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By Lamisa H. “Arriving each year with sailing craft propelled by monsoon winds, stories about the prophets of Islam travelled to the Australian mainlands long before European colonisers did.” Australianama Most of the time, when I ask my South Asian friends if they feel Australian, they reply with a hesitant or sharp “no”, even though most of them were born and raised right here in Sydney. When I press, they respond that they have never felt a true sense of belonging or association with Australian culture and by extension, it’s history. As if their place, usually as a first-generation Australian, is left without a historical story to inhabit or one that reflects their experiences of the world. Samia Khatun’s book seeks to rectify this, as it challenges the suffocating monolingualism of Australian history, weaving together the stories of various peoples colonised by the British Empire to chart a history of South Asian diaspora. A few months ago, I was taken back to memory lane when Samia found me on Facebook. She had not seen me since I was a little girl, but reached out to invite me to the launch of her anticipated book, Australianama: the South Asian Odyssey in Australia. She told me that the book opening was dedicated to her mother, so she was tracking down all the children her mother had raised. The prologue begins with a story of her mother, outlining how Samia’s journey had begun when she abandoned the migrant narrative of ‘Destination: West’ in a south-western hospital and sought to inhabit another story. As a writer, filmmaker, and cultural historian, Samia has held research fellowships in Berlin, Dunedin, New York and Melbourne. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, spending about a decade in carefully curated research and writing to give stories in colonised tongues the historical justice they deserve (fan-girl!). I knew Samia’s mother, Eshrat, as Shabhnam Aunty. I spent most of my childhood in her little brown house surrounded by sugar cane trees taller than the fence. Seeing this book dedicated to Shabhnam Aunty really touched me, and as a South Asian Australian, I connected to the story this book was telling. KASASOL AMBIA, THE BENGALI BOOK IN THE DESERT When in the hospital back in 2009, Samia came across front-page news about a copy of a nineteenth century Quran discovered in arid Australia. Intrigued as a historian, she traveled to a 150 year old mosque in Broken Hill to investigate, only to realise the book was not a Quran at all: It was a Sufi- Poetry book named Kasasol Ambia (The Stories of Prophets), written in her mother tongue (Bangla). The immediate question was: How did this book get here? In order to allow this book to truly sing, Samia Khatun was confronted with the gruelling task of relearning Bangla and listening to the book rather than dissecting it. The book’s original mislabelling exposes a deep issue with the way non-European history and knowledge is approached. It is essentially treated as something of the past, not allowing the texts to speak for themselves and play a part in the modern world. Historians lack of engagement with books such as Kasasol Ambia, Samia explains, “robs the poetry of the ability to perform its purpose: to imaginatively transport people to the past. These readings, though from different contexts and historical moments, all share the problem of using interpretive techniques of the colonised rule, which operate by transforming knowledges of the colonised into dead, inert artefacts that have no place in the imagined future.” White history actively erases other versions of history. When we uncover an alternative version of history, we are not dismissing white history, but rather recovering what has been lost and pushing it forward into the light. Western historians played a key role in painting a picture that not only ordered people into a racial hierarchy but also their knowledges-- turning colonised people’s knowledge into “dead artefacts” that could not bring any value to the present or future. I would never have imagined that there was a 150 year old history waiting to be told, and that there was a book's worth of brown history in Australia we were never taught. THE LEGEND OF THE CAMELEERS Instead of the tired narrative of the first fleet and penal settlement in 1788, I wish history teachers would delve into the legend of the 'Afghan' cameleers a little more. Often the history we are given shows only the results of historical moments, but simultaneously erases the people, places and processes that led up to that particular event. White history tells us that there are camels in Australia, but fails to really address why such an animal was there to begin with, leaving me to wonder, who were the people that guided the camel’s reins and where were they? The thirty-one so-called Afghans that arrived with 124 camels in 1866 were not all Afghans, but camel owners; from Afghanistan; India, Pakistan and Egypt, grouped under the umbrella term of ‘Afghan’. Brought into the spotlight of the Monga Khan posters you’ve seen all over Sydney, a lot more people are now aware that there were actually migrations of South Asian people before, during and after the White Australia Policy. During the 1860s, forty years before Federation, British colonisers realised that they needed camels to navigate the unforgivable terrain that is middle - Australia. The ‘Afghans’ became pivotal in building the country’s economy before motor transportation came about in the 1920s, and were instrumental in building the 54 hour train track beginning in Adelaide and ending in Darwin, aptly named the ‘Ghan’, as a shortened version of ‘Afghan’. The Australian government forbid the men from bringing their wives or families so many of them started marrying Aboriginal women, forming new Indo-Aboriginal and Afghani-Aboriginal communities. These communities were flourishing, with many becoming Muslim and others following values or beliefs that were seen as opposing Australian values. Therefore, at Federation (1900) the government refused to give any of these ‘Afghan Cameleers’ the right to citizenship, which forced many of them to leave Australia. In a 1925 New York Times Article, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce addressed the White Australia Policy, claiming that “the immigration law is not directed at any particular race. Its object is to preserve our standard of living and to guard against the disruption of our economic position”. This (thinly-veiled racist) sentiment rang false though, because the ‘Ghans’ were the key to building the economy. TAKING BACK AUSTRALIA When doing some further research for this piece, I wandered the library in hopes to find something of substance. Instead, I stumbled upon Mark Latham’s book ‘Take Back Australia’. I was immediately intrigued by the white man that looked like the love-child of ScoMo and Gordon Ramsey on the cover. In an article titled, ‘Leave Australia Day Alone’, he writes: “We need to find new and smarter ways of ensuring each indigenous Australian benefits from the unique advantages of the Western civilisation that arrived here in 1788 -- economic development, advanced health, services, education, housing, democracy and the rule of law.” I could not believe something like this was sitting published in a local library. The statement itself is an act of erasure of Aboriginal geographies, disregarding any history other than white. It rings true to the message of Australianama. Our history, culture and civilisation “remains organised around a myth at the foundation of modern Western thought, the claim that the knowledge systems of Europeans are more advanced than the epistemological traditions of the people they colonised.” The country’s history is still taught to us in a specific coloniser-praising way and our government policy is still dictated by our overwhelmingly white - male-dominated cabinet where we still have policies driven by racism and prejudice towards groups we perceive to be minorities. In this context, Australianama serves a breath of fresh air and brand new insight for a young Australian like myself. ALTERNATIVE HISTORY This piece isn’t about me screaming from a rooftop, “Guess what! I’m finally Australian because I have South Asian history and Australia does too!” It’s more so about re-evaluating the lens we perceive our history, bringing non - European epistemology to the foreground of our personal knowledge. Kasasol Ambia was the gateway for Samia to listen to non-English-language history texts, and treat them as objects that have true potential in shaping the way we view past, present and future. In reading Australianama, it became clear that parallel histories exist and that there is a wealth of knowledge, tracks and stories waiting to be uncovered. The myth of a homogenous Australian identity is as harmful as the myth of white Australia. The privilege of having history on this land came at the expense of colonisation, and to persist in only nurturing one version of history over every other is to further a damaging narrative. Uncovering this hidden history didn’t make me feel more Australian, rather it reminded me of the importance to connect with the Bengali and Muslim parts of myself I don't pay enough attention to. Lead Editor: Irisa R.

Irisa R. and Mariam H. Here is a collection of visionaries whose fearlessness, grit and perseverance is a testament to what they achieved. Many of these women weren’t easy to find while some you may have already heard of. Even when we rediscovered some of them in obscure archives, we could feel their presence. It would be insincere to pretend they were merely misplaced in history; some of them were footnotes in other people’s achievements, some of them were deliberately silenced and some were seen as too disruptive for their times. They all dared to live their life by their own values and for this reason their stories feel as vivid now as they did when they first emerged as artists, writers, activists and revolutionaries. So please, settle in and enjoy the ride. Amrita Sher - Gil; The Painter Amrita Sher-Gil’s achievements are so dense and illustrious that it’s hard to find a starting point, but she is now celebrated as one of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early 20th century. She first picked up a paintbrush at the age of eight but it wasn’t until she painted ‘Young Girls’ in 1932 that she won the grandest prize in Europe. She spent years in Paris as an acclaimed artist but later recalled feeling, ‘haunted by an intense longing to return to India...feeling in some strange way that there lay [her] destiny as a painter.’ Therefore, when the wheels of India's independence movement truly began moving she was inspired to create art that centred the experiences of Indian women. She succeeded (in every possible way) when she began painting Desi women, with a level of tenderness, sensitivity and cultural appreciation that was unheard of at that time. Elizabeth Choy; A Fearless Heroine When you think of a real - life James Bond. You need to think - Elizabeth Choy (minus the creepiness and low-key alcoholism). She started working as a nurse in Singapore during World War II and when Japan started occupying some of the most dangerous and tightly secured prison camps, she made it her mission to smuggle medicine, letters and food supplies to the prisoners of war. At one point the Japanese forces captured both her and her husband and a soldier later described in horrific detail how they tortured her. Although this torture was known to force anyone into speaking, she kept her word and never revealed the names of the people she helped, effectively saving their lives. It’s by no surprise that she was given the endearing nickname of ‘Gunner Choy.’ She went on to teach at some of the most prestigious private schools in London, and while doing so she always maintained strength in her identity, refusing to ever take off her traditional Chinese wear. If that wasn’t enough, she became the first and only female member of the Legislative Council prior to Singapore's independence from Britain, expanded the Singapore volunteer corp, and founded the Singapore School for the Blind. For all her dedication and services, Elizabeth was awarded the Pingat Bakti Setia (long service medal) in 1973 by her Government. Meena Keshwar Kamal; The Warrior Known as Meena, this Afghani woman was a force to be reckoned with. At the age of just 20, she started the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). It’s key goals were social justice, gender equality, the separation of religion from the state and the restoration of democracy. In 1981, to help spread the message of RAWA she started her own magazine called Payam-e-zan (Woman’s message). The distribution of these magazines is worthy of any spy thriller. RAWA volunteers would walk around the markets and spread the message of the magazine, until they formed partnerships and found distributors. It was published in Farsi, Pashto and Urdu and then distributed throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. The operation was illegal and extremely risky, where if any person was found to be engaging in such activities they could be jailed or killed. Meena also set up undercover schools to educate women and children seeking refuge. Whilst also establishing a public hospital and a handicraft centre for women that fled to Pakistan, to encourage financial independence. Meena epitomises how thousands of Afghani women use their strength, resilience and spirit to be true agents of change. She is remembered and honoured by the countless number of Afghani women who continue to fight for their freedom. Kanitha Samsen; The Humanitarian Lawyer Before Amal Clooney or Gloria Steinem there was was Kanitha Samsen. Born in 1929, she was encouraged by her parents to take her education seriously and she was given opportunities that few women in Thailand could have dreamed of at that time. By the age of 30, Kanitha had completed an International Law degree at Columbia University, a Social Welfare degree at Howard University and an International Relations degree in Geneva. When she returned to Thailand she spent years travelling around rural regions in order to understand how to improve services for women, whilst also offering Pro - Bono (free legal) services to the community. She opened her home to so many abused, elderly or unemployed women that the government started bringing vulnerable women to her doorstep. By 1980, she established the first ever women’s shelter, focused on housing, meals and health referrals, which aided thousands and thousands of Thai women. Within a few years she took her law degree to town and ended up pushing for legislation that helped women access health care and education. In 1990, to support these changes in legislation she introduced a policy centre focused on analysing the unique socio - economic and political issues facing Thai women. Later on in her life, she recognised that women tended to be excluded from religious Buddhist ministries so she became ordained as a maechee (a lay nun) and opened up a nunnery where women could be included in the most sacred religious circles. Googoosh; Singer (disco queen) Bell Bottom sleeves, funky music and a killer signature pixie cut, wasn’t even the half of it with pop singer Googoosh. A singer and performer from the age of 3, by the ‘60s she had released hit after hit in over seven languages, danced in nearly every style and had become one of the most successful movie stars. Her music was so energetic and fun that she became known as a disco queen, always performing in flamboyant dresses, skirts or pantsuits. She was also the first female protagonist to ever star in an Iranian film (Bita). After the Iranian revolution in 1979 her music was banned so her art became a symbol of freedom. She refused to leave Iran for twenty one years, even though that meant giving up the right to perform her songs live, staying loyal to the country that nurtured her talents and catapulted her onto the world stage. In recent years, Googoosh’s music has found a second life. It has been sampled by Kanye West, shared by Beyonce and celebrated all across the world. In 2000, Googoosh made a comeback at the age of 50, releasing new music. Homai Vyarawalla; Every Hipster's photography Heaven When we think of the ‘20s we are dazzled by photographs of flapper dresses and pearls, but look who we’ve missed! Homai Vyarawalla’s photographs were so incredibly AESTHETIC; elegant and purposeful. She was the first female photojournalist in India (and one of the first in the world). Her first collection of photographs were exquisite and were published in The Illustrated Weekly of India (albeit under her husband's name). They are now what we call ‘candid’ but at that time they were innovative. She was capturing Indian women, draped in their beautiful sari's while chatting to their friends or women just accidentally (perfectly) modelling on a rocky cliff (you know how it be). She spent most of the ‘40s photographing every major political leader during India’s fight for freedom. Thereby giving a dignified face and voice to many activists, whose fight for independence was considered far too controversial by most international media outlets. Begum Rokeya; The 1900s Stephen King (If he was a sassy, Desi feminist writer) Begum Rokeya emerged as a political comedian and writer around 100 years before this style of writing even had a name. She launched her literary career in 1902 with an essay called Pipasa (Thirst) but she is remembered as a true literary genius for Sultana’s Dream (1908) and the novels that followed. A sci - fi novel set in the future where only women held positions of power and everyone owned flying cars, solar ovens and other futuristic inventions. It was a perfect example of satire and captured the absurdity of inequality, especially in a time where women were barred from most positions of leadership. She also defied her parents (who were Mughal aristocrats) and learnt her local tongue (Bengali) so that she could better understand her community and establish schools aimed at educating girls. Many of her novels were set in a fantasyland called ‘Ladyland.’ Let’s please make this into a movie (asap). Nadia Anjuman; The Revolutionist Disguised As A Poet Born in Herat, Afghanistan’s renowned literary epicentre, Nadia grew up during the tumultuous times of Taliban rule. In defiance of their rulings she enrolled in an underground school named the ‘Golden Needle Sewing School.’ Run by Professor Mohammad Ali Rahyab, she was introduced to literary circles that inspired her in every possible way and would inform her later writing. Nadia was among the first group of women to enrol at the University of Herat, after the Taliban were ousted. She published her first anthology of poetry titled Gul-e-Dodi (Dark Flower). This anthology gained a devoted readership across Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Her poetry was raw and unfiltered. She was particularly skilled at Ghazal style of poetry. It’s now painful to read with the disturbing knowledge that she died from domestic violence. This extract from her poem ‘Dark Flower’ captures her beautiful intensity and vulnerability; If I leave this dark place, know my home will be in the crook of God’s moon My soul will climb to the center of God’s light Safia Tarzi; when Madonna said Vogue she meant her When we first saw Tarzi sitting cross legged, styled in her red turban with a direct and fierce gaze we couldn’t help but be intrigued. After extensive digging (and it really was extensive because damn this woman was mysterious and elusive) we discovered that Tarzi was an Afghan fashion designer, with a high - end boutique in Kabul. Her designs were vibrant focused on mixing traditional Afghan prints with western styles. A 1969 edition of American Vogue featured her as an up and comer in the fashion world. More research uncovered that Safia had also been a talented photographer, with several of her prints being turned into postcards. Maharani Gayatri Devi; The Princess Diana of Jaipur Priding ourselves on being a period drama - addicts, it came as a complete shock when we first came across her biography ‘A Princess Remembers’. She captured the beauty, glamour and elegance of the Indian princely states, without ever defending their importance or justifying their position. Of course, she was royalty and with that comes immense power and privilege but her book describes the culture, fashion and beauty of places in modern day India, Bangladesh and Pakistan with the level of respect and honour that I’ve only ever seen in novels and films depicting the English nobility (‘A Young Victoria’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘The Crown’). Soon after independence she was elected as a member of parliament and she spent her next thirty years as a politician, establishing numerous schools and advocating to loosen the system of purdah (curtain) that was used as a tool to exclude women from positions of power. Also just for good measure, I’ll leave you with the ultimate fierce energy. The undeniable star - Zeenat Aman.

By Lamisa.H, Jessica L. and Palwasha A. Australia Day has always been a confusing tradition. Throughout the last 232 years since colonisation, there has never been a consensus on how the day should or should not be celebrated. The government's campaign pitch for this year, “Australia Day, celebrate your way” is even more confusing. Celebrate your way! Embrace our melting pot culture by watching the fireworks decked out in the red, blue and white flag or by joining the Survival Day protests. Whatever floats your boat! We understand what the campaign is trying to do here; it's an attempt to encompass the wide-spanning perspectives that create Australian identity. History cannot be simplified into catchy lines and slogans, and neither can our country's identity. Modern Australia effectively started on that day [26th Jan]. You can't change that. That's just what happened. -Scott Morrison, 2018 It's emblematic of the same systemic racism that would allow a nation's national day to be held on the day of the country's colonisation, rather than its independence, or a multitude of other landmark occasions. It is an eye-opening reminder that attempting to pretty-up an already ugly event is an insult rather than progress, and that we need an inclusive vision of Australian identity, with the original custodians of the land at the forefront of the conversation. The date of January 26th is significant because it marks the First Fleet's arrival in 1788, making this the date that "modern Australia began." Australia Day is founded on the triumph of the coloniser, and our inability to reconcile with our First Nations people has left us failing to uphold vital human rights. Instead of changing the date, modern solutions have characterised the day as two-fold; Australians are expected to lament during the day and rejoice during the night - tossing up between calling it 'Straya Day' or 'Survival Day.' There are not that many hours in the day to live this many versions of history. Stan Grant, author of the book Australia Day says that this dissonance is the essence of our Australian identity, and what in turn defines our national day. Watch this interview for a full breakdown: What should it mean to be Australian? The only way to unite our country is if we deconstruct Australian history by relearning it through the lens of the First Nations people, make sense of what is happening right now in our society, and start critically redefining what it means to be an Australian in 2020. The Invention of Australia Day The nation of Australia was not founded for any compelling reason like its other colonial-settler country friends. It was never intended to be a settler colony, but a penal one i.e. a free-range jail cell. Another interesting thing to remember is that Australia Day hasn’t even always been celebrated on the same day. The first ‘Australia Day’ in 1818 was more of an NSW day, as Governor Macquarie made it an official public holiday one year after the land was renamed Australia. In the meantime, Australians were still British subjects and the Aboriginal people were not considered people, let alone the original custodians of the land. South Australia celebrated their 'founding day' on the 28th of December until 1910. It was only in 1935 that all our states and territories came to the agreement that they would celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January, and it was only officially celebrated as a national holiday in 1994! That is less than 25 years ago. So, let’s not pretend that the day is an ancient entrenched tradition that we are bound to. In a NY Times article, Waleed Aly writes that this could actually be our advantage as a nation, rather than a lack of direction: Australian-ness is forever being amended, negotiated, broadened. It is a country that continues to remake itself, less encumbered by the weight of its traditions. That might be a remarkable trait for running a society. But it turns out it’s an awful one for establishing a national day. For the first 150 years, 'Australia day' was celebrated in the most British way possible with commemorative gunshots and celebratory drinking. A "young" nation wholeheartedly standing by their British roots, history and culture. Yet like an angsty teenager, Australia began to develop an identity crisis under the governance of Mama Brit. We needed something so desperately 'purely Australian,' that a fake speech from Captain Arthur Philip surfaced and was recorded as history. “It may be that this country will become the most valuable acquisition Britain has ever made. It is, therefore, appropriate that I should express the vision which comes to me of a city stupendous in area and population, and this magnificent harbour visited by merchantmen of all sizes, designs and nationalities, bringing goods for the growing population in this land and taking away the surplus produce of its soil’” There was no evidence or mention of this in any of the published biographies of Philip, or recordings of that day. Was fake news used to build a national identity? Determined to better understand what the conversation was at the time, our writer Palwasha took a trip to the state library with a free membership card and uncovered all the digitised newspaper archives on Australia Day that she could find. What she found was shocking: “In my research I went back as early as the 1800's, to find out when and how Australia Day was invented. As I read through article after article that mentioned a national day of celebration for Australia, I became more and more shocked at the complete lack of mention of Aboriginals. In keeping with the attitude of the times, I expected to read language degrading their presence but was shocked to find that there was not a single mention of them throughout any of the articles. To read the discussion around a national day of celebration for Australia, you wouldn't know that anyone other than settlers existed in the country. The language of the articles were obsessed with forming an identity seperate from Britain and protecting "their new nation" from invasion (ironic). Reading the articles, you could see how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were written off in their own stories and in their own history. I urge everyone to go through some of these articles because what I found was truly disturbing.” Give us more action, and less talk We mourn whilst the rest of the country celebrates around us - Nakkiah Lui, a Gamillaroi and Torres Strait Islander writer and actress To this day, Australia has not officially recognised Aboriginal people in the constitution. The official constitution still allows for racial discrimination. The Uluru Statement from the Heart was drafted in order to amend this but was rejected by the Turnbull government in 2017. With every year that passes it is becoming strikingly clear that one side of history is favoured more than the other. Karen Wyld - author, writer and consultant of Martu descent wrote the following: The Great Forgetting is the part of the story in which we now find ourselves: government, media and white academia control the narrative and whitewash history. Through putting social pressure on migrants and their descendants to assimilate, the settler-colonisation minimalises unrest. And if anyone questions the narrative, then they are divisive. Un-Australian. They are just told to go back to where they came from. Of course, First Peoples aren’t to go back to where they come from. No, we must move on. Forget 230 years of violence, loss & grief, theft, and inequities – just be quiet. To those of us who are culturally and linguistically diverse, we have the luxury of treating this day simply as a holiday, a day to spend with our family. We are maybe comfortable saying that we did not partake in creating the system that oppresses Aboriginal People. So therefore, we can choose to celebrate the diversity, unity and luxurious aspects of Australia, right? This is really what the “celebrate your way” campaign is telling us to do. Yet by doing so, our silence makes us complicit in the ongoing oppression of Aboriginal people. One study revealed that young people are beginning to view Australian identity through a multicultural lens, potentially indicating a shift in how young people define an “Australian." As the new generation, we want to fight to keep redefining what it means to be Australian because it will not improve otherwise. Our country will continue to be one of the biggest offenders of human rights. Decolonisation is a collective effort needed by all Australians. By being critical about the history we are given we develop the power to reframe our history, and deconstruct the white-washed lens that has become so entrenched in our perspectives. Dr Calma AO, Aboriginal elder of the Kungarakan people and member of the Iwaidja tribal group and social justice campaigner explained; The refusal by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to acknowledge Australia Day is part of the ongoing struggle for recognition of Indigenous people's rights. It's about our fight to be included not excluded. It's Not Really About the Day However you choose to spend the 26th of January, know that it is not entirely about the day at all. The issue arises when we choose to ignore our history and we fail accept it for what it is. We do our part by relearning our history and voicing it in the public arena (yes, go to the Invasion day protests!). All we know is that we don’t want a day that proudly supports British Colonialism under the guise of Australian identity. A day built on celebrating only one perspective of history is not a stable foundation to call for the collective unity of all Australians. We want an Australia Day that is honest about its history, the good, the bad and the incredibly ugly. One that is actively seeking to unite all of us in our present by understanding our past. Further Reading Ao, TC 2015, ‘Australia Survival Day’, AQ: Australian Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 1, pp. 10–12. Australiaday.org.au. (2020). Australia Day. [online] Available at: https://www.australiaday.org.au/about-australia-day/history/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. Farrugia, JP, Dzidic, PL & Roberts, LD 2018, ‘“It is usually about the triumph of the coloniser”: Exploring young people's conceptualisations of Australian history and the implications for Australian identity’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 483–494. HISTORY.com. (2020). Australia Day. [online] Available at: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/australia-day [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. Kleist, J. Olaf. (2017) Political Memories and Migration Belonging, Society, and Australia Day . London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Marlow, K. (2016). Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: What's in a name?. [online] NITV. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/explainer/australia-day-invasion-day-survival-day-whats-name [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. Sargeant, C. (2020). The many different dates we've celebrated Australia Day. [online] SBS. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2018/01/23/many-different-dates-weve-celebrated-australia-day [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. Wyld, K. (2018). Karen Wyld: What kind of morality do they want us to celebrate on That Day |. [online] IndigenousX Showcasing & Celebrating Indigenous Diversity. Available at: https://indigenousx.com.au/karen-wyld-what-kind-of-morality-do-they-want-us-to-celebrate-on-that-day/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

By Lamisa H. New decade, new me, right? As I was reading over my goals for this new decade, I realised that I’d written “strengthen faith” as a separate resolution, alongside the rest. Generally, my self-help style new years resolutions have been rooted in finding fulfilment within myself for myself, with the end goal of becoming “content”. The difference in approaching it from an Islamic perspective to me is that the end goal is a greater sense of purpose: worship. For years, I have genuinely struggled to incorporate intentional worship into my day, treating my life and my faith as two separate entities, but Islam offers a holistic guide on how to navigate the human experience on the path of self-development, nurturing of the soul. Ihsan is when you can perform daily tasks with the constant remembrance of God. Now, I don’t anticipate that I’ll completely reach that goal this year but I can start with aligning my existing resolutions with an Islamic perspective. I found Imam Al-Ghazali’s Alchemy of Happiness to be a beautiful and trusted resource to help me ground my intentions. My aim in 2020 is to perform my faith so that it becomes a transformational experience, rather than a mere transaction between me and God. So here is my more holistic breakdown of my new year’s resolutions, through an Islamic perspective. 1) Re-evaluate how I measure success Taken out of context, a quote like “he who knows himself is truly happy” can look like your typical Tumblr quote with a fancy font and a pastel pink background. However, Al-Ghazali’s core idea in this is that happiness consists of transformation of the self, and that this transformation is in the realisation that one is primarily a spiritual being. In saying this, Al Ghazali expresses that it is only through a balanced observance of inner knowledge (‘ilm al-batin) and inner actions (al-a‘mal al-batinah), can our good deeds achieve their goals and are conducive to nurturing the Ruh (soul). For me, success has always meant achieving small everyday tasks in order to reach the bigger goal of self-improvement. It is about how well I can grow as a person, rather than earning money or reaching big milestones. Re-framing this view through an Islamic perspective has meant that instead of striving for personal happiness, I have shifted my focus overtime to how I constantly seek ways to develop spiritually, and nurture my soul. I just have to keep reminding myself to align my daily actions with my faith, as they are essentially one in the same. Making sure I have the right intentions is the ultimate success. 2) Allow myself to keep learning The key to unlocking the full potential of your mind has always been known to be education, but it’s benefits for the soul are not nearly as widely broadcast. In Al-Ghazali’s teachings, much of his spirituality relies on his continual pursuit of knowledge, both of himself and the world around him in relation to God. He writes: “Knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual.” I felt this quote connected beautifully with my efforts to adopt a growth mindset in my everyday life rather than labouring through a fixed one. It means that I have better incentive to give myself the time to learn a new skill, read a book or find new avenues for the task that I am completing. As a teacher, my whole life revolves around guiding people to learn. Yet ironically, I struggle to find the time and energy to keep learning myself. In our busy lives filled with other commitments, the task of continuous learning can turn into a stressful endeavour rather than a fruitful one. But when I reframe it through making the right intentions (as an inherent act of worship), it transforms the act of learning into the keystone of restoring my relationship with my faith. 3) Invest in the relationships that benefit me This brings me to my intentions with renewing the meaningful relationships I have in my life in the new year. Our support network is our catalyst for self-authorship, and essential for the growth of our spirituality. By making meaningful connections, we improve our ability to confidently, rationally and wisely make difficult decisions about ourselves and our lives. My intention with this resolution is to nurture my connections with people that carry the knowledge of faith. We all need consistent guidance, reminders and direction when it comes to keeping imaan strong. I can remember clearly how strong my faith was in high school, because I had a valuable support network that I could learn and grow from, and how this contrasts with the lack of this sort of support I experienced in uni, and my subsequent lowering of imaan. An equally important aspect of meaningful relationships is love, and the ability to listen without judgement. I realised that in my most spiritually fulfilling times throughout my life, I was surrounded by people who nurtured my faith and helped me strengthen it. 4) Master the art of not buying Whenever I lose sight of the purpose of my journey towards sustainability, I ask myself: At what point does my lifestyle impinge on the haq- the rights of others? My love of retail therapy is something I’m working on reforming with this resolution. For the past year I have been on a journey towards sustainability, after becoming aware of the severity of the climate crisis. Since writing the piece “Buying Ourselves Into Oblivion”, I’ve learned more about battling the seeming futility of efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, and rather than replacing what we have with more sustainable options, the answer lies truly in reforming our buying habits. Since I was very small, shopping together was an activity that my mother and I would do that would bond us, and because of this, it holds a very special magic for me. However, it’s not sustainable. When I ask myself that key question from earlier, I have no trouble putting my efforts towards maintaining what I already have. Islam encourages a lifestyle of minimalism, of learning to live within limits. I’m redirecting my love for shopping with my mother, to the renewal of skills we neglected overtime together, such as sewing and creating new, personalised items of clothing. By investing in fruitful experiences rather than objects, you free up mindspace to focus on your ruh. Integrating the teachings of my faith has given the journey of sustainability a higher purpose than it already had. 5) Keep working on respecting my body While “body positivity” may have been the buzzword of the last decade, the perspective of body neutrality is more notably aligned with an Islamic perspective of the body. In understanding my body as a vehicle for achieving the functions of my everyday life, aligned with the concept of our bodies as vessels for our Ruh (souls).Al Ghazali stated that “It is the knowledge of this entity [our bodies] and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God”. Therefore , a deeper understanding and appreciation of what my body is and does, is a stepping stone for a deeper knowledge of God. In moving away from the limiting perspective of body positivity towards a more holistic neutrality, I can focus on nurturing my intentions, mindfulness and spiritual growth. My body allows me to experience new places and cultures; to embrace the people I love; to laugh with my friends. Most importantly, my body allows me to perform acts of worship. Therefore, I remind myself that to improve on my spiritual health, I need to take care of my physical health. Basically, it's not about keeping my body in good shape, but rather keeping it, and by extension my Ruh, in good health. 6) Don’t forget about the community As I do not live in a vacuum, my action or inaction has a consequence on the rest of humanity, however big or small I think the consequence may be. Islam inherently asks me to assist in benefiting the community, by laying fundamental pillars such as Zakat in place. Before reframing this resolution, activities such as raising money and volunteering filled my checklist for feeling content with my life and what it represented. I liked the idea of trying to live my life in the service of others, but because of the stifling pressure for religious perfection, I failed to preform it as an act worship. The goal is rejecting individualism, and accepting social responsibility. Using the example of the money-making aspect of the sustainability industry, when we opt for something ethical, we are making ourselves feel better and absolving ourselves from all other responsibility. This resolution is a reminder to myself not to forget about the community, that there are other people around me that need my expertise or need my skills or maybe they just need a second pair of hands or a talk. It’s constantly reminding ourselves that we are not the entirety of our own worlds. A Note To End On My faith is a difficult topic for me to talk about. Religion is easy to love and discuss theoretically, as it has always made sense to me, but in terms of my personal imaan, the conversation becomes stifling, and with an added layer of shame about my practice. With the rise of the new ‘Roaring Twenties’, I feel positive about my growth because I am not executing my goals behaving like a drill sergeant with myself. Islam is where you can perform daily tasks with a constant remembrance of God, but I’m not forcing myself to do that straight away. I’m holding myself accountable but I’m giving myself time. As much time as I need, without anyone else telling me how much it should take. I thought the lifestyles we had to lead in this day and age made it impossible to prioritise our spiritual growth, but in writing this piece I’ve learned where I’ve been falling short with my ‘new year’s resolutions’, and life goals in general. In overcoming the difficulty in confronting my level of spiritual practice, I’ve been able to refocus my efforts with better intentions and a fresh excitement, because I know that the end goal is so much more important than me. Lead Editor: Palwasha A.

Palwasha A. Well here we are folks, right at the very end of this incredibly eventful decade. For many of you reading this, like our team at The Pvblication, this decade will have made up almost half of your life. In this new one, we’ll be heading into our thirties. Let’s take a look at how we’ll do that in the best way possible, and do ourselves proud by taking a tour through all the worst things that have defined this decade (many of them archaic remnants from older generations) which we’ll be rolling up our sleeves and pushing out of the frame with a vengeance in the next ten years. Here are the top 5 things that have defined this decade and how we’ll be showing them the door. Political Apathy Let's bring out the big guns nice and early. My, my, have the results of political apathy truly reared their ugly heads this decade. In particular one especially ugly, orange head, but there are so many examples closer to home. There has historically been a disconnect from people and their government (a phenomena that crowd favourite AOC has dubbed “an observational culture surrounding our politics”) but this gap is closing faster and faster as it becomes more and more apparent that if we don’t do something, no one else will. Focusing on home, the general view is that compared to the extremism of the US and UK governments, Australian politics are quite centre-left, but under our negligent watch, our two main parties have become two money-driven sides of the same coin and drive our democracy further into the ground every day. As I write this, choking on my smokey Sydney air, I’m inspired by the tidal wave of change-makers, especially school-age ones in recent years that are taking us into the new decade. The urgency of the situation has been recognised, that if we don’t fight, not only are innocent people being tortured on nearby islands at our governments command, not only are our draconian terror laws vilifying young brown children, but that our collective future is in jeopardy and our politicians do not care. This year saw the largest climate strikes in history, with the effort largely spearheaded by students (we interviewed several of these ground-shakers here). More and more young people are choosing to become politically active, working to break down the walls of inaccessibility that have plagued our politics and government for decades. People are less okay than they ever were in enjoying the creature comforts of now as flames light up our horizons, and we know this growing trend of caring will carry us into the next decade and steer the course of our future. Fake Woke Culture Working to appear politically correct rather than actually being genuinely unproblematic is the unspoken strangeness of the last few years. The term “political correctness” in itself suggests a superficiality to the effort, of wanting to be seen as doing the right thing rather than improving yourself to genuinely change a problematic mindset. The absolute absurdity of wanting to appear unproblematic without actually making any effort to stop being a sexist or a racist or a homophobe, etc. has been thriving, and while this in part can be blamed on entitlement and all the usual oom-pah-pah, let's address it specifically as a consequence of cancel culture- the trend of “cancelling” a person for a lack of total moral purity. Let’s shout it from the rooftops - there is no such thing as moral purity or genuinely living without flaw. Holding people accountable for their views and actions is completely necessary, but with room for personal development and growth, to be able to fix one’s mistakes, and do better going forward. Admitting you don’t know much about an issue is empowering. It's only through losing our fear of making mistakes that we can begin to ask the right questions and truly learn and then grow from the learning. Acknowledging when I myself have felt out of my depth in a discussion about an event or experience I knew little about has led to some of the most incredibly eye-opening conversations I've had in my life. Make a commitment- in this new decade you will broaden your mind, pursue new knowledge and seek out stories that you otherwise wouldn't have engaged with (we're here to help you do it). No one is expected to know everything and the pursuit of knowledge must be given the value it deserves, while making sure respect is maintained in its acquiring. Attitude Towards the Erosion of our Privacy A couple of years ago, I went to a Vivid Ideas talk where a “future forecaster” (yes, this is a real job) taught us what we could expect from the coming years. Her name was Jane McGonigal and she was the first person to point out to me that when we think about our future selves, we actually imagine them as other people, and because of this it's difficult to place ourselves in our own future, and address it with the appropriate level of concern. She gave the audience the following hypothetical: five years from now, you need to go to the bathroom and the only toilet is one that has a plaque above it letting you know that by using it, you are consenting to having data taken from your excretions by various third parties for the purpose of research into public health. She asked if any of us thought we would use it, and only one person raised his hand. When enquired, he said, "I want to say no. The idea of it disgusts me but I've already consented to so much that I never could have imagined being okay with ten years ago." The systematic erosion of our privacy over the last decade is one of the greatest emerging threats of our time (a recent example being Australia's data encryption laws and Facebook's many privacy violations) . Surveillance tech will play a part in the way brands market to consumers, the general rights and protections of citizens in our country and the way governments interact on the international playing field. This is not something that we can leave behind in the last decade, but it is something that we're changing our attitudes towards. Some handy tips are to be the most careful and risk averse version of yourself online (we beg of you). Be the Whatsapp of messaging apps. Commercialisation of Empowerment We’re all beyond tired of companies marketing everything from makeup to razors as empowering, but there’s a side to this phenomenon that needs to be put under the microscope. With the rise in popularity of social movements- in this case self-empowerment- companies naturally latch on to make a buck. Think commercials for women’s razors telling you you’ll find empowerment in shaving an already hairless leg, a new concealer that will give you surface “confidence”, etc. The old-white-men-trying-to-take-your-money nature of these ads is clear and quite easy to sidestep as you head on your merry way to work. However, with the birth of new media and the “ influencer” this past decade, the new power of being able to market with little to no regulation is now being used by individuals to capitalise off a movement that they don’t promote the values of, but in fact work against, by marketing themselves as a poster child for it. The most relevant and global example of this is the Kardashian family with female empowerment. Each of the members market themselves as powerful matriarchal business women while promoting and furthering the patriarchy’s agenda by creating and maintaining new insecurities in a whole generation of women. Their brand is to take the average woman's insecurities and rather than question why you should be insecure, change them to a standard of “physical perfection” that wows instead, a “physical perfection” that can be chased but never achieved because of the money and time required to emulate. Basically, under the guise of empowerment, what they benefit from most is keeping women focused on our looks as much as possible. But don't lose hope- activists such as Jameela Jamil (and her iweigh movement) have taken on the topic and are fighting for more regulation around influencer advertising, with recent headline-making successes like Facebook and Instagram’s ban of “miracle” dieting products that in particular the Kardashians have thrived off promoting as a get-thin-quick scheme and the hiding of cosmetic enhancement promotion from under 18s. Thankfully, the rise in popularity of countermovements promoting real empowerment has been seeing the tide turn and while the danger of influencer marketing will not die with this decade, the commercialisation of empowerment definitely can. Bystander Effect Let’s talk about the bystander effect. How many instances can we all think of, where we’ve seen something unsavoury happening but have done little or nothing to stop it. The bystander effect is different to apathy- while apathy is the act of not caring, the bystander effect is caring, but doing nothing. Our writers here at The Pvblication can think of many instances where we let the conversation deviate a little too far from our intentions or turned a blind eye where there was a moment of clear disrespect or aggression unfolding in front of us. But let's leave you with an example that we can wear as a talisman into the new year and remind us of what we can do when we act despite our fear. About a week after the devastating Christchurch attacks earlier this year, I was at my desk when the directors of marketing at the company I worked for started discussing whether an ad they wanted to promote was racially insensitive. The only woman out of the three (head of PR) said that it contained subtle racism and wouldn't be a smart move image-wise, and the head of marketing started complaining about how PC everything had to be these days. I was getting angrier and angrier at my desk, and had stopped working, but the hierarchical nature of the work environment prevented me from saying anything. The final straw was a comment from the head of digital marketing, a man who said, "any other time it would be fine, but right now after the attack people will probably complain. We can always post it later." At that comment, I knew that if I did nothing in the moment, I would let myself down completely and also vomit on my desk. I stood up, legs shaking, and walked over to people who could fire me and said "excuse me" in a voice that was sounded pre-pubescent. They didn't hear me. I said it again louder and more confidently and they reluctantly turned to me. I said, "I could hear your conversation just now. I've been listening to the ad and it's not subtly racist, it's clearly and overtly racist. And the comment you just made- racism is never okay and the way you just spoke about Christchurch was disgusting. If we've learned anything from what happened, it's that we need to look way closer at our own mindsets, and make sure the things we promote don't incite further violence like it in any way." I walked away after saying I'd be happy to review anything they had questions about. The energy at my mostly-white desk was angry. Colleagues I liked didn't look at me and you could cut the tension with a knife. I hadn't felt that happy with something I'd done in a long time, particularly because the stakes were so high and because I was afraid. I acted on the impulse. We all can. That’s it from The Pvblication folks, we’ll see you in 2020. Trust us, we cut down a lot more from this list than we wanted to, because there are many toxic decade-defining things that we believe, based on how the tides are turning, we really will be seeing the tail-end of as we wrap up the last ten years. These signals of youth involvement, of people speaking up, of opposite sides having more meaningful conversations with each other, are hopeful indicators for the future. Happy New Year to all our readers and a wonderful Christmas to those of you who will be celebrating. Thank you so much for your engagement with our content on this year of our launch. The feedback and response to our articles has often brought us to happy tears and we want to thank you for hopping on our slow-reading bandwagon. The next year will see even more exciting developments and growth as we continue to shed light on perspectives that are not the most mainstream and start rewriting our own stories. Stick around for the journey as we take our ideas into the new decade. Thank you. From the team at The Pvblication. Lead Editor: Tahmina R.

Tahmina R. My grandfather once told me that he was born an Indian under British rule, then was Pakistani as a student studying abroad in the sixties, and since the war was won, has lived his life as a Bengali man. Today is the 48th anniversary of the end of the Liberation War, the day that marks the independence of Bangladesh, the country of my heritage. This is a war reduced to memory because of how little has been written about it. A war my father does not remember except for the dead bodies he used to step over on his way to school, as a six-year-old. The history my mother can hardly recount because she was never able to urge the stories out of her parents. As for me, I’ve spent so many hours studying the World Wars, but I don’t know the details of events that my own grandparents lived through. The commemoration of these events are so often used for nationalistic purposes and in writing this piece I traversed the memory and experience of three generations, learning to question assumptions that I didn’t even know I was working with. HER MEMORY In May 1971, my grandfather sat on duty with some officers watching for a possible attack from a vantage point outside Joydebpur, a city north of the capital city of Dhaka, when a few of the men on watch ran into the city streets and told the women to flee because the Pakistani army was approaching. My grandmother was four months pregnant with my mother at the time and was travelling with my five-year-old Aunt. “We packed a suitcase and left with your sister. After walking a few miles we went on a ‘thela ghari’ [pull cart] but it was very bumpy and too uncomfortable because I was pregnant, so we walked the rest of the way. We had potatoes and water while we travelled for days. Your grandfather knew where to look for us … we met in a small village along the way to Brahmanbaria. Slowly, we went, and it took us four or five days to get to Chinar, the ghram [the villages]. For food, it was just to survive. When the Pakistani Army would come, an attack was always a threat. The middle people – informants – would keep us updated.” In an effort to address these forgotten histories, I had begun my interview asking question after question trying to map the details and began realising that my grandmother was not giving the kind of dramatic, compelling account that I had anticipated. Her responses were very clean, precise and left more to be desired. A movie moment that never came. To me, my grandmother’s reticence in talking about this period in her life was underwhelming, but my mother had the opposite reaction. She said this was the most she had ever heard her speak about it in her life. THE HISTORY The legacy of Partition is that it carved up the subcontinent. When British colonisers first drew their careless border they did so on the basis of religion to create the Muslim majority republic of Pakistan and the Hindu majority state of India. The arbitrary drawing of these borders led to the single greatest mass migration in human history. Fifteen million people were uprooted from their lives, and while this event marked the end of colonial violence, it was simultaneously the beginning of inter-state turmoil that Bangladesh, Pakistan and India still cannot break free from. While the events of Partition are well chronicled in our history books, what happened during Bangladesh’s independence war, or the ‘second partition’, is much harder to learn about. This war is only spoken about as collateral in history. What I didn’t anticipate when I began writing this piece was that it would lead me into hours of maddening research consisting of conflicting stories, uncorroborated reports, claims of propaganda and the repeated use of one of the most harrowing words: genocide. The 1971 Liberation War (muktijuddha) was fought and won by the Bengali Freedom Fighters to create the new state. This was in response to ‘Operation Searchlight’ by the West Pakistani Army, an initiative to crush pockets of rebellion by Bengalis wanting to secede from East Pakistan. Although there was significant indiscriminate killing, this operation targeted Bengali Hindus and the intelligentsia. It has since been labelled a genocide because an estimated three-hundred-thousand to three million people were killed as a result of their efforts. Some say that India exaggerated the statistics to bolster a rebellion that would weaken Pakistan; others question the legitimacy of the statistics themselves; a few deny the event altogether. This lack of consensus is the entire problem. The silencing, questioning, disagreement, factionalism that plague the retelling of the events of this war mean that it is reduced to memories. When it is brought to the forefront and retold, it is often used to bolster nationalistic agendas. THE PITFALLS OF NATIONALISM In trying to read between the lines of my grandmother’s telling of her war stories, I had missed the point altogether. She did not have historical amnesia. She knew exactly what had happened. She refused to romanticise her memory of the Liberation War in it’s telling, she did not dramatise her position as a potential victim or glamourise the birth of the new nation. Underneath it all, she had a profound respect for the people whose lives took on an unalterable course as a result of the War. It was so naive to sit with my grandmother with the expectation that she would pass down her memories as a badge of honour that we could keep with us as fuel for our pride in our heritage and what it took to secure it. But the military tradition is not a source of pride; it is a means to an end. Whereas the heroisms of knights and soldiers, stories of conquest and the fight to always ‘rise up again’ feature prominently in the nationalistic rhetoric of many nations, this drama has no place in the telling of her story. Nationalism is not, as one would imagine, the patriotism a person expresses for their country but rather, it often manifests as a fear of the other and a pride in defending an exclusionary vision of national identity. If we canonise these events as larger-than-life myths anchoring a single vision of the nation - we lose more than we gain. The word ‘Desi’ means ‘of the land’ but it does not specify which land. Whereas Europe has existed as nation states for centuries, the nations in South Asia have only existed for a lifetime. Specifically my grandparents’. This is what my grandfather meant when he said he was born an Indian, lived some of his life as a Pakistani and the rest as Bengali. These identities are not what keep him coming back for two to three months a year to Chinar, his birth village. Similarly, as a member of the generation who have witnessed it all, my grandmother erred away from the kind of nationalistic pride, as artificial as it is potent, that has paralysed governments and communities in conflict for decades. My grandmother’s recount of the War was only one memory of moments strung together from the millions that have defined her life of adventure, living on three continents, speaking four languages, traversing social and cultural divides, raising three children and four grandchildren. I thought I had come to her with the desire to listen to her stories with no preconceptions, but even within my desire to hear stories there was an assumption of the kind of story she should tell. FINAL THOUGHTS The way a story is documented is what informs our understanding of our present. Over the course of writing this piece I came to question how we document history and how we value certain stories over others. It was in stumbling across an Instagram account that chronicles the history of South Asians ('Brown History') and my reflexive categorisation of it as ‘niche’ in my own head that provoked a sudden need to delve deeper into the details of my own family’s history. When our histories cannot be easily found, read and understood, they can feel like an undocumented past. Somewhere along the lines, I had become a passive bystander, accepting that my family’s past would always be a collection of fragmented parts. There are many wars that have been reduced almost to memory. I urge you to consider whether you have placed value on your own history or whether you have created a hierarchy of what matters. In honouring our histories by bringing them into the light and not letting them get lost, we empower ourselves in the most permanent way. Lead Editors: Palwasha A.

Irisa R. and Mariam H. We were fresh out of school, eager to help with the best intentions. We came across a volunteer program promising us that we too could play a part. What is Voluntourism? In its simplest sense, “voluntourism” is defined as tourists holidaying with the purpose of volunteering. However it has rapidly morphed into a more sinister practice in which organisations sell the feeling of volunteering and so, fill their own pockets by profiting off the communities they claim to help. This industry has quickly become one of the most booming markets within travel. It’s so appealing to choose a relatively easy-looking project when it fits your time frame, budget and your interests. Yet it begs the question: why and how are thousands of these projects tailored to our needs? Voluntourism is an issue that is very close to us because we know that we’ve participated in it before. We have both volunteered with two different aid organisations that we later realised were deeply unethical and grounded firmly in the insidious practice of capitalising on the vulnerabilities of the communities they professed to help. There are a few big voluntourism organisations like IVHQ, Projects Abroad and Antipodeans. But these should not overshadow the thousands of grassroots organisations who are sustainably and skillfully navigating the terrain of humanitarian aid. For tips on how to distinguish between them, skip to the final section. Exploitation of Good Intentions With the rise of social media, news of conflict reaches us instantly with visceral clarity. With so many faces and stories, we feel more accountable to affected communities around the world. The tourism industry has recognised this desire to help and began to sell us the feeling of ‘helping’ in a pretty package. They brand it with hallmark - style slogans like ‘memories for a lifetime,’ ‘no special skill required’ and ‘have a holiday and make a change.’ Many of these organisations offer everything from teaching English, conservation and building houses to art and music. This list of credentials, when first encountered, can be seen as a badge of legitimacy signifying that they have enough resources to fulfill every need. I remember finding IVHQ particularly alluring because it had this pseudo-professionalism. However, think about it: no one trusts a restaurant with three different cuisines on the menu. So, why are we so willing to trust organisations that claim to do everything? In these situations, donations are often absorbed by the parent organisations and there are little to no significant sustainable developments seen in the actual communities being ‘aided’. For example, if a conservation project is focused on collecting garbage but the goal isn’t to build a waste disposal system, then what is the meaningful outcome? It’s not a coincidence that the largest players in this space are all organisations based in some of the wealthiest cities in the world, like London, Auckland and Sydney. The legitimacy of these organisations is rooted in the ‘logic’ that the western voluntourist’s presence is valuable just by modelling their way of life. Experiences with IVHQ: The Unqualified Volunteer Irisa: Three years ago, I went on a volunteer trip with IVHQ to Fiji, with the purpose of teaching English to children in local schools. When I arrived I realised how underfunded and underpaid most of the local workers were. I remember doing the math and concluding, “If I, along with forty other people (just for those two weeks), paid $900AUD, that adds up to almost $36000 AUD. So where is the money going?” It soon became clear that we were expected to design lesson plans. I remember thinking I’m not qualified, I’m not even a teacher! At first I was enamoured by the fact that every volunteer was from a different discipline. Some studying to be a doctor or an engineer, a lawyer or a musician. But later on I realised; did any of us have the qualifications to adequately fulfill the role of a teacher? No. Or a construction worker? No. A conservationist? No. Only months later did I realise that my time there had actually served to uphold a system that was unsustainable and dangerous. If you don’t have the skills to teach English, construct buildings or administer medical care in your home country then you shouldn’t be doing it anywhere else. Without having skilled teachers, the students would never benefit from a cohesive syllabus. Without qualified construction workers, the houses being built might never be structurally sound. Poverty Porn While other forms of travel sell relaxation or adventure, voluntourism sells poverty. In 2013, a study by Mostafanezhad found that eighty percent of voluntourists are concerned with the 'authenticity' of their experiences. Basically, the more poverty they see, the more they believe their experiences are beneficial and real. In development-orientated programs, poverty is viewed as ‘cultural immersion’ and in doing so the commodification of this experience is disguised. The South African Human Resources Research Council reported that the intense demand by voluntourists to visit "HIV orphans" led to a spike in the number of "unstable and unregulated orphanages". The report continues on to mention how children are being cruelly removed from their families in order to maintain “a stock of orphanages” for willing tourists to visit. The situation became so dire in Cambodia that UNICEF urged people to stop volunteering with children in orphanages. A terrifying recent example is the story of Renee Bach. An American who pretended to be a trained doctor in Uganda for 10 years under a nonprofit that she founded called, ‘Serving His Children’. She did not have a degree in Medicine or any tertiary education that qualified her to administer healthcare. Therefore, her ‘treatments’ and ‘surgeries,’ maimed and murdered hundreds of Ugandan children and is the most extreme example in recent times of criminal behaviour masking itself as charitable work. Experiences with ProjectsAbroad; my Uni said it was fine Mariam: In the summer of 2018, I volunteered in Cambodia with ProjectsAbroad as part of my Health Science degree. My university enforced a few barriers of entry so that I couldn’t engage in projects outside of my qualifications. However, once there I noticed there were newly graduated high school students allowed to participate in the same program. We had trained local staff who had the necessary skills to provide the actual assistance, I was really more of a glorified cash cow, along for the ride. At first, I rationalised the $3000AUD I paid to be there as a means for the poorest communities in Phnom Penh to access free medication or basic health care. However, I later learned that our doctor, who had been tirelessly working for his community, was quitting because his salary was too low. But I remember something that seemed beyond odd to me, the head of the public health program was an American man who had previously been a scuba diver instructor, and we only saw him once a week. So in summary, a scuba diver instructor without any experience was running a health care program and being paid more than a doctor. Oh also every very Friday we would spend an entire day uploading data that we late found out did not go anywhere (so there’s that). A Checklist To Help Distinguish The Good From The Bad We don't regret our experiences with voluntourism because it was their eye-opening nature that pushed us to examine the “how” behind the “why” of our good intentions. But other people’s real lives are not the vehicles for our self-realisation, and looking back now we wish that we had the resources to critically analyse the nuances and ethical issues involved with international volunteering. After years of combing through the shame that comes with volunteering in those spaces, we learned how to look for an organisation that is ethical. We happened upon an organisation called Refugee Support Europe (after three months of searching) and there we saw how an organisation can uphold the dignity of those they seek to help and aid those local stakeholders without allowing them to become dependent on their aid by pushing for more sustainable solutions. This introductory guide was formulated with the hopes that none of you will fall into the trap we so readily did. Do your research! The organisation itself should be focused in one country or region, and be committed there for the long - run. There should be a clear understanding of their role in the community they are situated. If they have a million and one programs on offer like a twisted McDonalds menu of suffering, it's clear they are moulding their program for the volunteer a.k.a consumer. The organisation must have a barrier of entry. There should be a request for your CV, references and/or an interview of some kind. If a retail store cares about the capability and personality of their worker, then an organisation that works with vulnerable populations definitely should. They should not charge you to volunteer. To clarify, this does not include living expenses, or raising donations from local friends and family because aid organisations need funds to run, they can’t exist on air and good intentions alone. The most transparent of them will ask volunteers to pay for their own living expenses to ensure any incoming funds are channelled into their work. Pay close attention to the sustainability of the proposed projects. Are their projects short-term band-aid solutions? If they are, then is there an immediate crisis unfolding where this is necessary. Or, is it just a lazy approach to development and going to do more harm than good? Weigh the options and do your research [again] on the region and the development problem the organisation is seeking to address. Be critical of yourself; if you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars overseas then you should be spending a few hours each week by contributing to your local communities [whether it be by donations or volunteering your time]. Good luck! To learn more about how an organisation can do it right, check out: Changing the Game: Aid with Dignity. Bibliography Beale, Peter (n.d.) What is voluntourism? Planning news /. [Online] 41 (8), 28–29. Benson, Angela M. “A Strategic Analysis of Volunteer Tourism Organisations.” The Service industries journal 31.3 405–424. Web. Bezruchka S ( 2000 ) Medical tourism as medical harm to the third world: why? For whom? Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. 11, 77- 78. Coghlan, Alexandra (n.d.) Towards an understanding of the drivers of commercialization in the volunteer tourism sector. Tourism recreation research. [Online] 37 (2), 123–131. Gillett, George (n.d.) The ethics of voluntourism. Student BMJ. [Online] 24. Jakubiak, Cori (n.d.) Ambiguous Aims: English-language Voluntourism as Development. Journal of language, identity, and education. [Online] 15 (4), 245–258. Liston Heyes, C. (n.d.) Voluntourism, sensemaking and the leisure-volunteer duality. Tourist studies. [Online] 17 (3), 283–305. McLennan, Sharon. “Medical Voluntourism in Honduras: ‘Helping’ the Poor?” Progress in development studies. 14.2 163–179. Web. Mostafanezhad, M., 2013. The politics of aesthetics in volunteer tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 43, pp.150-169. Proehl, Jean (n.d.) Risks of voluntourism. Emergency nurse : the journal of the RCN Accident and Emergency Nursing Association. [Online] 22 (9), 15–15. Simpson, Kate. “‘Doing Development’: The Gap Year, Volunteer-Tourists and a Popular Practice of Development.” Journal of international development. 16.5 681–692. Web. Sullivan, Hannah R & Sullivan, Hannah R (2019) Voluntourism. AMA journal of ethics. [Online] 21 (9), E815–E822. [online]. Available from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/2297127070/. Tomazos, Konstantinos (n.d.) The Commercialization of Voluntourism: Money vs Mission. Tourism recreation research. [Online] 37 (3), 271–272.

There is no such a thing as apolitical travel. A quick Google search of ‘The Top Ten Places To Travel’ will give you hundreds of lists, and after a cursory look over just a few, you will start to see a trend. The places that occupy the top positions are often affluent, European cities. This raises the glaring question of what we, collectively, deem worthy of our time, attention and money. What places do we choose to elevate and assign cultural value? It is not about where we travel, or why we travel, but where we see as worthy of travel. Even something as seemingly individual as travel bucket lists are deeply rooted in the politics of our time. Many negative assumptions about the so-called ‘developing’ world were produced and perpetuated in accordance with the political concerns of the three largest colonial powers, the British, French and American. This was not accidental, but a systematic approach to devaluing the cultural and civilisational significance of the places they conquered. The cultural capitals of the world were decided and the rest were relegated to dangerous, insignificant or backwards sidelines. This is despite the fact that places like Paris, with some of the highest crime rates in the world, are seen as idyllic and people travelling there are even encouraged to accept small crimes like petty theft as part of the experience, not a failure of the state. This list has been curated by our writers - each sharing their insights about places that they were lucky enough to visit but have yet to see included on a Top 10 List. Fez | فاس‎ | Morocco The place, not the hat. ‘Fez, the Spiritual City,’ was and continues to be a cultural and intellectual hub of the Muslim world. Being a medieval city, it’s labyrinthine streets wind together, only wide enough for people on foot and donkeys to pass through. The souks are filled with fresh spices, carpets, antique jewellery stores, and hundreds of olive and pomegranate vendors. There’s an absence of cars and fortress walls encompass the entirety of the old city. Often, the outside of a building will match the rest of the street, the door dull and unnoticeable. However, once you step inside, the spectacular majesty of the place is revealed, usually with gilded courtyards, high ceilings and intricate gardens that is completely different to what we’re used to in the West, with everything facing inward rather than outward. Riads (houses) reflect the Islamic tradition that wealth should not be displayed in humility and the grandeur should be reserved for the family. We think of universities as a Western invention but the first modern degree-granting university, Al-Karaouine, was founded in Fez by Fatima Al-Fihri in 859 CE and is still open for exploring today. Historically called ‘Fez The Spiritual City’, this was a name to honour an academic tradition where scholarship and spirituality were inextricably linked, where to pursue knowledge was to pursue God. This university was also the first institution in the world to offer courses outside the bounds of religion in the fields of medicine, mathematics and linguistics. A word of warning about Fez: a hammam is not what you think it is. Sylhet | সিলেট | Bangladesh Sylhet is one of the spiritual heartlands of Bangladesh, a sacred area that has been able to sustain its beauty and spirituality throughout the years. It’s one of the birthplaces for Sufism in Bangladesh, a form of mystical Islam that emphasises the importance of introspection. A tea-filled (cha bagan) province with lush greenery, it is also home to the site of the Dorgah Mohalla (a mosque and the tomb of Shah Jalal) which thousands of visitors pass through every day. Hazrat Shah Jalal was a Sufi scholar and the tale of his importance to Sylhet goes like this: one day, his uncle gave him a handful of soil and said, “find the place where the soil in your hand matches the soil from the land”. He travelled from Mecca, through Iraq and Iran and eventually found his match in Sylhet, where he settled. Sufism brought with it many devotees who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of spiritual perfection through worship (ibadah) which they often expressed through poetry, art and music (ghazal). Once he passed away, his tomb was transformed into a madrassa and mosque. To preserve the sanctity of the mosque, four families were assigned the responsibility to guard and protect it. It also has particularly delicious bananas, if you ever find yourself visiting and near to a tree. Battambang | បាត់ដំបង| Cambodia Battambang is often left out from tourist itineraries. Its tranquil, gentle charm doesn’t appear to market itself loudly but once there, speeding past an array of jungles, mountains, hidden temples and rice fields in a tuk tuk, you quickly became enamoured. The Battambang is a province located in the far Northwest of Cambodia, also known as ‘the rice bowl of Cambodia.’ The speeding tuk tuk rides are a heady experiences, as drivers race and outmanoeuvre each other to make Vin Diesel jealous. You’ll find yourself amazed by the mountains that just seem to rise out from sprawling fields. Like many places in Cambodia, the town wears its history openly, with French-style architecture remnants of a colonial past, dotted by broken disrepair and a shadow of the Khmer Rouge’s vicious rule. Mountain top temples and beautiful, hidden pagodas are only a day-trip from the main town. The caves of Phnom Sampeau serve as a microcosm of the blend of breathtaking natural beauty, rich spirituality and haunting sadness that defines Cambodia. The caves were once Buddhist temples but when the Khmer Rouge swept through the country, they terrorised the people by executing them on top of these caves and leaving their bodies to rot. Today, there is a memorial with the bones and skulls of some of the victims. Each evening you can sit at the base of the bat-caves and watch as hundreds of bats pour out in a steady stream. Medina | ٱلْمَدِيْنَة ٱلْمُنَوَّرَة | Saudi Arabia Medina Munawara is also known as the ‘City of Light’. This refers to the light of Islam brought to the city by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It is the home of Masjid Al-Nawabi, where he is buried. To say that it is one of the most spectacular cities is to understate its spiritual significance. Medina witnesses the convergence of hundreds of thousands of people a day, from every country, every language, culture and walk of life (my dad jokingly says that it’s the “true United Nations”). From people who travelled from the deserts of Rajasthan to the Indonesian women who hold hands whenever they try to move against the crowd, to the Belgian girls who’d come with fifteen of their friends and chatter excitedly in the elevators. The true beauty of Medina is in its ability to strip people bare of their trappings of wealth, history and language, and bring them together for a holy purpose, the same one for each person. The mosque is the heart of the city and when it’s time to pray pilgrims flood the main streets heading towards the centre. The music of the adhan (the call to prayer) rings across the city five times a day and each time it is as though someone presses a universal pause button. Shopkeepers close their stalls and simply walk out to pray, only to return in fifteen minutes to business as usual. The mosque has a capacity of one million, crafted with pink marble that turns violet during sunset, contrasting with the orange skies. To be there is to be humbled by the sheer magnitude of people, united in a single faith, following the same rituals, uttering the same prayers. Badakhshan | بدخشان ولایت‎ | Afghanistan Badakhshan is a place that you wouldn’t know still exists in Afghanistan. It’s a province that borders Tajikistan and Pakistan, and when walking around it becomes abundantly clear that you are witnessing the true Afghan manners and hospitality that the ancients extolled. Families leave their animals (primarily goats) to graze in parks as they walk to the river and mingle with whoever else is around, evoking the feeling of a close-quarters village. You are greeted by strangers with the familiarity of a friend and are given a cup of tea in any interaction in a shop longer than two minutes. Life is difficult in Badakhshan and in many ways it’s like stepping backwards in time. People have survived here with a long history of extending a hand to their neighbours. In Badakhshan can be seen some of the most extreme examples of throwing caution to the wind with city planning, like a rickety bridge over a gushing river that takes on three rows of vehicles at a time, or a small raft made of tyres and rope being the only way to transport entire families over another crashing river to the only medical centre in the region. If you do ever go there, stay away from their energy drink of choice ‘Ginseng’. Jakarta | Indonesia Jakarta, the ethnically diverse sprawling capital of Indonesia, is a booming city covered by a perpetual grey smog that dulls the entire scenery but not the life within it. The city shouldn't be overlooked for its vibrant and colourful sibling, Bali. Rather, the city should be seen as a reflection for the colourful life that exists within the people. Sitting in a traffic jam, you can see the street vendors busily cooking martabak (pancakes) as hungry men and women loiter around the cart. Children clamour together wearing shorts and flip-flops sometimes laughing, sometimes running but always sticking together. You can see people begging, with restless hands in need of relief. You can see poverty. You can see wealth and you will wonder how two opposites can live in such a place. Stray dogs prowl around warungs (street vendors) patiently waiting for scraps. Women and men come to car windows selling trinkets and souvenirs in one hand and an open palm on the other waiting for potential customers to respond. Piles of cut open coconuts emptied of its juices litter the side of the road, where a man wielding a large machete cuts it open for another thirsty customer. When arriving late to anything in Jakarta just say ‘macet’ (traffic jam), you will be forgiven purely on the basis that they too were probably at the mercy of the traffic.

By Palwasha A. I think it’s time we unpack why exactly, when we see female friendships, they make us cringe. In our current digital age, female friendships are flaunted on social media with a carefully-crafted, aspirational look to them, capturing the most superficial aspects of friendship while offering nothing of the depth. The scripts that have come alive on our TV and film screens throughout our lives are largely crafted by men, depicting sisterhood as “frenzies of shopping and brunching,” gossiping and catfighting, and so it makes sense that we undervalue them ourselves. We never see their true essence, how female friendships are a necessity for all women, for their growth, their sense of self and their agency. The term ‘chit-chat’ is often used to describe conversations between women, and has the effect of reducing their talk to something superficial and unimportant. Every woman can think back on conversations where they’ve jumped between the most superficial to soul-crushing topics with ease, a way of communicating akin to therapy, allowing unloading of thoughts and burdens. This devaluing of the way women speak to each other, is an example of the complete refusal to acknowledge the importance of relationships between women, and how we are, even in our everyday language, taught to trivialise them. Our friendships are reduced to stepping stones to the emotional completion we will inevitably reach when we eventually find a romantic male partner. In fact, it has now been found that close female friendships are a catalyst for self authorship - which is the ability to confidently, rationally and wisely make difficult decisions about ourselves and our lives. THROWING OFF EXPECTATIONS Growing up, the adult friendships I saw between women were framed as burden-sharing, where they would confide in each other, unloading the struggles that they couldn’t speak to their husbands about. Their companionship was not friendship exactly, but the familiarity and intimacy that naturally arises from speaking to, or with, a woman. These conversations were almost like a balm, a way of healing from the trauma and hardships of their everyday lives as wives and mothers, people who had been uprooted from their own countries and faced the unique challenges of being immigrants, women who didn’t have the privilege of accessing therapy or other support services. My mother and her generation didn’t always have the luxury of picking their own friends, or if they did, didn’t have time to spend with them. If lack of time, responsibility or life pressures were not issues, they also never saw spending time with their friends as something they deserved. It wasn’t seen as fruitful and it was the lowest priority. I have the freedom today to choose my own friends. My privilege in this shines through when I think of all the time I spend nurturing and enjoying my friendships, when my own mother can only justify seeing her closest friends once or twice a year, if at all. A generation of women not afforded the self care that they deserve. FINDING YOUR REAL SUPPORT NETWORK Growing up, I attended a school where by circumstance, the majority of my friends were white. Though we had fun together, our relationship lacked the depth that they had with each other. When my school environment became more diverse, I naturally gravitated towards the only group of “brown” girls in school, and it was with them I learned that I could confide in people who mirrored my own experiences. It’s been proven that around the time we become adults, women of colour begin to turn to women like themselves to combat the constant and steady erosion of their ethnic identities. Going into adult life and having so many new environments open up, I was able to choose people that I actually connected with the most to be around me, rather than sticking to friends by circumstance and then by familiarity. Using self - empowering language, we reframe our understanding of our own racial and ethnic identity, which is usually sidelined for the majority of our formative experiences. Alemán's study points to the larger truth that women of colour predominantly rely on their female friendships to find a sense of self in a society that inevitably pushes them towards assimilation and self-denial [referenced at the end]. SELF GROWTH I can map clearly through my life how so much of the healing and things I’m able to do now with minimal effort are a direct result of the strong female friendships I’ve formed. It's in my friends’ consistent refusal to laugh at my self-deprecating jokes that I’ve stopped making them. It’s in their urging to read my work and the feedback and encouragement they give, that has worked towards breaking the long - held fears and anxieties that I’ve struggled with when trying to write. Since I was thirteen years old, I would fry each curl of my hair under my straightener’s highest heat to kill off it’s wildness and frizz, in my head making me look less Afghan. A year ago, for the first time, a few close friends accidentally saw my naturally curly hair. They were in disbelief that for years of knowing me they’d only seen what I’d forced it to into. One of them commented that she couldn’t believe the ungratefulness of straightening hair like mine. I began to like the unruliness I’d once hated so much that I’d spend hours trying to tame it into submission. By learning to accept my hair, I was allowing myself to be seen as more obviously Afghan and started accepting a part of myself that had been sidelined and neglected for the better part of my life. It also lead to greater introspection, and the kindness with which I’m now able to speak to myself comes from uplifting streams of love like this, directed at me from the women around me. I hadn’t even realised that this was cracking the concrete I’d unknowingly built around my way of thinking and of doing things for years. You don’t notice the changes happening gradually within yourself until you look back at certain memories of the past and can’t recognise yourself in them. FINAL WORD The first time I shared my writing with my friends, I was terrified. I’d had an insane fear of sharing work my whole life, a natural instinct developed from the paralysing fear of failure. After ten minutes of resisting, I handed over my laptop, giving disclaimers every second about how bad it was and how I never do this. And then they were reading my words. And the sky hadn’t fallen down on my head. I could tell they didn’t like the first part. Then they flicked to the next one, the initial version of this piece and they loved it. This experience was one of my first times understanding the necessity of sisterhood for personal growth. I hadn’t been challenged that way ever, and putting myself into that discomfort meant taking the first step to climbing out of it and stepping unknowingly into a stronger self. It’s fitting that it happened with the first draft of this piece. I think anyone who has seen the purity of a true female friendship knows what I mean when I say that it emanates light. Pure light, a warm golden-yellow colour. The colour of the sun mixed with magic. Lead Editor: Irisa R. Bibliography: Alemán, A, College Women's Female Friendships: A Longitudinal View,The Journal of Higher Education (2010) pp.553-582. Susan B, How stories of female friendship construct a sense of self, Aeon Essays [online] Available at: https://aeon.co/essays/how-stories-of-female-friendship-construct-a-sense-of-self [Accessed 25 Nov. 2019]. Buchanan, D, Cate Blanchett is right. Female friendships can be more potent than any love affair [online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11612517/Cate-Blanchett-lesbian-row-Female-friendship-beats-any-love-affair.html [Accessed 25 Nov. 2019]. Spangler, L, A Historical Overview of Female Friendships on Prime-Time Television,The Journal of Popular Culture (1989) pp.13-23.

By Lamisa H. I grew up around a lot of smart kids. Children who were placed in gifted and talented classes and who seemed to comfortably move onto selective schools and succeed in everything they tried. In my school I was the only brown person, so being “smart” was the only category I could fit myself into. I tried to live up to it by carefully curating an identity of self-assured intelligence that I never let slip. I pretended to finish books that I wasn’t even halfway through. I stole the Pre-Uni answer booklets from my parents because I could not confidently answer the questions on my own. I grew up feeling like a fraud. I’M SMART, I'M SMART, I’M SMART I sought out validation of my intelligence from my peers, instead of actually trying to better myself in my studies, and this mindset followed me into university. What this looked like was hiding my work from my peers and not trying in tasks in the first place, for fear that my subsequent failure would be my fault. Hearing my friends say “I didn’t even study for this” before acing a test re - affirmed my belief that intelligence was gifted and effort wasn’t necessary for the talented to succeed. I thought my passion for teaching would carry me through university with flying colours, so naturally, when it didn’t, I stopped trying altogether. Dr Carol Dweck was the first to coin the term ‘fixed mindset,’ which is the belief that talent, rather than effort, generates success — that you are either good or bad at something and there is no changing that. Many of us still innately believe that while you can learn new things, the intelligence you were born with can never grow. In a ‘growth mindset’, people realise that they are capable of changing and growing their most basic abilities, like intelligence and talent, through effort and dedication. A growth mindset is imperative in achieving what a fixed mindset would never allow us to believe that we are capable of attaining. The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life and the successes you are capable of achieving. PRACTICE WHAT YOU TEACH I’m a new teacher. It is essential for me as an educator to cultivate my own growth mindset before trying to teach others. Recently, I got hired for my dream job at a not - for - profit called Story Factory - an innovative “school” that upturns traditional teaching methods, focusing on growing confidence and creativity. When I first met Bilal Hafda, the StoryTeller-in-Chief, I knew that I wanted to be him when I grew up. His empathetic teaching methods (giving students prompts rather than orders, refusing to correct their spelling and building off any ideas that may seem untraditional) became the teaching method I wanted to emulate. A school is a difficult place to run. Most of the time you get the feeling that you are making work so that students behave, and it’s a battle trying to figure out how your tasks are meant to be meaningful each step of the way. The rigidity of the syllabus does not allow for creativity in the classroom, which can lead to neglecting to teach real-life skills that students can carry into their lives, leading to disillusionment with the education system. In trying to grow my own knowledge, I asked Bilal what he wishes he could teach: “I’m going to cheat and say that there are two skills that I don’t think gets enough attention - confidence and creativity. You need [people] to feel comfortable enough to try new things and meet them at the point they are at. Creativity is a bit like that too, with more emphasis on play. I believe the two are interwoven, and that the right [learning] environment allows [people] to work on both skills.” RE - LEARNING There is no better way to witness the success of a growth mindset than in a classroom. As educators, we learn from our students every single day. They teach us resilience, they show us new perspectives and they surprise us when they resonate with content we didn't expect them to. They break down our preconceived notions of them - the barrier between teacher and student. They make us work harder because that hard work pays off. They remind us that our lives are all about growth. Trying to adopt a growth mindset in my everyday life is something I continue to struggle with, but now I know that the most important step is recognising that effort always overrides talent. Even in writing this piece and allowing others to read this work is a step in the right direction. Now, when I receive feedback from the team I can take the response at face value and not as a critique on my intelligence. I am now closer to achieving greater things than the high schooler who once believed her intelligence was pre - determined and forever stagnant. Lead Editor: Palwasha A.

Mariam H. When I was a little girl, I had this bright yellow dress with tiny colourful flowers scattered all over it. It had a big full skirt. Flowers would be floating all around me. Red, pink, magenta and blue. I loved that dress. My mother used to have to hide it from me because when she would wash it and hang it up to dry, I would grab it wet off the line, hurriedly put it on and then twirl around in it. Our bodies are the unique cross-section between the physical, social, and our subjective internal, which is the way we ourselves experience our body, and how it exists in our society. Our bodies are the first point of contact between our inner and outer selves and in many ways, we are built from what we hear and see. So, in a sense, our bodies are not truly our own. As I grew older and the dress no longer fit, I decided to only wear dark colours and dull prints. Shades that blended me into my own surroundings. Somewhere along the line I began to realise that I didn’t want to be seen as (what I thought it meant to be) a girl. The idea of femininity as irrational, frivolous and shallow had taken root. TO BE BEAUTIFUL, OR TO BE SMART. The brainy versus the beautiful, the maiden versus the witch and the blonde versus brunette. In my mind, women only existed as opposing binaries. When I first came across the idea that beauty was performed for the benefit of men, everything within me revolted against this notion. You could be beautiful and therefore passively content, or intelligent and driven. To me, one was clearly the better investment, even if the path was lonelier. As time went on, I became a staunch feminist. You know, the poster waving, sassy slogan wearing and bra-burning kind (well theoretically - they are damn expensive and also great for back support). Femininity continues to be overly sexualised, mysticised and commodified. It is held to unattainable standards, while at the same time dismissed as trivial. To be feminine is to be beautiful. However, beauty is more than just appearance; it is a behaviour. It is the correct way to be a woman. It’s the rom-com transformation of having your hair straightened, smile widened, posture fixed, voice mellowed, and vocabulary sweetened. I understood that beauty was a performative chore with an expensive price tag and a quick expiration. This helped to confirm my own bias and began to internalise an age-old dichotomy of looks versus substance as the only options for identity. WAS IT ALL A LIE? I never considered that the energy and emotional labour I invested in opposing beauty was in itself performing this false dichotomy. I continued to parrot perceptions that beauty is meaningless and redundant to the modern woman and throughout it all, I used my self-righteous zeal to mask the fear that if I did try, I could never be pretty. You see, I often don't like my body but I can’t say that. When I do, it is met with a barrage of aggressive and quite disdainful ‘positive’ affirmations. Inherently embedded in that flood of supposed uplifting onslaught is a current of betrayal, pity and the occasional dash of disgust because the modern woman cannot be self-conscious. She certainly cannot avoid her reflections or be uncomfortable in her own body. No, the empowered, 21st century female is a queen. She is effortlessly assured and confident in her appeal. She is coveted and desired, though she neither cares nor notices. Interestingly, the phenomena of shaming women for their preoccupation with their appearance and weight is not new. Women are socialised to view themselves as the object of the male gaze. It’s not as though there’s a patriarchal omnipresent overseer cackling away in a room, forcing down nefarious body standards. It’s a spiderweb where women are both the fly trapped and the one spinning the web. A LOSE, LOSE. At my lowest weight, I was still not skinny. My lack of expression and utter exhaustion meant my usually rounded cheeks were hollowed, allowing my cheekbones to show. My eyes were sunken in and dark from the lack of sleep, providing the illusion of contours. A thigh gap remained elusive but if I sat next to you, you would barely know I was there. My usually healthy curls were limp and dry, as I desperately brushed them out and burnt them flat. Yet by all accounts that was the best I have ever looked. It was also among my most depressive episodes. Most things were hard: school, talking, getting up, sleeping but at least I could wear a size eight. You try to convince yourself that your value is not derived from your beauty while simultaneously doing everything in your power to ensure that you are perceived as beautiful, and then you hate yourself for trying. After working on my mental health, reaching academic goals and accomplishing personal ones, all these achievements became hollow cut-outs of success. The remarks were always, ‘I see you’ve gained a lot of weight’ or ‘you really need to be careful’ or ‘if you gain anymore it’s really going to get out of control.’ In order words, the art of staying thicc without actually being thick. REARRANGING THE PICTURE. I don’t want a manufactured sense of body positivity. I don’t think that with my embodied existence it would ever be authentic to who I am. But what I am moving towards is neutrality. In essence, I want to be ok with not always being ok. My body is my faith, it is my history. The way my eyes slant is just like my grandmother’s. The way my hands are shaped is like my father’s. The way my face moves when I concentrate is like my mother’s. My hands have scars and it’s all a part of my story. If your body is the way you communicate with the world and it doesn’t just belong to you, then it needs to make statements about who you are. I want my physical presence to reflect values that are important to me. I want a clear connectedness of the body and spirit, in line with my faith. To acknowledge that my body is the material, corporeal home for my ruh (soul). That it exists to reflect and express my values. The body is more than just a vessel, the sum of all of its component parts. I want mine to tell the story of my faith, my heritage, my history and my beliefs. A body that shows who I am and what I believe. It is all still a process but at least it’s progress. Lead Editor: Irisa R. Bibliography: Bartky, S.L, Foucault, femininity, and The Modernization of Patriarchal Power (1997), 92-111. Berger, J, Ways of Seeing, (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1st ed, 1977). Blood, Sylvia K, Body work the social construction of women’s body image, (Routledge, 1st ed, 2005). Orbach, S, Fat is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-diet Guide for Women+ Fat is a Feminist (Random House, 2nd Ed, 1998). Smolak, L., Murnen S.K, Feminism and Body Image, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1st Ed, 2005). Wolf, N, The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women (Random House, 1st ed, 1991).

By Palwasha A. and Mariam H. You’re sitting at your computer, looking through potential job listings and internships, a blank doc open for the resume you’re about to create. You read through the description for each role, your confidence diminishing. It all seems so far above what you’re qualified to do. You highlight the roles where you think you can get your foot in the door. As you stare at the blank document of your resume, you think about how you’ve done nothing worthy of being mentioned on there, and try to figure out how to make it look longer than a postage stamp. You exaggerate your achievements and the whole time you wonder just how long you can get away with it. Can you tell me about a time where you’ve experienced the feeling of not being as good or feeling like a fraud? Yeah, particularly at the moment, because right now I’m not working; I stopped working in 2016 and moved to Sydney to finish my nursing degree. I’ve been applying for jobs. I used to work in a hospital for disability in Northern Territory. When I apply for jobs, they will call for interview then say at the end of the day, “sorry, after carefully considering…” something like that. It makes you feel bad you know, and you see other people getting opportunities and even when you’re talking among your colleagues, maybe in placement or maybe at school, they say “Oh, I’m working there or there”. So I’m thinking what is going on, what is the matter, is it my resume or what? At times I don’t feel courage. Recently I even applied for a job and they were like, “we advise you to look at the website regularly and apply for the future”. I thought, “If I apply for the future vacancies, am I not going to get the same result?” So it slows down your energy but one thing I know for sure is that it won’t continue that way. Definitely when the time comes, I will get mine, so. That’s what keeps me going. Sola, Nursing Student, 42 years old What is Imposter Syndrome? Imposter syndrome refers to patterns of behaviour wherein people doubt their abilities, irrespective of any past achievements (Nelson 2011). In fact, people will attribute most of their success to luck, chance or timing, while taking full responsibility for any failure. The syndrome was first explored in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who described it as “an internal feeling of intellectual phoniness” coupled with the insistent anxiety that you would be found out (pg. 241). The interesting thing was that these feelings persisted despite actual academic and professional experience, resulting in crippling self-doubt and the anticipation of failure (Nelson 2011). While imposter syndrome can be experienced by anyone, research has indicated that it is disproportionality higher among women and people from minority groups (Mullangi, Samyukta & Jagsi 2019). For women belonging to minority groups facing structural barriers, the experience of imposter syndrome is often inflated by the lack of forerunners or role models of the same background in their field. It’s safe to assume that almost every objectively competent woman, and especially woman of colour, has experienced at least one moment in their lives when they have felt like they don’t belong in a space they are otherwise qualified for. What Does Imposter Syndrome Look Like? Has there ever been a time in your career where you’ve felt like a fraud? When I first got my job as a teacher, I was very scared of my English speaking abilities. I kept thinking, “they’ve got it wrong, they’re going to figure out that they’ve made a mistake and fire me from my job.” For the first two, three years I was like that. My first parent-teacher interview night, I was so nervous I said, “What if I don't understand the parents?” My colleagues, they kept saying “you understand us, why are you so worried?” Finally I went through it, and I understood everyone. But I was scared for a very long time thinking they’d find out that I actually don’t speak English that well. One time that I gained some confidence was when one of the native English-speakers in my biology class asked me a question about English grammar or something, and I answered him. That’s when I thought “oh, they actually think I know English.” Thoraya, Science teacher for over a decade. 45 years old. The look and feeling of imposter syndrome can be boiled down to the following three statements: Intense internal pressure to avoid failure. Extreme fear of being a fraud and people finding out you’re incompetent. Worry that you do not have the ability to complete something satisfactorily. In short, imposter syndrome looks like a person who is qualified to complete a task but cannot see themselves as such. They attribute their success to luck and other external factors without any acknowledgment of their own ability, effort and hard work (which can result in the fear that they won’t be able to replicate this success, creating constant anxiety, especially at deadlines). A person with it typically downplays their successes and emphasises their failures. If they succeed they will likely attribute it to the ease of the task, or others’ contributions. This will also result in difficulty accepting compliments. Think about times when someone praised you for work that you poured countless hours of sleeplessness into - how many times have you responded with one of the following: “Oh it’s nothing” “I actually didn’t even do anything” “Hahahah thanks, but it could have been so much better” Has there ever been a time where you felt unworthy of the praise you were getting? I once made a painting in class, a simple watercolour penguin, that won an award in an art competition. I never submitted it to the competition but the painting ended up being exhibited in a gallery alongside other entrants. They were all framed and invitations were sent out to families to join the viewing. I remembered seeing all the other submissions and thinking “this isn’t right, why am I here?” I looked at my painted penguin and thought, “this doesn’t deserve all this attention, it’s bad, I wasn’t even trying” When I was praised for the painting I questioned their honesty in my mind. I desperately wanted to tell them that I didn’t belong up there with all the other artists. I was only 11 years old trying to convince everyone around me to take that painting down, hide it, rip it or burn it because I believed that everyone would see what I saw, that they’d eventually see with stark clarity that I was never good enough to be there in the first place.” So Why Does It Matter? Identifying imposter syndrome within yourself is important for numerous reasons. The first and most immediate reason is that when you live with the feeling that you are a fraud, it stops you from achieving the best in your work. The tendency of imposter syndrome to stop you from internalising your achievements, and so downplaying them, often means that you will likely not be credited for them. This is where imposter syndrome starts to have very real life effects. It can lead to lost opportunities, career setback due to not taking credit for your work, and not asking for opportunities or promotions. Research has shown that this is unfortunately a common trend for women, who while excelling in meritocratic institutions such as students in school and university (eg. high marks on a test you’ve been assigned), do not carry this over to the ‘real world’ setting of work, which is far more dependent on self-promotion (this means networking, talking about yourself, appearing confident in your own abilities) (Mullangi, Samyukta & Jagsi, 2019). There is an undeniable gendered dimension to this, as the same revered traits of self-assuredness, confidence and aggression in men, are often viewed as pushy, domineering, and unsocial in women (Fitzpatrick, & Curran, 2014). Additionally, the structural barriers, lack of strong role models, mentors and sponsors for people from minority groups means that the assertion that you are entitled to success, and deserve to be rewarded for the work you do, is not a reality for all and cannot be accepted the same way by minorities. Mullangi, Samyukta & Jagsi, Reshma (2019), even state that in this way imposter syndrome can be conceptualised as “a symptom of inequity.” Essentially, the effects of imposter syndrome end up meaning that you are ultimately stopped from achieving the things that you are most suited to do. A more immediate consequence of imposter syndrome is that it can actually affect your performance in your work. Feelings of inadequacy, or failing to recognise your expertise in an area can mean that you are unable to exhibit the appropriate level of professionalism and competence required for the role, despite the actual skills, knowledge and experience that you possess. For example, in a profession where a client needs to feel safe and confident in their carer’s ability to do a job, the carer’s own perception of their abilities can severely influence the client’s. This affects the quality of care they are able to deliver. How Do You Overcome Imposter Syndrome? “When I was still in the early years of working as an Occupational Therapist, a doctor was speaking to me and told me I was nothing but a glorified administrator. If it had come at an earlier time in my life, or if I hadn't been questioned my entire life, maybe I would have let it go. But it wasn't just about representing myself and women, it was about advocating for my entire profession. So it told him "No. Actually what I do is get people back to living their life in the way that they want" Sara, OT of 36 years, professor at the University of Sydney So now that we’ve established that imposter syndrome is crippling and terrible, what do we do about it? After scouring the internet and raiding the minds of some of the people that have made it to the other side, here are some tried and trusted ways of overcoming imposter syndrome: Awareness As the old cliche goes, the first step is to admit you have a problem. Consider those pestering thoughts of inadequacy. Do they have any basis in reality? Are they really justified? Do you fail consistently or is it that you’ve never really kept track of your successes? Be a realist (and we don’t mean a pessimist catfishing as a realist) Consider your context and where you are at in life. How much are you really expected to know at the stage you’re currently at? If you’re just starting a job for example, it is completely normal and acceptable not to know all of its ins and outs yet, and to feel as though you're out of your depth. Not knowing everything just means that you will continue to progress and develop. And remember that it's ok to ask for help if you need it. Talk it out! Discuss your feelings with trusted friends or colleagues. High chances are they are also feeling or have at some point felt the same way. Work out strategies together. Don’t let the feelings of inadequacy fester in your own mind. Talking about what you’re feeling will also help you to get another person’s more objective perspective on your abilities. Reframe your negative thoughts Think of real life instances and examples that contradict the feeling that you haven’t achieved anything, and more likely than not you’ll find examples you haven’t thought of since the time you achieved them. It’s important to isolate and identify the cruel voice of IS in your head and do the work to learn your worth, so that next time you’re confronted with feelings of inadequacy you can identify them for what they are and start to reframe them. And finally, failure really isn’t all it's cracked up to be. In a capitalist society like our own, becoming obsessed with the idea of success, all the ways we can achieve it, the things we’re going to do when we have it, is normal. Expected, in fact. So, in an environment where the ‘self-made individual’ is king, it’s easy to see how we’ve internalised the idea that failure is a personal defect. Context, structure, circumstance and sheer luck are not factored into the equation. For people who are from minority groups this obsession can also be compounded by feelings of responsibility as a representative for your entire community. Failure is inevitable in the same way that death, a holiday themed Krispy Kreme release, and an unnecessary Hollywood reboot of a great franchise is. It's important to understand that failure is a part of life, expected but not constant. The hard part isn’t the failing, but being able to learn the lesson from it and use it to build your wisdom. To paraphrase the great SRK in the Bollywood classic ‘Om Shanti Om’, failure isn’t the end of the story, it’s just a chapter. Maybe even several chapters. But the point is, by recognising that failure is just the complementary toy in the Happy Meal of life, the shame of failing gets lifted. Failure itself is not synonymous with an unchanging intrinsic part of you, it’s just one of the stages in the process.