Queers of the Desert

E J Milera (1992-95)

Edward John Milera (John Cross) was an Aboriginal man who lived and worked in Alice Springs from 1992 until he ended his own life in 1995. He made significant contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS in the Aboriginal communities of Central Australia, the participation of Aboriginal men in Central Australian gay social life, and the profile of Indigenous Australian queers nationally.

John lived openly with a white partner in the same house as his mother and extended family in Alice Springs. Thus he was one of the first 'out' Aboriginal gay men in Central Australia. He demonstrated publicly that such people can be valuable members of their community.

Born in Adelaide in 1963, he was the eldest of seven children of a Ngarrindjeri mother and a Narrunga father. From the age of two until he was twelve John lived with his family in Whyalla as part of a small but close-knit Aboriginal community.

Like many young gay men, John kept his developing sexuality to himself, only coming out in his late teens after a critical event with his then girlfriend:
"I re-assessed my life, and I told her I had these feelings I'd never explored before - which was towards men. And I think she had a fair idea, because we were very intimate with each other as well as really good friends. She went back home, and I started to go out to the gay bars."
Tape 1, Page 4

His sexuality was readily accepted by his mother who, as is so often the case, probably already knew. His father, however, remained distant until his twenty-first birthday. But John took his place on the Adelaide gay community and quickly found his feet in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal queer society. By 1982 he had met his life partner, Robert, and the two of them were to remain together until the end of John's life.

John completed a year at business college after high school and held a range of responsible positions including appointments in the Australian Taxation Office, Department of Mines and Energy and the Commonwealth Employment Office. However, he didn't really start to find some sense of fulfilment until he left the Public Service and took up the role of youth worker in an Adelaide Aboriginal community centre. He later gained a position as a volunteer coordinator there, which itself led to a job as assistant editor of the New Look Nunga News. Around this time John was instrumental in the establishment of Nungays; a support and coming out group for Aboriginal queers in Adelaide.

Subsequently John and Robert decided to try their luck living in rural Victoria with Robert's family, where John found another position as a youth worker for the local council. But things didn't work out being so close to Robert's family, and in 1992 they decided to move to Alice Springs. Within two months of arriving in town John had found a job as the men's HIV/AIDS outreach worker at Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.

In January 1993 John agreed to record an extensive oral history interview with Jim Wafer in Alice Springs for an article on homosexuality on Aboriginal Australia(Gays & Lesbians Aboriginal Alliance. (1994). Peopling the empty mirror: The prospects for lesbian & gay Aboriginal history, in Aldrich, R. (ed.) Gay perspectives II. Sydney: Australian Centre for Gay & Lesbian Research. pp1-62.). What follows is a series of quotations relevant to his time in Alice Springs taken from the 42 page transcript of that recording, giving John an opportunity to speak directly to his audience.

 


Tape 1, Page 15

What attracted you to Alice Springs?

Well, we'd both wanted to come up here because Robert's a tour coach driver, and we thought we'd come up here. He'd have more likely a chance in getting a job in the tourist industry, and me within the Aboriginal organisation - which now I'm working for the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. So, I mean, we're both fairly qualified in different fields, but we felt that this was the most likeliest place where our skills would be best utilised.

What's your present position here in Alice Springs?

Oh, I'm the HIV/AIDS Educator, which also involves me doing some counselling, and also working as a gay support worker. So that's tapping into the Aboriginal gay men here, and building up a rapport with them and basically supporting them as being homosexuals.

Can you tell me about the kinds of things that you do in your work here in Central Australia? Like, you mentioned the other day going to schools, and the beats, and counselling and things like that, so can you describe the kinds of things that you do?

Well, with the schools, I go in and do basically sex education; so it ranges from getting to know our bodies through puberty.

Do you do this with...?

Just with boys.

Do you do this in white schools, or Aboriginal schools, or mixed schools?

Tape 1, Page 16

Just Aboriginal kids. Yeah, it's the growing up stages, you know, puberty, and we look at pregnancy and female anatomy, right through until we finish up with STDs, HIV and AIDS information. A lot of that I have to adapt to being more of an exercise classes, or visual - such as videos and things - with a lot of the Aboriginal boys having lower literacy skills than their counterparts, non-Aboriginal counterparts. So, I have to make the lesson, an hour-and-a-half, make it interesting and well, challenging, I think, for them. From my stint last year with the Catholic school boys I think it's worked out really well, what I've done. They've come back every week wanting to know this and that, and they've asked a lot of questions. So it's been really great.

Other work that I do involves Chris and I. Chris works for the AIDS Council of Central Australia. He and I have just initiated a beat program, which entails hanging out at the beats and handing out condoms, leave them some info. This is purely anonymous, and it's basically sussing out the ones that are in the cubicles, you know, for an extended period of time, which, we think we know that they're doing the beat, and then popping these things under the doors and leaving it at that. Maybe talking to some of them that we know, or that may want to talk to us.

My main aim is just basically to try and tap into the Aboriginal men that use the beats here. And as we know, bisexual men are the hardest ones to reach, and that's the more likeliest place you're going to meet any bisexual men. So, it's still even hard trying to even approach them or whatever, unless they may know that you're a worker, which therefore might frighten them off, you know, the fear of being caught out or the community finding out. So it's a very difficult area that we're working in at the moment.

We also initiated a stencilling project, which we got a large stencil made up in Adelaide - a plastic stencil - which briefly reads: 'Stop AIDS; always use a condom; never share needles. For more information contact the AIDS Council, or Congress', and our phone numbers. We approached the Alice Springs Council in gaining permission to stencil all the public toilets in Alice Springs; Council approved that.

They also approved us to put baskets on the walls in the public toilets in town - by the Council lawns - so we can put condoms in there. And I think since we've done that, we've may well, we may be up to the two-and-a-half thousand condoms that we've already used.

Wow!

So, that's both a basket in the male and the female's, so we've gone through quite a lot of condoms. Now we've got to try to work out with the communicable diseases mob, whether or not they will come to the party and help us out with some condoms, because, as you know, it's a fairly costly affair to provide that service.

And I mean that's another strategy, because a lot of people won't go into Congress, where I work, because we have them around the place at various points and in the toilets, where they can get them for free - and that's lubrication as well. A lot of people won't use the AIDS Council, and a lot of Aboriginal people won't use the AIDS Council. So, that's basically the work that I'm doing at the moment.

Let's hope that I would be able to work with a health worker and a doctor at Congress; we're quite interested in looking at some bush medicines as an alternative therapy for positive people.

Do you do any counselling?

Yeah, I do counselling. I actually have a number of clients, some that are coming out - some young lads that are coming out - and just the gay community. I make time to visit them at least once or twice a week; just sit down, have a chit-chat, and: 'How's things? Blah, blah, blah.' Just basically there to support them.

This is not necessarily people who are HIV positive, it can be just gay people in general?

Tape 1, Page 17

Well gay people and straight people, too. I get quite a few women that come into my office and basically wish to talk to me about sexual practices which could be of high risk or low risk, you know, just wanting to find out about HIV/AIDS and the transmission modes. Quite a few of the females at work have actually popped into my office when they've got a bit of spare time, and have sat down and spoken to me. And you know, we're really talking intimate stuff.

So, I've sort of built up confidence in certain sectors of the community for the confidentiality side, which a lot of the Aboriginal mob fear. In a lot of Aboriginal organisations confidentiality just doesn't exist. So, it's starting to build up quite a bit now - people's trust in being able to approach me, to talk to me.

You do counselling with white people as well, or just Aboriginal people?

No, just Aboriginal mob. There was even a case of a relationship had split up, and I was asked if I could go and counsel.

Gay or straight?

A straight couple - if I could go and counsel the guy, because he was having a bit of suicidal tendencies. I don't know whether it's a gift that I've been given, without having a degree in psychology and the social welfare and whatever. But I'm an analytical type of person where I can see things on both sides of the fence, and I think that's basically what a lot of people why they've trusted me in coming to speak to me.

So the counselling side is very, very good, although I get annoyed when I get phone calls at night and I have to go out at night. But these are generally crisis calls, they are really in an all time low, or whatever, especially a couple of my clients that are coming out. They're clients which I will go straight around to see and to deal with, because I know that the coming out transition that you go through - the fear, the guilt, the shame and all that type of stuff. A lot of the gay work that I do, and the gay counselling, is just reflection upon my actual coming out, and from what I've noticed with other Aboriginal gay men in Adelaide.

How do you see the relationship between your gay identity and your Aboriginal identity? I mean, do you see yourself as being Aboriginal first and then gay, or gay first and then Aboriginal, or do you see the two identities as more or less being integrated?

Oh, I could get into trouble here. [Laughter.]

Just say what you feel.

Well I just think I'm an Aboriginal gay, you know, I'm an Aboriginal gay man. I don't think there's anything that really distinguishes them. I could say that I'm an Aboriginal gay Anglo-Saxon male, because I do accept my English background, and my Aboriginality is - but there, I suppose I would put Aboriginality first. I mean, that's ultimately what I am, is an Aboriginal, yeah, and then I'm gay, and then I'm also Anglo-Saxon. I just think they just all go together, I don't really like to put them into categories, or which one comes first or whatever. But I think, ultimately, Aboriginality is first.

Do you think that the term 'gay' has wide currency in Aboriginal communities?

What do you mean?

Well, do people use it very much? Would they use that rather than some other term, like 'cat', or 'poof' or...?

No, 'poof' is generally the word used, that would be more associated with the community. We try to educate straights that 'gay' is a lot more polite, a lot less derogatory than 'poof.' I don't care, I think we've just been told that 'poof' is a horrible word - I mean, ultimately we are 'poofs.' [Laughter.] I don't mind, although I do take some offence to being called a 'poof', I just say: 'Can you use the word "gay", or "camp"?' But no, a lot of the community would probably basically say 'poof.' I think a lot of the women use 'homosexual' or 'gay', they seem more understanding; but men use it, and I think they use it in the derogatory way.

Tape 1, Page 18

You mean the word 'poof'?

Yeah, I think they use it as a put-down. I see it more so in that light.

So do you think this attempt to get people to use the term 'gay' is having any effect, or...?

Well, down in Adelaide, yeah I had quite a bit of success in educating straights that 'gay' is the more appropriate word to use. Up here - it's not really talked a lot about up here. And I'm there as well as being a gay man and a worker, I take that attitude in my work that I don't force my values or attitudes upon other people. If it comes up in a conversation about homosexuality, well I'll talk about it, but if it's nothing being said, I basically won't say nothing. And I think that's just - what would you say? It's just commonsense, you know, in being polite. You don't force your lifestyle upon anybody else unless, if they want to know anything about it, well, I'll gladly talk to them, but other than that I don't go around and blatantly impose my sexuality upon people.

Do you see any differences in the way people view homosexuality in the places you grew up in South Australia, like say, Whyalla and Point Pearce in Adelaide, in the Aboriginal communities there, do you see any differences in the way homosexuality is perceived from the way that it's seen here in Central Australia?

I think it's basically the same. From the time since I've been here it's a subject which is not discussed a lot. It's just basically kept under the carpet, but if it is mentioned you hear a lot of the negative side of it.

What kinds of things do people say?

Well, that they're dirty, or they're deviates, and child molesters. Just all the negative side to being gay. I mean, I'm none of those. But that's basically all you'd really hear, and I think it's the same all around. I think that most of Australia - I mean, I've done quite a lot of travelling, and homosexuality, outside of...

If you are with your group, like in Adelaide we had a fairly strong network - the Aboriginal gays down there - so we socialised a lot. We lived together, and we did a lot of things together, but once you're removed from that and you're in a predominantly straight society - a straight Aboriginal community - well then, you don't hear a lot, and you don't camp it up as much. You don't do a lot of the things you would around a lot of gay people. I mean, down in Adelaide we'd go to a lot of the gay functions, like sports days, or the bowling, the baths. Go to the hotel, like the Colonel Light, and play pool and stuff. So we lived gay everyday. But up here it's a lot different. I'm dealing predominantly with a lot of straight people, as my supervisor said one day - I was just really happy and I did tend to camp it up a little bit - she said: 'Stop it.' But that was only in the sense that other people would take offence to it. So I sometimes have to watch myself. [Laughter.]

Tape 2, Page 5

From what you are saying, it sounds as though there is more homophobia here in Central Australia in the Aboriginal community, than what you found in Adelaide.

I think it's everywhere. You don't go out looking for it, but it's like yin and yang, good and bad exists everywhere and it depends upon who you with mix with.

I have great support from my colleagues at work, although not many have asked me whether I'm homosexual, I think a lot of them have taken the assumption that I am. That doesn't bother me. But the support shows at work, and I think if you've got that support in a working environment, where your colleagues know that you do gay support work or bisexual work or whatever, it shows that things are changing to a certain extent.

People are accepting that: 'There are gay and bisexual men and women out there, and that we, as straight people, have to learn not to judge those people.' And I think that's the message I'm getting from work, is that people are starting to sit down and listen... and are willing to learn.

I think ultimately, hopefully, in the end that a lot of people will start accepting homosexuality as another sub-culture of the Aboriginal lifestyle. Although in traditional settings, I think, it's a lot longer off because of the traditional way of life. Your role in life is set out; twelve, thirteen, you become a man - you do this and you do that. So I think in traditional lifestyles it will still be a thing in the closet.

Tape 2, Page 6

But you mentioned the other day that you'd heard something about institutionalised homosexuality in traditional culture. What do you know about homosexuality in traditional Aboriginal society?

Well I can only go on my background, my traditional background. It has been known in South Australia that there were some forms of, as you would say in a European term, 'homosexual acts' being done amongst males. One example is there is a cave painting...

What about here in Central Australia, have you heard about homosexuality in the traditional culture here?

No, well I don't want to comment.

You couldn't comment, right, okay.

Its not my place.

Yeah. What do you think are the reasons behind homophobia in Aboriginal communities?

Christianity, of course, being installed! I mean, my parents grew up on a predominantly Church of England mission, and I think that happened all around Australia that Christians, the missionaries, got to the Aboriginal mob first. There was even the days of you couldn't speak your language, you got flogged by the minister because you spoke - you're heathen. So a lot of the homophobia stems from Christianity, it seems - 'proper morals.' Like, a lot of my older aunties and that, I could see that's where they're coming from, because it was pumped into them day in, day out, on the mission. I honestly believe that's where it all stems from.

Tape 2, Page 10

What about here in Central Australia, have you had a chance to see whether Aboriginal men are more likely to go with other Aboriginal men, or white men?

Well there again it depends, because I think those from interstate are probably more likely to go with white men. The ones here, I think, are more likely to go with black men. But that's something I'm not really sure on anyway. It's too soon to be able to give a definite answer to that one.

I know this sounds like a very general question, but just any ideas you might have about the experience of being Aboriginal gay in a predominantly white heterosexual culture - what's it like?

Horrible. [Laughter.]

Why?

Oh, you're looked upon as being an Aboriginal in the white community no matter where you go, so you're always stuck with that. I'd like to be known as just another human being, irrespective of - even though I'm not that dark - but irrespective of my racial background. I'd like to be known as a person. That's the most outstanding thing, I think, in a general white community...

Especially a lot of people, they see Aboriginals, they don't think they're going to meet an Aboriginal as educated as I am, or as knowledgeable, or worldly. That sort of freaks them out. I think that's basically the main thing. If they know you're gay, well then, that's another added disadvantage in a white community, because that's also a taboo topic, or subject, within the normal heterosexual white communities. So, they both discriminate.

But I suppose that's a challenge in the same way.

Yeah. Well the same with Aboriginality, the gay bit, it's also a challenge to disprove a lot of people's stereotyped views about gay men...

 

Transcript of Interview with Edward Milera (John Cross). Recorded January 1993 at Alice Springs with Jim Wafer. Darwin: NT Archives Service, Oral History Unit.
©  (1993) Jim Wafer & NT Archives Service, Oral History Unit. Used with permission.

 


In the year following the interview John, together with Phil Walcott, Ronnie White, Colin Ross, Matthew Cook, Allan Cohen and others, organised a national event for Indigenous Australian queers called Anwernekenhe ("ours" in Arrernte; the language of Alice Springs). Held at Hamilton Downs station; 74 km northwest of Alice Springs from October 31 to November 4, it involved over 60 Indigenous Australian gay men and transgenders from across the country and was possibly the first forum of its kind to be held anywhere in the world.

As one of the attendees reported, Anwernekenhe was a watershed event in Indigenous queer politics in Australia and a turning point for national Indigenous HIV/AIDS strategies.

 

At this landmark gathering, Indigenous gay men and transgender delegates had a national forum through which, for the very first time, they had an opportunity to voice their concerns and experiences. Consequently there was a lot of unresolved anger and many unanswered questions which had been waiting to 'come out', which was both the right and the appropriate thing to happen. This first historical gathering led to the Anwernekenhe Report, and was also the catalyst for the genesis of a national recognition and awareness of Indigenous gay men and transgenders as an identifiable group. This also resulted in the formation of the AFAO National Indigenous Gay and Transgender Project and its Steering Committee, into which each state and territory could now have direct input through their individual representative.

Gary Lee (1998). Anwernekenhe II: 'Us Mob'. National AIDS Bulletin.

Apart from the enormous amount of work he put into getting representatives from all parts of the country and obtaining funding for it, John also made substantial efforts to get the local Aboriginal community to recognise the significance of the conference. He even organised for a group of male traditional owners from the Hamilton Downs area to perform a welcoming dance for the conference; an extraordinary achievement in itself. Although many people lent their assistance, John was really the driving force behind this very risky activist intitative. It was a hugely successful event at many levels and the fulfilment of a long time dream for him.

But, while there were key people who backed him all the way, friends report that he found the prevalent homophobia in the Aboriginal community of Alice Springs a daily burden to deal with. Whether it was this or other reasons in his life remains unknown, but it was not long after the success of Anwernekenhe that John began to show signs of significant depression.

He took time off work on stress leave over the ensuing months and talked about the option of changing jobs citing pressure, not only by the organisation he worked for, but the demands of his position as a solo practitioner within it. By mid-March friends recall that he was sinking deeper and not responding well to medication. He applied for a new position in a local Indigenous media organisation and was awaiting an outcome.

Then, on a Thursday night in April 1995, following a barbecue with friends and family where he appeared quite bright and responsive; after everyone else had gone to bed, John hung himself on the back veranda of his house. Robert awoke at some point and realising John was not in bed went looking for him. He found John hanging from a beam having kicked a chair out from underneath himself. He was dead by that time.

Phil Walcott, writing the evaluation report for Anwernekenhe, provided the following obituary for John.

 

John Cross died in April aged 32. His vision and energy were instrumental in the development of a conference initiative which he helped to bring to fruition; a long-held dream of his and others. What he was instrumental in helping to establish, we who are left to carry on with the work must take courage from. His conviction to carrying on the dream of a more equitable representation of and by Aboriginal people in their endeavours for better health care across the broad spectrum of health services available throughout Australia is shared by us all. We will miss his continued input while at the same time considering ourselves to be glad for his life, his teaching and his love.

Walcott, P. (1995). Anwernekenhe: First national Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander gay men and transgender health conference. Hamilton Downs, Northern Territory October 31- November 4, 1994. Canberra: Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.

John Hobson, with assistance from Jim Wafer & Phil Walcott.

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