Jimmy Little outlines his views on racism, 2008

Transcript of the recording

I can only think that Dad would have had it tougher than me – my Dad's generation. We were corralled in the community. I was born on the mission, and proud to be a humble beginner from a restricted area, but my Dad and his generation, and Mum's generation, they were really not given general freedom across the board, other than work. But he didn't complain to me, or complain to my hearing anywhere with other Indigenous people. We were happy to be among ourselves. We didn't want to go across the border line, invisible border line, that society would have had up.

In the picture theatres as a kid, going to school, the community in the town where I grew up, we couldn't sit anywhere in the theatre. We had to sit right down the front on a border line that permitted only black up the front and whites down the back or upstairs. So I saw that, and I said that's OK, I didn't want to mix with anybody. I'm just going to go to the movies, with an open mind and open heart and enjoy that with my family and friends and black community. So to me that was acceptable until later on when I thought, well gee this is not being fair dinkum in the community.

Yet, as a kid, like in grade two all the way up to grade three and four that didn't really worry me. It was just a matter of enjoying people who enjoyed you. I was not inspired to wear the banner, carry the banner, or be down on people. I ignored people who ignored me, and I could live without them. And my attitude was an open hand and a smile and not a clenched fist and a frown.

So in other words, my general attitude to people was open and friendly and that opened doors for me across the border line that people had. I never had the border line. It was the white society that had the border line. And because I was going straight down a path that I believed was a mutual path I didn't go there to try and mend people or change people's attitudes.

I just wanted to do my job and go on to the next place and that's all I kept doing. So I didn't go out with a political attitude. It was just commercial entertainment and take it or leave it. Music is non-racial and it's non-political and it's non-religious. It's a commercial product for all.