“If you have come to help me…”
by Ricardo
I first came across this quote in the earlt-mid 1990s. “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” The poster I made with these words first appears in a Northland catalog in 1994. Since then it has become a widely-known quote, cited in thousands of web-site, books, articles, speaches, school board meetings, conference themes and who knows what else. It is usually attributed to “Lila Watson, Aboriginal activist.”
In fact this attribution is not correct (but not completely wrong). Here is our experience with the quote and its source. When I forst saw it, it was quoted in a student newsletter of some sort. It was attributed to “Australian aboriginal woman.” When I got ahold of them, the editors of the newsletter did not know any more than that. Not able to find the source (or even know how to look for it–remeber, the internet was fairly rudimentary still) I went ahead and designed the poster. We were not happy with the attribution, though. It was easly to see that the insight revealed by those words was not something that comes cheap. This was someone with some organizing experience under her belt. It was tempting to credit it to a “leader” but we didn’t have enough information to take that leap. We ended up attributing it to an “Aboriginal activist sister.” At least we were giving her credit for at least being an “activist.” We felt that, at least, would be safe to say.
We create a lot of art basedon quotes and are always trying to get the most accurate information we can on them. After some years we found some citations of it that mentioned Lila Watson. Excited to finally find a source for the quote we decided to research it. We finally tracked Lila down. She is still a community leader and activist (in Brisbane, I think). Anyway, we explained that we wanted permission to use the quote in a poster. Her husband (who acted as go-between in these conversations) knew exactly what quote we were calling about. It had already made the rounds widely. Lila expalined that she had been part of an Aboriginal rights group in Queensland (the hot-bed of Black Power organizing at the time) in the eaqrly 1970s. They had come up with the phrase in the course of their work–probably for someof the printed literature they produced as part of their organizing. She could not remember the exact process of how it had come about. She was quite clear, though, that she was not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process.
After some back and forth we came to an agreement on how it could accurately be credited. Now our poster simply attributes the words to “Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s.” Of course, we still get the occasional indignant e-mail “you know you should attribute that quote Lila Watson, an Aboriginal activist and educator…”
Lila Watson is not sure how the quote became attached to her name alone. It is a tribute to the power of the Internat that once it was, it has taken on a life of its own and has been replicated across the world and in several languages. It’s easy to see why, though. The words reflect a political clarity that is both sharply critical and generous. Who can resist them?
Thank You!
↓ Quote | PostedFebruary 20, 2007, 10:17 amI have been so curious about this quote, a guiding light for me in my community development studies.
Thank you for this research - what a fitting and good reminder of the importance of community in all of this work, as we usually go the path of fierce individualism.
↓ Quote | PostedMarch 27, 2007, 11:36 amThis quote was hung at a conference in Seattle last month and I have been mesmerized by it since. Thank you for this information!
↓ Quote | PostedJune 5, 2007, 5:00 pmIt strikes me as being very libertarian in meaning even if that was not the intent.
↓ Quote | PostedJuly 27, 2007, 7:27 amDear Ricardo - Where did you get the information that Lila Watson actually attributes this quote to “Aboriginal Activists Groups”? I am working on an academic journal, and one of our article author wants to credit the Aboriginal Activists Group with this quotation also, but we have found no source (besides your poster) that gives credit to anyone other than Lila Watson. Could you email me with any other information you might have. Was this from an interview with Watson? From an article or book written about her?
Thanks for your help!!
- Susan
↓ Quote | PostedAugust 7, 2007, 11:32 pmSusan,
There’s little I can add to what’s on the initial blog entry. We had been trying to track the source of the quote when we ran into the first attributions to Lila Watson (of which there are now millions). The quote is so compelling that everyone wants to use it, and they naturally reproduce the attribution they find with it. I managed to find contact info for her in Brisbane and spoke with her husband a number of times. He knew immediately what quote we were calling about. He had conversations with her and then got back to us until we had an attribution she was comfortable with.
She said that she was a part of the group that came up with those words. This was the period of Black Power struggles (a term used in the Aboriginal rights movement among other places). It was for a leaflet or pamphlet they were putting out (she doesn’t remember for sure exactly what the project was — I’m sure it didn’t seem important to document at the time). It was a collective process and she didn’t feel comfortable being credited with it. The way we credited it is descriptive: Aboriginal Activist Group was not the formal name of an organization.
We do a lot of confirming the origins of quotes since we use them in our work so much and we try to set the record straight when we can. So many people have seen the Lila Watson attribution that it might be necessary to mention her (we occasionally get indignant messages telling us that we need to credit Lila). Something that mentions that it was a collective statement from a group that included her among others.
Last year I tried to locate the contact info and couldn’t find it. It’d probably take phone calls to Brisbane to get it again. This spring I met some folks from there who said that Lila is still very active, radical and well respected and is part of a large activist family. I understand that she is also an artist working in traditional media.
I appreciate your checking on the source. I would like to honor Lila’s wish that the quotation be credited as accurately as possible.
I hope this has been helpful.
↓ Quote | PostedAugust 8, 2007, 1:41 pmRicardo
[…] from the Northland Poster Collective. […]
↓ Quote | PostedSeptember 4, 2007, 1:22 am[…] This quote is often credited to Lila Watson, an Aboriginal community leader and activist in Australia. Although it turns out that it was actually the result of a collective process of Aboriginal activists. Check out Northland Poster’s blog for more info. […]
↓ Quote | PostedJanuary 9, 2008, 8:48 pm[…] 13, 2008 · No Comments Kilroy said it: The Southern Hemisphere is the top of theworld […]
↓ Quote | PostedFebruary 13, 2008, 1:53 amPersonally, you are my idol. i love your work. You make me feel so good about myself
↓ Quote | PostedFebruary 18, 2008, 9:40 pmThank you for clearing this up. I never knew it to be from anyone other than Lila Watson. Now I can attribute it correctly the next time I want to quote it…which will probably be soon given how compelling I find its sentiments.
↓ Quote | PostedMarch 24, 2008, 7:45 pmThank you so much for researching this, and providing the insight to the quote being a collective response to a collective experience. It leaves me with even more admiration for Lila that in reacting to your request she stayed true to the spirit of the quote, it is one of the most powerful statements on acitivism, collectivism, and the human condition that I have seen. I confess that I too had been attributing it to Lila Watson, as it was passed on to me that way originally.
↓ Quote | PostedSeptember 16, 2008, 11:48 amThanks again.
Thank you so much for researching the origins of this quote! I too have found it to express exactly what I was groping to articulate, and it is heartening to hear that other people feel the same way!
↓ Quote | PostedSeptember 16, 2008, 4:30 pmI read some of the posts and I think it is a great blog. Sometimes I can’t help but give free reign to my sense make-up A joke for you! Why is the letter A like a flower? Because a Bee comes after it!
↓ Quote | PostedOctober 29, 2008, 10:08 pmhttp://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/soc220/Lectures220/General/AntiRacism%20Quotes.htm
↓ Quote | PostedNovember 4, 2008, 7:53 pmI remember being at the meeting in Canberra in the early 1980s where Lilla Watson made that statement in the course of a speech to the Women and Development Network of Australia (now sadly defunct), it was reported, I think in one of the newsletters of WADNA or else in some other newsletter from Canberra at the time which was more focussed on international issues than on the aboriginal struggle as such. Unofotunately whoever wrote the article neglected to include her name so the newsletter went around the world simply referring to her as an ‘aboriginal woman’, then it began to be quoted back from places like the Philippines and North America before being actually used in aboriginal publications.
↓ Quote | PostedNovember 5, 2008, 8:12 amIt was very significant in helping WADNA to develop its own philosophy and later, what came to known in Australia as Community Development, although in some ways it was not original as Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Vietnamese had been saying similar things before that. But Lilla brought it into an Australian context and different people were listening to her who didn’t listen to those socialists (in the cold war era).
I have just come to this blog now because a Timorese friend of mind has put the quote on his facebook page and started a debate about it.
On the day in which a former community organizer is elected to the White House it is good to be considering this again.
Helen Hill
Lecturer, International COmmunity Development,
Victoria University, Melbourne.
[…] it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. What does, though, is the following quote, attributed to a collective of Aboriginal activists from the 1970s in Queensland, […]
↓ Quote | PostedDecember 5, 2008, 6:52 pm[…] It is attributed variously to Lila Watson and the Aboriginal Activist’s Group Queensland 1970’s […]
↓ Quote | PostedDecember 19, 2008, 4:10 am