"They are our treasure"

For generations, Elders have served as cultural knowledge holders; paving the way for other First Nations women to follow. As NAIDOC Week approaches, we hear the incredible stories of trailblazing women who continue to inspire today.

- SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO sweeps through the backstage corridors of the Sydney Opera House with the casual confidence of someone who feels thoroughly at home. The 58-year-old soprano and composer brushes past racks of gold and red satin, sequins and tulle. She greets dancers who have just returned from the stage where they’ve performed a ballet, The Hum, for which she composed the score. Deborah takes a seat. Behind her, the view from Bennelong Point is all sparkling midnight blue sky and harbour. This is an extraordinary introduction to a quite extraordinary life. And she feels gratitude for it to every wise woman who has blazed a trail before her.

“I feel quite emotional about it,” she says of this year’s NAIDOC Week theme, ‘For Our Elders’. “The Elders are our treasure, they are our greatest wealth in any society, but for First Nations people, they are the most highly valued members of our community. They are that great and abiding resource of knowledge, and when I think of what they’ve managed to achieve in creating a resilient and vibrant community for First Nations people … I think of our Elders with a deep sense of gratitude.”

A Yorta Yorta and Yuin woman who was a member of the stolen generations, Deborah was raised in a white, working class family in the southern suburbs of Sydney. The first Indigenous person she remembers meeting was the pop star Jimmy Little, at the Miranda Fair shopping centre, when she was six years old. She had no idea then that the man who was introduced as “Uncle Jimmy” really was her uncle. Nor was she aware that he and Charles Perkins visited her adoptive parents and begged to take her home to her birth family.