I believe racism has a huge impact on mental health and depression. You’re out there doing your own thing and trying to live your life, and then you’ve got someone having a go at you because of who you are. And I think later on if it happens to you a few times, I think it has a massive effect on you. And you sorta sit back and you think about “Why are these people having a go at me because of who I am? We’re made to feel like we’re not equal and isolated from society, and this spans from the way that the media portrays us, a lot of the time, negatively. So, there’s not a true portrayal of who we are. You don’t even see ATSI people on mainstream TV Yeah. Mental health and racism I think do go hand in hand. Whether you don’t know if it’s happening to you, you still feel very bogged down, you feel heavy, you feel like that everything you do is having to be a chore because you’ve got all these things to come up against as soon as you leave the house.
Whether it’s with a taxi driver, a shop, work, it’s as soon as you leave that sanctuary of home. Yeah, it’s become quite heavier. I remember I’d never set foot in a pub for fear of either being assaulted or being rejected. Night clubs. You’d travel somewhere, you’d sleep in a car, you wouldn’t book a motel room unless you’d have a Caucasian friend… Go and tell him to book the room. Having to live with that everyday, and then having racism on top of that, yeah, it just creates anxiety and it creates depression over time.