After the meeting, everyone was invited to have coffee or tea and Professor Pierce mingled with the small audience. Suddenly I remembered that I had, that very afternoon, picked up the latest issue of our newspaper, Koori-Bina, from the printers. The talk had not included any mention of Aboriginal people or local politics so it seemed important to me to let Professor Pierce know we were doing something, and what it was we were trying to do. I ran down to the car and got a copy to present to him.
I later learned that few, if any, other Blacks had been notified about this lecture until it was too late for them to attend. They rang his tour organisers and complained, and the result was that, on his last day in Australia, he was taken to several of our inner-city community organisations such as Murawina Preschool, the AMS, ALS and so on.
I was surprised when, a few days after the lecture, I received a letter, post-marked New Zealand, and addressed to me care of our newspaper. Professor Pierce wrote that he had been taken to several organisations where he was given literature relating to their different activities, and on the bottom of each one was my name. Would I, he asked, have other written material that I could send to him? He enclosed a few of his leftover Australian dollars and coins to cover postage. The address he gave was at Harvard University.
I parcelled up copies of a few things I had written on Aboriginal health, nutrition and sociology, and mailed them to him. Some weeks later I was astonished to receive a telegram of invitation to take up postgraduate study at Harvard. Did Professor Pierce not realise, I thought, that I had no college, no undergraduate experience?
The telegram said that a package would follow containing a Year Book and application forms for both the Graduate School of Education and the School of Public Health. The application form for the Education School, which I selected as the most relevant to me, consisted of two double pages: on the front, space for name and address and contact details, the middle two pages were to set out details of previous academic experience and credits or awards applicants had received, and the last page for information check and signature. I was humiliated to realise I had nothing to put into the centre pages, and so—nothing ventured, nothing gained—sent them off blank. However, I attached a list of my publications—work I had authored—which was quite extensive, hoping it would demonstrate that I had the ability to research, analyse, focus and write.
What a pleasant surprise and shock it was to receive another telegram informing me that I had been accepted into the Masters program and, even though the beginning of their academic year was close, inquiring if I was in the position to commence that term.
Although it was to be another three years of trials and tribulations before I could take up the offer, just holding the telegram I sensed that perhaps there was a tiny light shining through the unchartered unknown which lay ahead in my life.
And so from grief, still I danced.
Snake Dancing Page 24