On Being Blackfella's Young Fella Edition 2 - Glenn Loughrey

Is Being Aboriginal Enough?

'I discovered no matter how good I was, I was never good enough.'

This is a story of identity: how one man experienced exclusion and a sense of unworthiness in Australian Society.  It is the story of growing up - blackfella's youngfella - and the struggle to assimilate into the dominant, white European society.

But the struggle, the search and the frustration leads to his uncovering a core question: is being Aboriginal enough?  Enough to make sense of life, enough to identify as a proud and free member of an ancient people in a society that stole its land, denied its richness and crushed its sense of identity?

The search also involved fear and disquiet; and conflict for the author as both an Aboriginal person and a Christian priest.  Can they co-exist, or are they mutually exclusive?

Thus, it is the ongoing story of his journey into a greater understanding of Aboriginality as a way of being human in this place; and along the way, a discovery that there is no such thing as Aboriginal spirituality, only Aboriginality...

Glenn Loughrey is an Anglican Priest in the Diocese of Melbourne and the Vicar of St Oswald’s, Glen Iris. He identifies as a First Nations Person and is proud to be Wiradjuri. He is an artist, writer and speaker whose style sits at the intersection of the two worlds in which he lives, the First Nation Heritage of his father and the Englishness of his mother. His art and writing recognise both the originality and the similarity of his two worlds and is an authentic attempt to keep them in conversation.