Q&A with Robert Eggington: on tackling Indigenous suicide rates | Indigenous peoples | The Guardian

Q&A with Robert Eggington: on tackling Indigenous suicide rates | Indigenous peoples | The Guardian


Show captionOpinion

Q&A with Robert Eggington: on tackling Indigenous suicide rates


Each week, a new guest hosts the @IndigenousX Twitter account. We’re inviting them to tell us about who they are

Fri 7 Feb 2014

Each week, a new guest hosts the @IndigenousX Twitter account to discuss topics of interest as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. In partnership with IndigenousX, we’re inviting its weekly host to tell us about who they are, what issues they’re passionate about, and what they have in store for us during their upcoming week.

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Tell us about yourself

My name is Robert Eggington, I am a Bibbulmun man from the South West of Australia. I am 57 and was born in Perth. My father was a military man and as a family we moved around various states living close to army depots. When I was seven years old we moved to Ipswich in Queensland for two years, and then to Western Sydney, in Villawood, where I completed both my primary and junior high school requirements.


I was the type of young boy who, like many young Aboriginal people, couldn’t adjust to and rebelled against a dominant education system that was racist and precluded the indifference of the minority. This had a very adverse impact on my schooling and I couldn’t wait to be free from its regulated control and the fact I felt I was being cleverly manipulated into what they wanted me to believe and become. As I got older, I also begun to understand that there were many other forms of knowledge that existed in this world that wasn’t a form of academia.

Aged 22, moved back to Perth and met my wife to be, Selina Kickett. We have three beautiful children – Robert Jnr (who passed away), Marika and Karinda, and we now have three beautiful grandchildren. I have worked at a grass roots level in Aboriginal community controlled organisations in Perth for the past 35 years. I have also worked at Dumbartung, which is a community cultural resource agency and gallery for the past 27 years.

What will you talk about on @IndigenousX?

I am going to talk about the issues which are priorities in our community: the epidemic status of Aboriginal youth suicide, incarceration rates, justice issues, history and personal views and experiences. I will also talk about cultural exploitation and the intellectual property rights of cultural knowledge and stories.

What issues are you passionate about?

The issues in our community which I am most passionate about is the grief that goes with the loss of young children to suicide and how families cope with the aftermath of that loss. I also deeply care about the rights for Aboriginal people to repatriated our sacred and significant cultural items and keep them secured in our own community depositories – this I believe gives us the right to archive, maintain and most importantly interpret our own history. It’s also about the importance to produce cultural materials and archives that tells the truth about the history of the genocide and colonisation of our people’s lives.

Who are your role models?

My role models without question are our young people who have passed away as a result of suicide – their deaths create within me a passion to keep fighting against all that is wrong in this world, and to keep on fighting the challenges that our young people face on a daily basis. They are the reason that I will always be a representative voice of those in our community who are voiceless and silenced by oppressive systems. My most precious role models are not within this world, but are with our great ancestors around the camp fires in the distant lands of time. They encourage me to give all I can to ensure their deaths were not in vain, and to allow others to become stronger from their passing.

What are your hopes for the future?

I hope the future will see the dissipating of the mandatory laws that are part of the Western Australian judiciary system and which incarcerate our young people at a rate many more times than that of non- Aboriginal people. This is the first and initial step to ensure the freedom of our people from the jail systems across our state.


I hope for a form of Aboriginal grass roots advocacy which could deter the epidemic rates of youth suicide by creating a stronger cultural resilience against racism and prejudices. The future needs to allow our people the right of self- determination and decision-making at a community level, which will ultimately empower both our political and spiritual sovereignty.