As part of Social Sciences Week 2025, Flinders University hosted From the Personal to the Political: Understanding the Impacts of Colonialism Through Storytelling. The event was supported by the ANZSOC Local Event Support Scheme and by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, which awarded one of only ten Spark Grants nationally, the sole Spark Grant awarded in South Australia this year.
Professor Marinella Marmo opened the event with an Acknowledgement of Country, partly in Kaurna language. She emphasised this as more than a formality: it was an invitation to reflect on the legacies of oppression, the role of criminal justice in marginalisation, and the urgent need for unity at a time of division. Reference was made to the recent violent assault on Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne, underscoring the ongoing realities of colonial violence and racism.
The evening foregrounded storytelling as resistance. Rather than abstract theorising, participants were invited to listen to deeply personal narratives with profound political resonance, stories that remind us that healing and justice are inseparable from truth-telling.
Truth-Telling and Shared Responsibility
Professor Leanne Weber shared reflections from her book The Chosen Son, which recounts the story of her Aboriginal brother growing up in a White Adelaide family during the 1950s–70s. She spoke candidly about her family’s inability to help him thrive, and the grief, guilt, and shame that followed. Weber argued that settler Australians must also shoulder the burden of truth-telling, not leaving it solely to First Nations survivors. Sharing these difficult family stories, she suggested, is one way to reckon with our ongoing colonial history.
Drawing on Indigenous memoirs, the Stolen Generations Inquiry, and scholarly work by Anna Haebich and others, Weber situated her personal account within the broader history of forced child removal. She highlighted the destruction of kinship networks, those “overlapping circles” of care and solidarity, that no white family could replace. For Professor Weber, the act of writing became a process of moving from being “trapped in the personal” toward a recognition of collective responsibility.
Healing, Identity and Allyship
Michelle Gissara, a proud Kardu Diminin / Kardu Yek Neninh woman and Indigenous Doctoral Research Fellow at RMIT, shared her personal and family story. Her mother, part of the Stolen Generations, was taken at age four, and Michelle herself was later separated from her mother and estranged from her Aboriginal family. Growing up in a white family, she described the confusion, alienation, and trauma of living “between two worlds.”
Reconnecting with family and culture as an adult, learning her Aboriginal name Menmerru, her totems, languages, and kinship networks, was described as a turning point. Yet she also spoke to the enduring impacts: struggles with self-image, mental health, suicidal thoughts, CPTSD, and imposter syndrome as a mixed-race woman with lighter skin.
Gissara emphasised that what some might call “resilience” she understands instead as cultural healing – survival rooted in family, community, and Country. She urged non-Indigenous people to engage in allyship by:
As she reminded the audience: “What you tolerate becomes the norm.” Allyship, she stressed, is not a label to claim but an ongoing process recognised by community when actions speak louder than words.
Dr Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges, and the Adelaide University Indigenous Collections and Archives Coordinator. He also spoke of his personal experiences and highlighted the importance of investing in your generation. A well-known and award-winning author, he has worked as an arts administrator, academic, curator, and novelist. His novel Calypso Summer was selected for the 2015 International Youth Library White Raven list, which recognises books of universal themes and exceptional artistic and literary style. His other works of fiction include Songs That Sound Like Blood, the Game Day series co-authored with NBA player and Olympian Patty Mills, My Spare Heart, and the Uncle XBox series. He strongly believes that working with young people and writing for a young audience is pivotal to changing mentalities and fostering lasting social impact.
A Collective Call
The event closed with audience engagement, reflecting on the power of writing, lived experience, and cultural storytelling to confront colonial legacies and envision a more just future.
