When I started my blog Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist just over four years ago, the major motivation was that I wanted to claim some space in the worldwide web for Aboriginal feminist left-wing discourse.
I strongly felt that the mainstream media continued to ignore these types of opinions and, thanks to the internet providing public and freely available space, for the first time ever there was the ability to circumnavigate these traditional channels of communication.
I believed no one would read it. This very soon proved to be an ill-founded belief for not only did my blog gain a strong readership very quickly, but it was picked up by a couple of keen editors shortly after I started it.
I thought this was a fluke at first, but as the requests kept rolling in, I eventually realised there was a craving for the types of perspectives I was giving in the broader mainstream discussion. And thus, my career in freelance opinion writing and social commentary began.
Around the time I started taking this space, quite a few other Aboriginal people were doing the same. Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter had allowed us to connect and organise over vast distances. They also gave us platforms to discuss matters which had long been denied within the mainstream press.
Channels such as IndigenousX elevated the profile of many Indigenous people from all sorts of fields. Bloggers networked and in no small way, the media landscape changed. We now see more diverse Indigenous voices in the media than ever before, and though we're a long way off parity levels of representation, we are also less stilted by what the mainstream deems is an acceptable view for an Indigenous person to have.
Yet all has not been smooth sailing. There have been casualties. It was a real shame, for example, when Tracker Magazine was discontinued. Tracker was a fantastic addition to the landscape when it was first conceived because not only did it house some strong journalistic coverage of pertinent events in the community, it also gave the space for more radical and critical commentary.
Though you can still find that commentary going on in other places, it was a gift having it all in the one place, which we no longer get to enjoy.
"For all the battles that increased public profile brings (particularly as an Aboriginal woman), the ability to change the political landscape so our voices are