I’m An Aboriginal Woman With Chinese Heritage — Here’s What It’s Like

Over the past 10 years, I feel like there’s been a surge in content about being mixed race. From countless op-eds to formal academic research into the perception of multiracial individuals, there seems to be endless analysis of people who cross preconceived sociocultural lines. However, most of these don't go beyond analysing a biracial experience or involve the experience of multiethnic people who are also Indigenous. 

I primarily identify as an Aboriginal person, who has an aggressively Scottish last name from my wonderful (white) father. I report consistently on First Nations issues and overwhelmingly engage in public life as a Bundjalung Githabal and Worimi Saltwater woman. 

However, I occasionally seem to shock people on Instagram when I start posting Lunar New Year content, share a meme about the experiences of the Chinese diaspora or occasionally write captions in Mandarin and Cantonese. I’m often accused of cultural appropriation, which I laugh at, and at least once a year I almost feel like I'm “coming out” on my socials as a person of Chinese descent. 

Lunar New Year is one of the most significant celebrations in Chinese cultures. It's a time to come together with loved ones and perform a number of traditions to bring in luck for the next year. With Lunar New Year approaching this week, I feel the need to deeply reflect on my heritage, my relationship to a multicultural upbringing and the social taboos about First Nations people being mixed-race. 

Broadly in Aboriginal culture, people will ask you for “your family” and this triggers an oral recitation of your lineage where you list your “family names”. One of the family names I belong to is Ping, a Worimi and Cantonese family from Karuah Mission in NSW. 

I grew up being aware of my Southern Chinese heritage. In my grandparents' house, there were dot paintings next to jade carved in the shape of dragons and guardian lions. Throughout my childhood, my mother and my grandmother were members of the Local Aboriginal Lands Council and the Sydney Chinese Women’s Association. I did not perceive these things to be different and my family never treated these things as strange or incompatible. To me it was just connecting to my community and honouring my ancestry. 

I’ve never, however, identified as “Chinese-Australian”. I believe that there’s an element to these labels that reflect how we engage in public life and I'm acutely aware that I do not move through the world being perceived as a Chinese person. But this heritage does distinctly inform how I interact with the world, in both negative and positive ways. 

My first experience with racism was at 6 years old in my regional town when kids would avoid sitting next to me, and said that being part-Chinese meant that I would “make them sick”. I remember going home to my parents crying and asking what my peers meant by that. My family then had to explain what racism and Sinophobia were. 

From this negative experience, I became a radically anti-racist child and this increased with growing racist experiences related to being First Nations. In a way, this experience was the seed of my whole media career.

While many mixed-race op-eds focus on the tensions of belonging to multiple cultural communities, I have found many more positive experiences from being Aboriginal and of Chinese descent. At the most basic level, I got access to some of the most delicious food in the world, Cantonese food, and a solid yum cha gossip sesh always hits the sweet spot with my Cantonese friends. I was able to grow up with deeply complementary cultural values of love of ancestry, connection to history, pride in culture, allegiance to family and being aware of the impacts of my individual choices on other people as a communal culture. 

Even though there are key differences between the cultures, my family was able to navigate through different communication styles and cultural nuances to connect to what we share. This intercultural experience from a young age gave me a love for learning languages, cultural awareness and accessibility that I try to bring into my work every single day. 

A key hurdle I've encountered is some people’s inability to understand that I can be Aboriginal, as well as something else. Often, I feel like there is an expectation of Aboriginal people that we must be “all or nothing” and that our legitimacy or authenticity as Indigenous people is questioned unless we are. 

This comes from deeply entrenched stereotypes about Aboriginal people which have outsiders dictating what we should look like, act like, where we should live or how we speak. These stereotypes also tend to frame Aboriginal people in isolation, that we should be “pure” or “full” Aboriginal and only exist within an Aboriginal public space performing to superficial expectations from non-Aboriginal people. . 

However, this essentialism is completely divorced from the lived realities of Aboriginal communities across the continent. We are like any other group of people, and we can be deeply curious and excited by difference. We have always interacted outside our nation groups, spoken multiple languages, learnt cultural nuances and respectfully engaged across preconceived social lines. 

I only have to look to my Aboriginal family tree to know this to be true. According to our oral histories, my families across Bundjalung and Worimi have been having consensual interracial marriages for over 150 years with English, Scottish, Indian, Cantonese and Māori ancestors living amongst the community they married into. 

I have grown up in a household excited by language, food, dance, music, celebration and difference. I see my multicultural family as my strength and I always seek to honour my ancestry as respectfully as possible. These are the experiences and histories I hold close to my heart when I share a Lunar New Year meal with my family. It may not be “authentic” to others but it feels right to my family and it’s a way that we continue to honour and love my ancestors.

For all who observe, kung hei fat choi/gong xi fa cai and I hope you have a prosperous new year.