In the run-up to this year’s Australia Day, SBS Punjabi brings you experiences of Punjabi Australians with Australia's indigenous people, to promote a better understanding of the country’s first people.
Tejinder Pal Singh has been living in Australia for the last 14 years. He won the 2016 Northern Territory Local Hero Award and was a finalist for 2017 Australia's Local Hero Award.
Mr Singh received the honour for his initiative to feed the poor and needy of Darwin. For years, Mr Singh has dedicated the last Sunday of each month to cooking vegetarian food - up to 80 kilograms of curry and rice and then loading it all on a van to take it to public parks in North Darwin where many hungry people partake it.
Mr Singh says most of the people turning up to eat food prepared by him are from the Indigenous communities.
He says he gets along very well with this much-misunderstood community because in his view, “they are a lot like Punjabis.”
Mr Singh started the practice of serving free food in 2012 to spread awareness about Sikhs - Mr Singh's own community, who would be mistreated by the locals for their distinct appearance because of their turbans and beard.
Tejinder Pal Singh with locals. Source: Supplied
“I feel we Punjabis have a lot in common with the Indigenous people of Australia. Our over the top celebrations, our strong family ties and spendthrift habits when we have money and frugal lifestyles when we don’t, find reflection in Australia's Aboriginal communities,” says Mr Singh.
Tejinder Pal Singh with his food van that serves free meals to the homeless. Source: Supplied
His understanding of Australia’s First Peoples was gathered over the years when he worked as a taxi driver in Darwin, where he migrated from a village near Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab.
“If today migrants like us are well-settled in Australia, it is all thanks to the Aboriginal people because they raised their voice against the White Australia Policy of the 1970s,” he says sounding grateful to the First Peoples of Australia.
