Award-winning hip-hop artist and Yorta Yorta man, Adam Briggs says he hasn’t stood for the Australian national anthem since he was “maybe 13 or 14 years-old” after realising the lyrics didn’t represent Indigenous people.
Appearing on the ABC's Q&A on Monday, an audience member asked him what the Australian anthem would have to look like in order for it to be accepted by Indigenous Australians.
The question comes after Briggs recently featured in an ABC social video, where he broke down the anthem into sections and interpreted what the words meant to Indigenous people in an attempt to explain what it “sounds like when blackfellas listen to it.”
“The idea that Australia is young and free when Indigenous people are some of the most incarcerated people on the face of the earth,” Briggs said.
“You know, wealth for toil, only one in 10 Indigenous Australians are financially secure.
“If we can’t take the steps towards changing the simple things like a bad song…, how do we move forward to change everything else,” he said.
Briggs said he was prepared to wear the abuse and "racist" comments because the message he was trying to drive across was more important and bigger than himself.
"I've got a manager and one of his jobs is deleting the racist comments every day... every day, and it's a big job...I'll probably needs two managers," he said.
Briggs' take on the anthem has drawn criticism from Aboriginal politician Warren Mundine, who told the West Australian the award-winning artist didn't know what he was talking about and that Indigenous people were "the freest people on earth."
“Here is a person making a lot of money, a rock star that travels the country and no one is stopping him and locking him up. Let’s get back to reality,” Mundine said.
Mundine said the ABC shouldn't be spending taxpayers dollars on such videos.
"If they are going to do something they should be out there prosecuting the case of how we stop youth suicide and Aboriginal suicide,” he said.
