Daring to lead

In many important ways, however, Barack Obama is no Jesse Jackson - and that is a key to Obama’s political appeal. Whereas Jackson was a fully formed public figure - with all the baggage that entails - Obama is a work in progress who has the ability to embrace nearly whatever qualities he chooses.

As I flew back to Australia after a successful fortnight in the US, including addressing the prestigious Stanford University on my ongoing controversial campaign The N Word, I reflected on the leadership debate that consumed me before travelling abroad and have arrived, reluctantly I might add, at the following temperate conclusion: that the future national leader for Indigenous Australians will rise to the fore, like Barack Obama in the US, from outside the ranks of Indigenous households who have lived and breathed black politics all their lives.

I also suspect that this person, or persons, will have an impressive resume; outstanding academic and work history (Obama and his African American wife Michelle are both lawyers), and will have universal appeal to black and white audiences alike.

After I finished viewing Ten Canoes, the third movie on the 14-hour Qantas flight back to Australia, I closed my eyes and reflected on the appeal generated by Obama mania: front page stories in newspapers and lead news item on most political channels and implored that the rising black leader can in some way stay true to his people when he reaches the ultimate public office in the US.

I also anticipate that one day I will get to read a visionary statement from Obama and Australia’s future Indigenous leader, like the one my wife Rhonda and I read as we walked under the impressive Martin Luther King Jr Memorial waterfall feature at Union Square in San Francisco, made by the illustrious civil rights leader as follows:

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.