Nova Peris – Standing Up For What’s Right

First published by One Community Chronicle

Miriam Bell talked to legendary Australian sportswoman and former politican, and staunch advocate for the Jewish community, Nova Peris, when she visited New Zealand recently. Here’s her report of their conversation…

Nova Peris is on the verge of tears. 

The trailblazing Aboriginal sportswoman and former politician is sitting in the breakfast room of one of Auckland’s trendy new hotels, looking out over downtown to the sparkling Waitamata harbour.

It’s shaping up to be a beautiful February day, she and her husband are in New Zealand for a mini-break before boarding a cruise ship, and it’s her birthday in a few days time.

But it’s also the day after the Bibas family were returned to Israel amid disturbing scenes, and shortly after the way in which the Bibas children died has been revealed.

The tragic unfolding of events devastated Peris, as it did many, and she says she and her husband cried as the news got worse, and as they watched kids in Gaza celebrating in front of the Bibas’ kids’ coffins.

Until recently, Peris was best known as the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal (as part of the Australian women’s field hockey team at the 1996 Olympic Games), and the first indigenous Australian woman elected to federal parliament (as a Labour senator in 2013).

Since leaving parliament, she has remained in the public eye due to her work running the Nova Peris Foundation, and her advocacy for the “yes” vote in the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum.

But since October 7, Peris has become a strong advocate for Israel, and the Jewish community, and a vocal campaigner against anti-semitism.

In this she is unusual. There are very few high profile, non-Jewish figures in Australia or New Zealand who have taken this stance. But Peris is driven by a steadfast sense of justice and what is right.

This has led her to speak out about the alarming rise in antisemitism in Australia, which has included the fire bombing of synagogues, assaults, graffiti, threats, doxing, and boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. 

She has visited synagogues, and Jewish community centres, and spoken at events, such as the one year commemoration of October 7 in Sydney. 

Last March she visited Israel for the first time, and in May she resigned as co-chair of the Australian Republican Movement after her co-chair asked football associations to suspend Israel from a FIFA conference.

And it’s why she has taken time out from her holiday to meet with representatives of the New Zealand Jewish community, and to talk to the One Community Chronicle.

Here’s an edited (for length and clarity) report of this reporter’s conversation with Peris.

You are one of few non-Jewish public figures to speak out for the Jewish people, and against antisemitism. What has led you to become such a staunch ally?

On October 4 2023, I got back to Australia after completing the Kokoda Track for the second time, and returned to campaigning for the Voice referendum on October 14.

But the referendum ended up with 60% of Australians voting against indigenous Australians having a voice. My mother and I cried for weeks after, we were devastated by the result and what it might mean.

Then I started thinking about October 7, and my Jewish friends.

I thought about the way the majority of Jewish people voted in the referendum, and overwhelmingly they voted for our recognition. And I thought about the historical relationship between the Jewish people and Aboriginal people. 

It was Jewish lawyers like Jim Spiegelman and Ron Castan who stood with us in the fight for Aboriginal land rights, to overturn the concept of Terra Nullius and to deliver us justice in landmark cases such as Mabo.

The Jewish people have a history of standing up for the rights of Aboriginal people. They’ve sat with my people, they’ve heard the truth and believed in us, and gone forth for us. 

So when my Jewish friends were feeling isolated after October 7 and I saw what was happening, I had to do something. I said help me understand your fight, and I listened to them.

I started to speak out, and then I went to Israel. I visited some of the kibbutzim attacked on October 7 and the site of the Nova festival, I met with families of hostages, including Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi was held hostage in Gaza, and I heard stories that I will never forget.

We were shown the film made from videos taken by the Hamas terrorists themselves. Every politician should see that film because what happened that day is being denied, but the evils that we saw we can never unsee. 

The truth is there, and if you want to find it you can, but instead we’re seeing this disinformation and hatred against the Jewish people like there was in the 1930s and 1940s.

How has your own life and history shaped you and your views?

My mother and my auntie are from the Stolen Generation. They were eight and two years old when they were taken away to a mission on the Tiwi Islands, and were there for many years. It was only about four years ago the Catholic Church apologised for what happened there. But it was closure, and it’s healing for them. 

I was at a breakfast for the Stolen Generation at Parliament recently, and I talked to an elderly Aboriginal gentleman. He told me that when he was stolen he had a name, and then he went into an institution and he became a number.

But that gentleman, like my mother, survived. I look at my mother, who came through it with self-belief as she was fostered out to a beautiful English couple who had empathy and saw her as a person, and she never pushed her past on to me and my sister, never spoke about it.

It’s similar to many Jewish people who went through the Holocaust. They were entered into the system as a number, their world was erased, and they were dehumanized, and they want to ensure their children never endure what they’ve been through.

I had freedoms my mother never had, and I was able to go to school and play sports. We didn’t have much racial discrimination in the Northern Territory, it’s a multi-cultural place, and no-one said I couldn’t achieve because I was an Aboriginal girl.

So when I was nine I was in the newspaper because I won five gold medals and broke three NT records at a state championship, and I wanted to go to the Olympics. When my mum was eight she was sent to the mission. But she came through it, and raised us well, with love.

But I have never taken things for granted, and I was raised to feel empathy for people. So the reason my support for the Jewish people is so steadfast is because I understand my own people’s history, and I see things clearly because I see humanity.

Can you tell me more about the connections between Aboriginal people and Jewish people?

Jewish people first came to Australia as prisoners, and then came to settle freely later in the 1800s, so there’s history there.

And then you look at our military history with over 8000 Jewish people serving since WW1, alongside Aboriginal people, and one of our greatest general’s, Sir John Monash, was Jewish.

If you look at the Jewish contribution to Australia, it’s been generous across all fields from medicine to education to philanthropy. The community has done nothing but build the country up.

A lot of Aboriginal people support the Jewish people, but don’t say it. Many Aboriginal people have gone on pilgrimages to Israel. Others are descendants of Australia’s 11th Light Horse Regiment, who fought in the Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in WW1. They saw the fight to give the Jewish people the right to their homeland, and that’s a fight they understand.

And there’s the story of William Cooper [pictured], an Aboriginal activist. In 1938 he led a delegation to the German Embassy in Melbourne to deliver a petition which condemned the persecution of the Jewish people by Germany’s Nazi government.

Worldwide, it was one of the only private protests against the Nazis following Kristallnacht, and there is a memorial to William Cooper at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

How do you feel about the anti-Israel protests and rhetoric that seem so prevalent in Australia? 

There’s a lot of disinformation, and a lot of young kids that I speak to have jumped on that bandwagon. And they yell and scream about resistance and colonisation, and it’s all f*** Australia and f*** white people. 

But talking to my mother, and older Aboriginal people, they say “what are they going on about? This generation doesn’t have it like mine did”.

For me the hardest thing is seeing how it impacts older Jewish people. Because how terrifying it is to be a Jewish person now? And what can I say apart from I’m sorry that you’re enduring all of this. Because it’s complete madness. It is madness that the Jewish people are made out to be the colonisers, and the perpetrators in all this.

When you look at Jewish history, going back over 3000 years, the Jewish people have survived persecution and exile. They have the strongest DNA that I’ve ever known, and I believe indigenous people around the world should have the highest regard for Jewish people, because they are the epitome of decolonisation.

The Jewish people have returned back to their homeland stronger than ever. They’ve never forgotten their traditional ways or religious practices. And they’ve turned the desert into what it is today. It’s an absolute joke all these fools chanting from the river to the sea, because Israel isn’t going anywhere. 

Have you encountered any backlash to your stance, and what keeps you going in the face of negativity?

Of course, I get s*** on social media. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I don’t have an ego. I’ve achieved at the highest levels. I see humanity, and I care for people and I have gratitude for the life that I have. 

I look at the strength and resilience of my mother and my ancestors. My mother was silenced on the mission, my grandparents were made to feel inhumane. And I’m not just a proud Aboriginal person but a proud Australian and all these young people shouting about colonisation, well, that horse has bolted.

Australia has done much towards reconciliation and there are so many opportunities for Aboriginal people, but discrimination does still exist. As an Aboriginal person I’ve learned to walk in two worlds, the Aboriginal world and the modern world. 

So how do I see the whole anti-Israel situation? I’m disgusted… I was in the synagogue in Sydney in lockdown for two hours, while outside there was all this yelling and screaming and carrying on.

I look at all the older people in the synagogue with me that day and the Jewish schools and restaurants that are being attacked, and all the aggressive protests, and I think do you really think Netanyahu is going to give a s*** about that?

Australia is thousands of miles away, and these protests will have no impact on what Israel is going to do. Because Israel has a right to defend itself, and if what happened on October 7th happened in Australia, we would expect our government to do the same. 

With the hatred that has come to me, it doesn’t affect me.  I will always stand true as I know the difference between good and evil, and Hamas is evil. I went to Israel to understand the country and to listen to the people, and I see the truth. 

What keeps me going? There’s a beautiful saying that resonates deeply with me: “Blessed is the one who plants a tree knowing they will never sit in its shade.” 

What keeps me going is the joy and fulfillment I feel in planting seeds – whether through advocacy, opportunity or kindness – and trusting that, with the right care and love, they will grow into something far greater than me.

I may never know who will one day taste the fruit or rest beneath the shade of what I’ve sown, but that’s not the point. The point is that I gave, and continue to give, expected nothing in return. I’ve devoted the rest of my life to charity, to helping those most in need, and that alone fills me with purpose.

So I’m driven by my work with the Nova Peris Foundation, a social impact charity dedicated to empowering Aboriginal people with essential infrastructure and economic opportunities. We strive for positive health outcomes, growth and the support to achieve life excellence.

And what comes next for you? I understand you are working on a new project? 

When I spoke at the Emanuel Synagogue, there were a couple of ladies there who said “can’t we clone you?”. And that led to me working with these ladies, filming a documentary for the last six or seven months. 

Because there’s a lot of people around Australia who do support the Jewish people, so we’re going out to speak to those people and to bring their voices out.

I’ve talked about what the Jewish people have given my people, how they’ve stood with us. Many people don’t know this. But if you don’t know history, you don’t know where you come from, and that’s my thing – I want to show people the history. 

The news media is not interested in good stories, it’s always about controversy. So Israel is presented as the big bad attacker, rather than as defending itself from attackers on all sides, and that’s what too many average Australians are presented with.

So this work we are doing is also about showing the reality of Israel, and its history. And it’s to show, as I say to the Jewish kids I speak to, that what the Jewish people have in their DNA is phenomenal.

Many Aboriginal people pray for the Jewish people and Israel, and when I met the ambassador of Israel recently I told him that, and said “our ancestors will protect you and the Jewish people of this country”.

Miriam Bell