Dameyon Bonson says as a young gay Indigenous man he desperately needed a role model, but none was available, so he set up Black Rainbow, the first mental health and suicide prevention support service of its type

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

As a gay Aboriginal man, Dameyon Bonson says it was difficult to find anyone like him when he was growing up.



There were no gay Aboriginal role models that he knew of, and the Aids scare that swept through Australia – culminating with the Grim Reaper campaign of 1987 – meant Bonson felt ashamed, and even scared, of his sexuality.

Nearly 30 years later, much of the health information aimed at gay Indigenous Australians is still centred around HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, Bonson, a suicide prevention worker in the Kimberley, says.

It is what prompted him to found Black Rainbow, a new organisation trying to gather enough funding to establish itself as the first mental health and suicide prevention support service dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTI people.

“Like racism, homophobia can be casual, implied or blatant,” Bonson, who is 41, said.

“For Aboriginal lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex [LGBTI] people, one of the biggest problems is that there is nothing reflected in the world around them nothing that says, ‘It’s OK to be you.’ ”

People who identified as Indigenous and LGBTI suffered higher rates of depression, often self-medicated on alcohol and drugs and, in the worst cases, took their own lives, Bonson said.

“International research tells us that Indigenous LGBTI people are up to 45 times more at risk of suicide than the general population,” Bonson said.

“We don’t have a clear picture of what the figures are in Australia because the research doesn’t exist. As someone who is Aboriginal and working in suicide research, I realised that I had also become complacent to the fact that there is no health promotion material out there tailored towards this community, and we need to change that.”

Dr Tim Senior, a GP who works in Aboriginal health, said he had several gay Aboriginal patients and they all had unique needs. Many suffered “a double edge of discrimination”.

“There’s a combination of growing up in an environment where they’re often very proud of their Aboriginality, but experience discrimination as a result of it, as well as coming to terms with their sexuality often during their teenage years which is already a difficult time anyway.

“You get a double edge of discrimination which requires particular resilience to go through.”

A lack of health information tailored to LGBTI Indigenous Australians, combined with few role models, meant there was a lack of meaningful support for them.

“There is little out there that says to them, ‘This is a viable path, being Aboriginal and gay,’ ” he said.

Even the language around sexuality did not necessarily speak to Indigenous people, Senior said.

This was highlighted at the 2012 Pacific Region Indigenous Doctors’ Congress in Alice Springs, where a presentation from Canadian Indigenous researchers described how Aboriginal LGBTI terminology was colonising.

“Successive waves of colonisation have led some Aboriginal communities to become confused about the identity, roles and places of sexually diverse peoples in our communities and cultures,” the researchers, from the University of Saskatchewan, said.

More research was needed to identify “the health needs of a strong, misunderstood, sometimes vulnerable, yet very fabulous population” they concluded.

Lee Bevan, who grew up in the Kimberley and who descends from the Myool Myool and Gija people, identifies as queer.

“Gay has a connotation of white and middle-class. It’s colonising language and loaded with people’s prejudices,” he said.

Bevan now lives in Perth and said he hoped he was a role model to young Indigenous people who identify as LGBTI.

“I want them to see I have a successful, happy and fulfilling life, because it is so important for there to be visible role models out there,” Bevan said.

“What people also need is clinical support to help them understand and navigate this very difficult situation, of trying to form an individual identity and sense of self-worth in a community and social setting that is sometimes quite dysfunctional.”