This is the best summary I could come up with:

It was one of the places visited on Charles Perkins' Freedom Ride of 1965, just two years before the referendum that would give the Commonwealth power to legislate on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and have our population counted in official statistics.

As we peer ahead to whatever October 14 will end up being, it stirs up deep-seated painful emotions caused by a hidden war that is waged on the inside daily: racism.

Last week, the ABC reported that peak bodies for Indigenous mental health were calling on politicians to engage in more respectful discussions around the referendum and that members of the federal Coalition had declined to meet with representatives.

That early compulsion to prove myself worthy was compounded by messages about tackling stereotypes that Aboriginal people are inherently dirty, lazy, and dumb.

Fighting an invisible force that pushed me to work ever harder but equally diminished every achievement because of that feeling that there was something inherently flawed in my very being.

My colleague Stan Grant, the formidable Professor Marcia Langton, and of course, the great Adam Goodes, just to name a few whose stories we've heard.

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