MATTERS OF THE HEART – MY STORY – JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE

In 2025, Senator Jacinto Nampijinpa Price released her memoir – Matters of The Heart. It is a story that is honest, raw and at times heartbreaking, and a deeply personal reflection of how a young Indigenous woman, growing up surrounded by violence and tragedy, beat the odds to become one of the most powerful political voices of our time. “I’ve been to hell and back, and I’ve survived,” she says. On Tuesday 18 February 2025, Jacinta Price addressed The Sydney Institute to explain how she came to write her book and why it is so important that she tell her story so that it might impact on government policy in closing the gap and bringing stability to Indigenous communities in remote Australia. The paper which follows is taken from an edited transcript.

MATTERS OF THE HEART – MY STORY

 JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE

I’m very grateful for you all being here today. I’m also very grateful for the incredible support I have had right around the country in all my efforts trying to bring some reality to the debate that is Indigenous Affairs.  All this, as well as trying to drag the truth, kicking and screaming, into the light and to challenge the status quo. It is an attempt to try to bring our wonderful country together again. I love this country, I love Australia. I love the opportunities, the fact that it’s given me so much opportunity in life and, for that, it’s been so important and so much a part of my journey.

It’s been daunting. To write a book about myself, about my life and about the challenges and the darkness that I’ve had to overcome is so different from being able to stand up and speak on an issue. And it’s still daunting being able to share that so openly. I’m very grateful for the incredible support and the open hearts of people like yourselves, the Australian people, who have just made it that little bit easier to be able to do it. I guess I’m living proof that this country provides opportunity for anybody, that anybody can become what they want in this country. That anybody can make it to the halls of power and be in the driver’s seat in terms of putting forward the direction in which this country should be able to go, a direction that’s going to benefit all Australians.

When I was approached by Sue Smethurst and HarperCollins to embark on a journey unveiling my life, it was at first a bit scary even though I thought, well, it’s probably the right time. It’s probably the right time because I have had the wonderful opportunity to take the stage and take a national platform on the issues that I’m particularly passionate about.

One of the most common questions that has been put to me, on social media anyway, is – can you tell me a bit more about yourself? It’s a question I never answer, because I might be there forever. So, I thought, well, now’s the opportunity. Now is the right time to be able to speak about my life experiences, to be able to shine a light on that, so that not only my supporters but my detractors can understand why I fight for the things that I fight for, why I stand up for the voiceless, why I push back on the status quo.

It all begins, with my parents and my mother’s journey. I feel as though my mother deserves her own book on her own journey as a Warlpiri woman, a Warlpiri child and girl and somebody who had to face womanhood at a very young age in becoming a mother at the age of 14. This and the struggles she endured and had to overcome, the obligations of customary law placed on her as a 13-year old.

The expectation for my mother was that she must join a polygamous marriage and be married off at such a young age and become a second wife. This was not an uncommon practice when my mother was growing up. And it still occurs today. And part of my book also describes my grandfather who, as a Warlpiri man, first came in contact with white Australians in his early adolescence. He was a revolutionary, forward-thinking man who pushed back on traditional customary obligations. He allowed my mother, in the end, to make the choices she wanted to make to better her future, to embark on a journey of understanding this modern Australia that she was now part of. A journey that would enrich her life.

My grandfather lost his sight when I was quite young, so he was blind for the most of the time that I knew him. I remember sitting on his lap as a 10-year-old. He touched my arm, saying to me, “Oh, yeah, you know, you must be nearly ready to be married soon.” And me going, “No, no, no, no, no, I’m nowhere near it yet.” He chuckled and he said, “Okay, okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Then he said, “But you know what, when that time comes, I want you to marry a white fella.” My dad was particularly embarrassed by that suggestion. “She can marry whoever she wants. It doesn’t matter, don’t have to be white fella, they can be whoever, come from any part of the world,” he protested.

What my grandfather meant was that he saw in my father, who was white, an individual who opened the world up for my mother, who took her away from a violent situation where she may have very well lost her life if she’d stayed with my mother’s first husband. She was forced into that relationship. If she hadn’t escaped that relationship, then she may very well have never lived, and I may never have come along. So, to my grandfather, my father symbolised this modern world. He was so proud that those worlds came together in love, and that my dad was able to be that lynchpin toward freedom for my mother. That’s what my grandfather wanted for me, that’s how I saw his comments.

Within the journey as written in my book, I speak about some of the circumstances no one should have to go through. One of those situations was quite early in my relationship with my husband, Colin. We are together as a blended family and I talk about my relationship with my first husband in the book as well. But when Colin came into my life, it was a time when I was struggling as an individual, as a single mother. Around that time, in the first couple of years we were seeing one another, I was tasked with having to identify my cousin’s body in the morgue. My cousin, who was about four years younger than me, had died in an alcohol fuelled car crash where the driver had been punched in the back of the head by her drunk husband in the back seat, which caused the crash that killed my cousin. Colin, very heart-warmingly, ensured that he took care of me. He drove me and my father to the morgue to identify my cousin.

That was definitely the moment I realised this bloke is a keeper. I wanted to marry this bloke, because anybody else might have run in the other direction. But Colin was there right by my side. Colin’s son Kincaid was four years old. He’s now about to turn 18. They both have lived the journey and walked the path with me and my boys. They have been to the many funerals of loved ones that we have lost to domestic violence and alcohol fuelled violence.

During my time working for Imparja television, I did a lot of touring around the country. When I was a children’s television presenter, my best friend acted as a giant honey ant and we sang and danced our way across regional and remote Australia. I had the opportunity to spread messages to kids about everything from eradicating trachoma to ensuring they washed their faces and took care of their ears. These were educational messages and much more. Quite often, we’d come to a community where a couple of weeks before a child had been raped or attacked. You’d see these little kids and you just wanted something better for them.

I knew that Warren Snowden had been the member for Lingiari since I was a five-year old and, to me, he’d done nothing to improve the lives of my family in remote communities. My mother had been a Labor supporter, but I watched her used as a token and not recognised by Labor. So, she left and joined the Country Liberal Party after which she became the Minister for Local Government. This encouraged me to try my luck in politics. I was elected to the Alice Springs council and became deputy mayor, contested Lingiari against Warren Snowden but failed and then had the opportunity to challenge a sitting senator, and I had the wonderful honour to be elected to the Senate in 2022. As part of the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory, I sit in the Nationals Party room.

When I see Indigenous Affairs being weaponised against non-Indigenous Australians, I have to stand up against it. We’re talking about families, we’re talking about people, human beings – those who have walked the walk and been on the path and the journey and seen the heartbreak, and lived it. Why should we be separated by race in our country? Those separatists, who seek separatism, are an industry that has been built on the backs of the misery of our most marginalised. For them it is about maintaining their positions of power and not about solving the problems or supporting our most marginalised. They are not seeking to empower the marginalised to have the lives that they live – to be able to send their kids to school, to be able to earn a six-figure salary, to be able to live a life free of violence in their homes, to be able to own their own home. The same opportunities that are afforded every single Australian in this country.

Why should our most marginalised continue to miss out because of their culture or their race? This is Australia, and it’s 2025. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a Western democracy that should uphold the rights for every citizen equally.

All those reasons are uncovered in Matters of The Heart. This is my journey and the reason I’ve come this far and why I continue to stand up in the face of some of the most horrific criticisms that I receive, especially from supposed Indigenous leaders. If I have to stand up and continue to be a target, so that it shines a light on what the problem is in terms of that leadership, then that’s what I’ll do, so that Australians can see with their very own eyes where our problems lie, why our marginalised cannot get ahead.

When I talk about some of the horrible things that I’ve experienced, one of those things is being a survivor of domestic violence myself. While I had witnessed violence within my extended family, I’d never personally been subjected to it. Being subjected to domestic violence made me absolutely realise that no human being should have to endure that. No human being should have to be treated so appallingly and have to experience the trauma of abuse as I did. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. It is then incumbent upon me to fight for those that aren’t so lucky as I have been. It is also why it was so important for me to allow the skeletons in my cupboard bask in the light, if you like. But I have had the incredible support of my family throughout my life, and that is another reason why I consider myself very lucky. Because of the love that I have had in my life to be able to stand up and be that voice for those who are belittled, who are denigrated, who are marginalised, to be that voice, and I’ll continue to do so despite the threats.

In this last week of parliamentary sittings, I stood up to call out the chairperson of the Central Land Council. Not only do I know of his violent past because he is part of my extended family, but I had to go through our processes to draw that out for the public to understand. It needed to be demonstrated that those who choose to make excuses for his sort of conduct and behaviour should be brought into the light also. Those are the people that I continue to get pushback from. That supposed Indigenous leadership. Those are the people that the media, the ABC particularly, hold in high regard and expect the rest of us to revere them. But why should we have this double standard in a country like Australia? We wouldn’t allow it anywhere else, but it is allowed in Indigenous Affairs for some horrible reason.

Part of my journey has been trying to change the narrative in this space and to take it from a more honest perspective, and to prioritise the victims in that regard. I’ve done that in my previous work as part of the Centre for Independent Studies. It’s been really important. While I might be telling my personal story, it’s not about me in the end. It’s about ensuring that those who need to have the same opportunities, have freedom of choice, have the basics of an education, to live a life free of violence and sexual abuse, can get that eventually and for their future.

For a long time, there has been an Aboriginal rights movement, and the expectation of Aboriginal women has never been to participate in the feminist movement, but simply to take a back seat, to fight for your race, as opposed to yourself as an individual, as a woman in her own right. I find the activists that belong to the Indigenous rights movement can be very aggressive in support of their own stance. And, if you’re a polite individual, you’re reluctant to take that on and challenge it. There is also a culture within Indigenous people and their fight for Indigenous rights, that suggests you should not make us look bad. The argument is, don’t make Aboriginal people look bad because it encourages racism.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, racism isn’t killing our marginalised, it’s the violence, it’s the alcohol, it’s the destruction. Part of what I’ve been trying to do is to say to fellow Australians, if you’re concerned for your fellow Australians, stand up and talk about it. We’re talking about humans here, and that’s what we should take it back to. Basic human needs. We should all stand up for one another, regardless of race, regardless of the gas lighting and the bullying from the activist class. Some of this is   changing now. Many Australians are saying, you’re right. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to stand up as well. And I keep saying, push back on the left, especially the feminist class. Where are the sisters? Where are the sisters to come to the rescue for Indigenous women? You know, I’ll call it out for what it is.

What I’d hope to see is that we focus in on who our marginalised are, and stop taking a blanket approach that suggests all Indigenous Australians are disadvantaged for no other reason but racial heritage. We need to ensure that those in remote communities are getting an education, a satisfactory education, and treat them like ESL (English as a Second Language) learners, like we do with our migrant community. Because we’re talking about young kids whose first language is not English.

So, it’s about getting back to basics, and I’d hope to be able to see more young people from communities whose first language is not English, finishing school, going to university or going into meaningful employment, and having much more opportunity. That’s what I hope to see, that our marginalised are actually better accessing the opportunities that exist in this country, and that we’ve created an environment to be able to do that.