from men, inter-racial relationships, and the enduring influence of Tupac to indigenous land loss, the erasure of indigenous struggles from the classroom, and the power of the Internet to connect indigenous peoples around the world through #IdleNoMore.
In this engaging and entertaining interview, even a simple question like asking Sebbens? age led to clever banter and laughter:
ICTMN: How old are you? if you?re allowed to say, Actress? [laughter] SEBBENS: Yeah, my agent would be like, ?Don?t say it. Don?t say it.? [laughter]
ICTMN: OK ? no worries.
SEBBENS: [With affected voice ] I?m however old you want me to be. [laughter]
ICTMN: You want me to play an elderly person? I?ve got you. You want me to play an infant? I can pull that off. [huge laugh] Just give me my SAG card.
SEBBENS: [With another, different affected voice] The age range is 5 months to 55. [huge laugh]
ICTMN: There you go.
ICTMN: But you were born and raised in Australia?
SEBBENS: Yup.
ICTMN: In what part?
SEBBENS: In Darwin, the same city as Miranda [Tapsell, who plays Cynthia] and Jess [Jessica Mauboy, who plays Julie]. So, the three of us grew up in the same hometown.
ICTMN: Did you grow up knowing each other?
SEBBENS: We knew of each other. I went to high school with Jessica?s sister. Miranda?s mom and my mom worked together. Our families have all had connections. We just never really met each other?Miranda and I went to the same drama school, NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Art], in Sydney, so we met there, and we were besties before we started filming Sapphires, and then we all came together on that little project.
ICTMN: Nice. So, you always wanted to be an actress?
SEBBENS: Yeah.
ICTMN: When did you start drama school?
SEBBENS: I started studying at NIDA in 2007. Prior to that, in 2006, I did the Aboriginal Theatre Course at WAPO, which is the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. That?s a mouthful. That?s Hugh Jackman?s drama school.
ICTMN: Did you just study acting, or did you also study singing?
SEBBENS: Just acting, but they have music components and movement components.
ICTMN: Did you grow up in a city, or did you grow up in a more rural town?
SEBBENS: It depends who you?re talking to. Darwin people say it?s a city. City people say, ?No, it?s a small town.? [laughter] It?s kind of the best place in Australia, I think. It?s not a huge city, with a population of 200,000 or something. It?s one of the few places in Australia that has a really high percentage of indigenous Australians living in the city. So, for me, it?s a really multicultural, amazing town to grow up.
ICTMN: In the schools that you attended prior to the two drama schools, were you in integrated schools, or were the schools mostly segregated?
SEBBENS: Ahhh, definitely integrated.
ICTMN: Were you in school with White kids?
SEBBENS: Yeah, yeah ? absolutely, yeah.
ICTMN: In the same classes?
SEBBENS: Yeah, yup, yup.
ICTMN: Hanging out at the same lunch table?
SEBBENS: Yup.
ICTMN: Oh, cool.
SEBBENS: That?s the beautiful thing about Darwin. My boyfriend, who is a white boy [laughter], people meet him, and he?s got this Darwin accent, and people go, ?Oh, are you indigenous? Are you a Black fella?? And he?s like, ?Naw, naw.? [laughter] But he sounds like he is to city people. [laughter] I was shocked when I moved to Sydney in 2007, one of my classmates at NIDA said, ?Oh, you?re the first Aboriginal person I?ve met.? And I just could not get my head around that, because, in Darwin, you walk down the street, and every 2nd or 3rd person is indigenous or Asian or Greek. It?s one of the few examples I?ve seen where multicultural, not meaning many cultures, but actually living together and functioning together, as a really wonderful, amazing, organism.
ICTMN: So, when you?re walking down the street in your hometown or in Sydney? how do you spell Darwin?
SEBBENS: D-A-R-W-I-N
ICTMN: OK. [Sebbens starts laughing] I just wanna make sure I?m catching the accent. [With a hard r.] Dar-Win. [Much laughter] So, when you?re walking down the street in Darwin, or Sydney or Melbourne or anywhere in the country, are people able to identify you as indigenous?
SEBBENS: In Darwin, yup. Because people know my family ?
ICTMN: No, but strangers who look at you, would they be able ?
SEBBENS: Yeah, in Darwin they can. Indigenous Australians? My own mob see it in me more than white fellas do. White people won?t? they just don?t get it. But Black fellas can spot it.
ICTMN: Yeah.
SEBBENS: You know, they just go? there will be that thing: ?Where are you from?? ?Darwin.? ?Ah, yeah.? And they just know. [laughter] No one else really gets it.
ICTMN: The same thing happens in this country. Particularly for African Americans. I?m a Black woman, and it?s interesting? When the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, won? I?m sure you?ve seen pictures of her and know what she looks like. She?s clearly Black.
SEBBENS: Yeah, yeah, yeah [already laughing] ICTMN: But it was amazing to me, how long it took White Americans to realize it: The first Black woman to become Miss America had been crowned. Because they literally did not see her Blackness. Right?
SEBBENS: Right.
ICTMN: Yeah. It?s interesting. I didn?t know a single Black person, and I know a lot of Black people, who couldn?t tell that she was African American.So, it?s interesting the way that?
SEBBENS: Wow.
ICTMN: Your nearness to whiteness can be just enough to disable white people from seeing who you really are.
SEBBENS: Yeah. And that?s the frustrating thing?
ICTMN: Even if you?ve grown up in, for you Aboriginal, for me Black, culture.
SEBBENS: Like for me, growing up in Darwin. My mother is from Broome, originally, which is in Western Australia. And everyone there knows who I am, because they know my family. We?re one of the biggest families in Broome. And my whole life I?d grown up knowing who I am, no one questioning me, my mother teaching me who I am, and my grandmother and my aunties and everything? and then moving to Sydney, and I was just so offended that all of a sudden, people were making me question my identity.
ICTMN: Yeah: What are you?
SEBBENS: Because they couldn?t see, they had a problem with it, I didn?t look, to them, what they wanted me to look like, or what they expected me to look like.
ICTMN: MmHm.
SEBBENS: And that?s really frustrating. And it comes from my own mob, too. There are people in Sydney? It?s not every Black fella who looks at me and goes, ?Oh, you?re one of us.? Some of them just? most do, but, that?s when it?s really disheartening, when people outside of my life, who actually have no impact on my life, make me question things, who try to confront me with that.
ICTMN: MmHm.
SEBBENS: And I?m just, I?m very blessed to have a mother who is really strong and who has taught me and my siblings and all my family to know who we are.
PART II
ICTMN: Beautiful. I want to know, in terms of the film itself, there is, for me, watching the film, this kind of affinity for Blackness, specifically, for my culture. Because I?m listening to the music, even before the movie started, and I?m ready to get up and start dancing.
SEBBENS: Yeah, Yeah! [laughing]
ICTMN: I?m flashing back to the old family get-togethers, family reunions, cook-outs in the backyard.
SEBBENS: Yes! [laughing]
ICTMN: I?m like, ?Oh, I remember when Aunt Diane used to do this dance off of that song!?
SEBBENS: [laughing] Yeah!
ICTMN: It?s constant in the film. The promoter is a Black man. There are, obviously white and Black troops, but your love interest and the love interests of the other women in the film are African American – and brown-skin, brothers. [much laughter] Not looking like me Black men. [much laughter] It?s like, real chocolate, you know? [much laughter] In the beginning of the film, the girls are interested in Charley Pride. But, this is still Black culture. Country Western is of course rooted in?.. well, that?s a whole other thing. [laughter] But anyway, we won?t go there. [laughter] Don?t want to offend the South. [laughter] I just want to know, growing up, did you guys listen to Hip Hop, Soul, R&B?
SEBBENS: Do you know, it is so massive for indigenous Australian mob. Hip Hop and R&B, Motown – Country and Western for our older generation, like our parents, our nanas, and grandparents. You go to Darwin today, and 15 year olds are still tagging, like, ?Tupac Rules? and stuff on bus stops. [much laughter] It?s really funny because, I got older, and I realized that, historically, we have more in common with First Nation mob –
ICTMN: MmHm.
SEBBENS: – with what?s happened.
ICTMN: Sure.
SEBBENS: And definitely there are parallels between African American struggles and indigenous Australian struggles. But I think it?s a thing of? Indigenous Australian mob are able to see? for a little Black kid in Australia to turn on the television and see a Black man singing or a Black woman singing on a TV show? America saturates our screens and our airwaves, as it does the rest of the world. And it?s not a bad thing, it?s a great thing. You guys just ? pop culture is your thing. [much laughter]
ICTMN: It?s what we do. [laughing] It?s all we do.
SEBBENS: And you do it well. [more laughter] And we take that in ? definitely. Extremely influenced. I mean, Jessica?s an R&B girl through and through. That?s what been great about all this [with the film]. I?m so excited about her next album, because it?s gonna be total R&B, which will be like the first. White Australia ? not so much, but definitely Black fellas over there, Indigenous Australians dig it.
ICTMN: Nice. And were they all, ?Yay, Obama.? [laughter] SEBBENS: Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
ICTMN: OK. [laughter] SEBBENS: Absolutely. The people who do have an opinion of it. People were just excited. I remember when he first got elected, thinking, even in Alice Springs, some central, remote desert, some kid is gonna see this man onscreen who is the president of the United States?
ICTMN: MmHm.
SEBBENS: ?and his skin color is the same as his or this little girl. Whatever your political beliefs are, I think? we?ve just had our first indigenous head of state introduced into Parliament in Australia.
ICTMN: Nice. Such a proud moment.
SEBBENS: The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory has now been sworn in, an indigenous fella, so that?s really exciting for us.
ICTMN: Well Indian Country Today is primarily focused on Native Americans and First Nation communities.
SEBBENS: Cool.
ICTMN: So we should talk about that. [much laughter] Do you grow up, in your education, in school, or just sort of generally, with an awareness of indigenous rights and indigenous issues on a global level, or is that something that you kind of have to come to as an adult?
SEBBENS: It?s something you have to come to as an adult. Australia is? you know, funny enough, we learn a lot about America. We study books about slavery and things like that. When I was in high school, we didn?t do anything like that about indigenous Australian history.
ICTMN: Wow.
SEBBENS: In Legal Studies we learned what terra nullius was and the Native Title Act ? for like a week.
ICTMN: Wow.
SEBBENS: Yet we spent a whole term watching Roots and analyzing ? which is amazing, and all that amazing writing, but globally I think we?re just getting to the stage. I think social media has had a huge impact with this generation, things like #IdleNoMore. Stuff like that is all over Twitter. I?ve got a friend, who?s a young activist, I guess you could call it, in Sydney, and she?s got a pen pal in Canada. And they?re swapping #IdleNoMore stickers from Canada to Australia and all this amazing stuff. So I think, earlier on, it was just a thing of being focused on our own world and our own struggles and issues as indigenous Australians.
ICTMN: Sure.
SEBBENS: But now, because of the Internet and because social media, it?s so much easier to understand what?s happening globally, and how you can fit into that, and how you can learn from other mob. So, that?s what?s happening.
ICTMN: One thing that I love about the film is that it isn?t about a white experience with Aboriginal people. It?s about Aboriginal people. It starts off at home, and although I?m not going to give this away, it ends up at home. In that final scene, I was so happy to see you girls going home and performing for your families because that?s the most important audience.
SEBBENS: Yeah, exactly. That?s what I love. There?s a great speech that Chris? character Dave gives about performing at The Apollo Theatre, but I love that it comes back. It culminates, like you said, with them performing for the most important audience, which is their family. Because whatever happens after that, it doesn?t matter.
ICTMN: Do you think that the way that Aboriginal life is portrayed ? it?s almost like a homeland ? what is it called, where the Aboriginals are kept?
SEBBENS: We call them missions – like reserves, I guess.
ICTMN: So in South Africa it would be a homeland, or here it would be a reservation. So for you it?s a mission.
SEBBENS: Right.
ICTMN: OK. So is mission life accurately portrayed in the film, as much as we see it in the movie?
SEBBENS: Yeah. Do you know what, I think because the film is so much Tony?s [Tony Briggs, screenwriter] memories of childhood, Tony?s mother?s memories of their childhood and his aunties? memories, I know a few people in Australia, white people, were like, ?Oh, they?ve portrayed mission life as this happy, bright, chirpy existence.? And, it?s like, ?You know what? You inflicted the suffering upon us. We found the joy and the laughter through that, through family. And that?s what those scenes are. That?s what the mission life is. No one is denying that what?s going on inside that house is a mother who?s lost her child, but what indigenous people have done so well is cling together and stay strong in their communities and survive through laughter and family connection. So, in that sense, it?s a very accurate depiction.
ICTMN: Yeah. I think there?s always this moment where people from outside communities of color are stunned at the way that we manage to smile through our lives.
SEBBENS: Yeah. They want us to be ?
ICTMN: – either smiling and happy constantly or ?
SEBBENS: ? just constantly beaten down. Yeah.
ICTMN: Instead of being human. Right? And having the full emotional experience.
SEBBENS: That?s it. And if we had done a film that was that side of that story, I don?t think a lot of Australia would have sat up and paid attention the way they have responded to this film.
ICTMN: Why not?
SEBBENS: Because people feel like they?ve heard it before, and they forget that there?s hundreds of thousands of stories to tell. And they?re getting to tell theirs every day on screen. Every time you turn on? Australian television, Australian screen needs to be braver and take a big step in their representation of real Australia.
ICTMN: MmHm.
SEBBENS: I think they feel like, ?We know that story. We watched Rabbit Proof Fence or we watched Sampson and Delilah. We get it guys.? Which is a really crappy attitude to have.
ICTMN: Sure.
SEBBENS: But the beautiful thing ? like you said, it?s not the white experience. I think that?s why the film?s done so well. Because, we?re at a stage in Australia where we have indigenous writers. We?ve got indigenous producers, indigenous directors, indigenous actors. It?s not the white person?s take on the indigenous story. It?s completely the indigenous person?s story, and therefore it becomes A Story, for anyone. And I think that?s why audiences can connect with it more, because we?re not going, ?OK, now we?re telling you an indigenous story.? We?re just telling you a story, about our family.
ICTMN: And how beautiful. And what a blessing.
SEBBENS: Yeah, man. Definitely.
ICTMN: And have the very diverse communities of Aboriginal people across the board, have people embraced it?
SEBBENS: So much. We knew they would. When I first read the script, I was just on the bed in tears, from laughter, from sadness. I walked out to my mom, and I was like, ?Mom. You?ve got to read this script.? And my mom was like, ?What? What?? [laughter]. We all knew. Tony knew when he was writing it, what he was on to. And Wayne [Blair, director]. We knew instantly in our hearts that our mob would respond to it and love it. And the beautiful surprise has been how the world has responded to it.
END