Jessica Mauboy is not my (musical) cup of tea but earlier this year I was able to redeem my status as a really shit godfather to my 11 year old goddaughter when I slipped her a copy of Jessica’s latest album for her birthday.

Here in the Top End Jessica Hilda Mauboy is “our Jess” who can do no wrong.

For those who’ve come in late (or have lived under a rock for the past eight years) Our Jess is a young Indonesian/Australian (in the truest sense of that nationality) performer of stage, screen and record who grew up in Darwin and has the strongest of ties to this place.

Elsewhere in the country it seems that she is less well regarded.

Last evening on Facebook – that journal-of-record-for-self-appointed-moral-arbiters – journalist Chris Graham threw this post into the Facebook cesspit:

Jess Mauboy participating in Australia Day celebrations…. Hmmmm

That started a long comment chain, much of it dismissive of Jessica’s participation in a series of Australia Day concerts on Sydney Harbour. I popped up with the suggestion that Jessica could maybe play at both the Australia and Invasion/Survival day gigs and that criticising her for doing her job was a cheap shot.

That attracted this response from Chris Graham:

Really Bob? Really? Jessica Mauboy enjoys privileges today that she would NEVER have enjoyed if it wasn’t for the people before her who sacrificed so much.

Celebrating Australia Day dishonours them all.

Presume you support Anzac Day? Can’t see any link?

If there was a national day on any other day – a day that didn’t mark the theft of Aboriginal land – then go for it.

Until then blackfellas who participate in Australia Day celebrations are, in my book, not only part of the problem, but unlike bogans they cannot plead ignorance.

Makes it far worse.

Nala Mansell popped up with the one word comment “coconut.” Arika Biara Errington reckoned that Jessica was “Just another to add to the assimilation pile.”

Around this time I backed out and watched this unseemly brouhaha from afar.

Michael Brull was one of the few to argue against the apparently common view that Jessica Mauboy was some kind of traitor to her heritage.

Disagree with Chris. It’s worse being white and celebrating Australia Day imo.

A conqueror celebrating their victory and ignoring the suffering the conquest brought about – whether through racism or stupidity – strikes me as more obscene than someone insincerely paying lip service to it.

To which Chris Graham responded:

Brull: I actually think ignorance is an excuse. Not a particularly good one, but an excuse none-the-less.

I know a lot of non-Aboriginal people who really just don’t get it. As the years roll on, I think they’re running out of excuses for their ignorance.

But Jess Mauboy has absolutely no excuse.

She knows what it means – she went for the cash instead.

I have a major issue with that. But I take your point.

The discussion (for want of a better word) then morphed into a churlish thread about Jessica’s response to the US-version of the DVD cover of the hit movie “The Sapphires“ when released there.

At this point I retreated to my bed and my dreams.

In this morning’s NT News  – with her face splashed across the front page – Jessica sends this message (in part) from her home in Darwin:

I think Australia gives you a unique identity. Although we are so diverse, somehow we resolve that in the one word, Australia.

It makes us bigger and better than our differences. That is our heart.

And in what may work as a post dated answer to those who doubt her sincerity, Jessica has this to say about Australia Day:

I am able to celebrate Australia day and embrace the stories of survival. I want to know the stories and share them with people as well.

I have accepted that as a big part of my life, as a 24-year-old indigenous woman.

…

You want to help that situation, to help people heal and maybe singing a few songs and being the colour I am can help.

Let’s not be bitter, let’s be proud of who we are and being here and living so they get to tell their family’s stories to the next mob.

We’re all free and good to go, that’s the opportunity we have to grab. We have to help each other to make it better, to make it special.

Jessica will headline the Harbour Concert Series on Sunday along with a “melting pot” of other artists. 

The Yabun Festival will be held at Victoria Park in Sydney to celebrate the the 25th Anniversary of the original Survival Day Concert of 1988.