Award-winning journalist Rachael Hocking’s years studying at RMIT were not always easy, but they fuelled her drive to report on social justice.
“The foundational journalism skills I learnt at RMIT were fantastic and my confidence was built through my activism at RMIT,” she said.
A Warlpiri woman from the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory, Rachael was the only Indigenous person in her year when she studied the journalism degree at RMIT’s Melbourne city campus 10 years ago.
“We don’t often see ourselves reflected in the mainstream. When you are the only Blackfulla in your year at university, you don’t often hear your world view reflected. It means you have to do a lot more work. It took me two years to confidently talk up in class,” she remembered.
Rachael grew up in the NT and completed high school in Melbourne. While she understands more than most the unique challenges of moving off Country to attend a tertiary institution in a big city, Rachael is reluctant to play to the erroneous notion that Indigenous people are a monolithic entity and won’t presume to talk for all First Nations people.
“For a lot of people it is really, really difficult – the language barriers, the cultural barriers – it is culture shock,” is all she will say.
RMIT’s Indigenous support centre Ngarara Willim became a “lifeline” for her.
Rachael Hocking speaking at the 2023 RMIT Scholarship Dinner
Ngarara Willim helped Rachael secure scholarships to help finance her studies, paying for books and a bicycle to get to work and classes. But it also provided so much more.
“The strong bonds of reciprocity in most First Nations communities are not well understood or appreciated in the wider community,” she said.
“The fact that we hold multiple roles in our families and communities is very important. It means a scholarship isn’t just for one person, it is for an extended family. I shared my scholarship income with my family, including the bicycle it funded. Not solely because I saw it as my responsibility, but because I grew up in a family and community who instilled the belief that we are stronger individually when we lift each other up collectively.
“Ngarara Willim was incredible. It was a place and a time for us all to come together; a safe place for Blackfullas to feel comfortable, to ask questions and to celebrate the things we were achieving. Having a properly staffed and resourced place like Ngarara Willim is essential.”
While she was surprised that the sole Indigenous studies unit in RMIT’s journalism course was a one-semester elective, things began to gel for Rachael when she took that unit.
“I did so well in that elective subject. I felt seen. I was heard. I knew the facts and I had lived experience of the issues I was reporting on,” she said.
She wants to see more compulsory units on Indigenous affairs in media courses.
“If you are going to be doing journalism in this country you need to know the context of the issues you are reporting on.”
After graduating from RMIT, Rachael joined NITV, Australia’s national Indigenous broadcaster, first as a reporter and then as co-host of its flagship current affairs program, The Point. In 2020 she was named Media Person of the Year at the Dreamtime Awards and she received a First Nations Media Australia award for her reporting on the 2019 death of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu.
Rachael served a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma in the Asia Pacific and now works as a freelance journalist, moderator, presenter and teacher with a firm focus on social justice, equity, telling First Nations stories and helping other First Nations people tell their stories.
“There is a First Nations viewpoint on every single subject in the world. We need to hear more of them.”
