MEYNE WYATT ‘SILENCE IS VIOLENCE’

Closing a Monday night's Q+A show on ABC in June 2020, which focused on Indigenous deaths in custody and the global Black Lives Matter movement, actor and writer Meyne Wyatt delivered a powerful speech taken from his autobiographical 2019 play City of Gold.

"'How are we to move forward if we dwell on the past?' That's your privilege. You get to ask that question," he told the audience. "You want your blacks quiet and humble. 'You can't stand up, you have to sit down.' ... Silence is violence. Complacency is complicity. I don't want to be quiet. I don't want to be humble. I don't want to sit down."

Meyne also recently became the first-time Archibald prize entrant to win the Packing Room Prize for his self-portrait. The Wongutha-Yamatji man is the first Indigenous artist to win any of the prizes on offer at the Archibald Prize in its 99-year history.

Source:The Guardian | Meyne Wyatt's Monologue on Racism on Q+A