[Nooky]
Respect.
Respect for ourselves, for our culture, for each other.
It helps us stand tall and be the warriors we always have been.
Our kids look to us, their mob, mums and dads, aunties, uncles, nans and pops, Elders, mates, to help show them the way.
But these days, there's lots of other voices they're hearing online and on social media.
And they're teaching our kids all kinds of bad, disrespectful stuff about women and girls.
Stuff that can lead to violence.
Violence against women isn't part of our culture.
It never has been.
So we need to drown out the noise from those bad influences and turn up our voices.
Not just online, but everywhere.
Because when we teach our kids respect for themselves, culture, Country and each other, things change and those disrespectful influencers, they lose. Because we've turned up respect.
Which is why I started We Are Warriors.
[We Are Warriors]
I noticed pretty early on that music was healing to me. That's why I continued to do it.
It kept me out of trouble and it kept me kind of regulated.
The microphone was like a therapy session, you know what I'm saying? It's like all the frustrations I was feeling would be put into the microphone and the microphone was like the best listener, so all it did was listen to what I had to say, it didn't talk back, it didn't, you know, say negative things, it allowed me to just let it all out, use it to create something good.
I feel like that was the power for me.
We Are Warriors is an organisation I started about two years ago now.
The through-line of We Are Warriors is that you can't be what you can't see, so I kind of set out to highlight and amplify these stories of Blak success and get it across to the kids and we do that through our events, the content we create and our workshop series that we do in community.
You know what the kids can get from these workshops is all about healthy relationships and respect for people, respect for other genders and other people's, you know, walks of life and other people's stories.
We're in these rooms and everybody's sharing. The young men are sharing, the young women are sharing, and they're sharing their experiences and blending them to one, to make one message.
The We Are Warriors program helps build respectful relationships by firstly seeing Corey as a positive role model, creating a safe space for them to be vulnerable with their feelings and their emotions and also looking at, you know, how to cope with things that might be quite difficult or challenging for them in their life.
To be able to build their capacity to express their emotions appropriately, I feel that it's helped them re-engage within school and also helped build their confidence and their self-efficacy and overall self-esteem, which helps foster developing positive relationships.
Program makes me feel proud of myself, it teaches me a lot about respect.
I just feel more confident about myself.
You're able to channel frustrations and emotions and channel them into creating good and use them to fuel your creativity, and that's, that was for me the whole reason why I got into it.
Like, when you're able to evaluate yourself and your mental health, your physical health, looking inside of yourself and healing traumas that might be there that you might not even know are there, especially when there's a youth we're talking about, like, they don't understand these things yet.
So to get in there and be able to address them and address them without even trying to, you know, it just so happens that the power of music and creativity, it has that good healing energy in it, so it just does the work for you.
This has like, changed me heaps, you know, like it's made me a different person.
I always used to muck up, I always used to do naughty stuff, you know, and just run amok basically. But after this, music just calms me. And when I'm frustrated and angry music's key.
You can go outside, get some fresh air and chuck on some music and I'm right, you know.
It's just all about just learning who you are and be proud of who you are.
Just being proud of to be an Aboriginal, you know, because not many people have that privilege.
At the centre of it is about, you know, Blak success.
But involved with that is healthy relationships, healthy boundaries, respect for yourself, respect for others.
And I think, you know, learning these things through the power of music, it does have that knock-on effect to work towards preventing family violence, because these workshops are able to do these things, but kids can have fun while they're doing it.
[Nooky]
So let's be loud and proud.
Let's raise our voices and teach our kids about respect every day in our communities, because respect for ourselves, our culture, our Country, and each other can drown out the voices of disrespect. Anywhere.
It's time to pump up the volume. Let's Turn Up Respect.
