Today, I stood in a room full of powerful Indigenous women from across the ocean at the Te Pū Oranga Whenua Symposium in Rotorua. When I got up to share my thoughts on the term lateral violence, I could feel the weight of the stories in the room, stories of resilience, leadership, and pain that too often go unspoken.
We gathered to talk about the future of Indigenous women in agriculture, business, and leadership. But as the kōrero flowed, one truth sat heavy in my heart: for many of us, our biggest battles are not always with the system. Sometimes, they are with each other.
Jealousy is something we do not often talk about out loud, especially as Black women. We are raised to be strong, to rise above, to keep moving. But behind the resilience and the success stories, jealousy is there in the whispers, in the side glances, in the unspoken competition that can damage the spirit.
When a Black woman does well, she is rarely just congratulated. Instead, her success is dissected, her intentions questioned, and her worth debated. I have seen it and I have lived it. Buy a new bag, a car, or a house, and suddenly it is not seen as hard work paying off but as showing off. Take a holiday and it is "must be nice". Heaven forbid a Black woman has been smart enough, strategic enough, or relentless enough to build her own wealth and independence.
This is the invisible labour of being a Black woman in business, the constant need to validate ourselves, to prove we have earned it, to smile through scrutiny and still be graceful when our character is questioned.
The truth is this has deep roots. The Blak & Salty reflections by Aboriginal academics Donna Moodie, Kelly Menzel, Liz Cameron and Nikki Moodie describe lateral violence as the internalised legacy of colonisation, when oppression is turned sideways and we take out our frustration on each other instead of the systems that created it. It is mobbing, gossip, isolation, exclusion, all symptoms of the same wound.
Uncle Mick Gooda wrote that colonisation taught us to fear directing anger upwards, so instead, we turn it sideways, at each other. And I see that play out in business every day. When one woman rises, some will celebrate her; others will start sharpening their knives. I have felt that sting personally, from smear campaigns to rumors meant to undermine. It is not always strangers. Sometimes, it is people who look like you. That is what hurts the most.
Who gets to define success? Who gets to belong? And who gets to speak without being accused of being too loud or too confident? For many of us, the expectation is perfection. Always on guard. Always curating. Because one misstep and we risk reinforcing someone else's stereotype.
At times, it feels like there is an invisible checklist we are expected to meet before being seen as legitimate: accreditation, recognition, the tick of a peak body, the logo on an email signature. But I am done with that. I am a Black woman in business, period. My lived experience, my track record, and my outcomes are my credentials. I do not need someone else's stamp of approval to validate my work.
What I saw today in Rotorua reminded me why this conversation matters. In that room, surrounded by Indigenous women from Aotearoa, Australia, and beyond, there was no jealousy, only solidarity. We spoke of sisterhood, sovereignty, and the deep knowing that our power multiplies when we stand beside each other instead of in each other's way.
That unity speaks directly to this year's Indigenous Business Month theme, Strength in Collaboration. True collaboration begins when we move past competition and embrace collective success. It is about recognising that strength does not come from individual achievement alone but from lifting others as we climb. When we work together, across nations, industries, and generations, we create something far greater than what any of us could achieve alone.
Jealousy, at its core, is about scarcity, the false idea that there is only one seat at the table. But the truth is, the table was never built for us. So rather than fighting for scraps, we should be building our own. Because when one of us wins, we all win.
The world already gives Black women enough battles to fight. We do not need to be fighting each other too.
My message to the women in the room and to every woman reading this, in business, leadership, or life, is simple: clap louder for your sisters. Turn jealousy into inspiration. Let success be contagious. Because our collective strength lies not in competing, but in lifting.
And when we do that, when we stand together from Gulumoerrgin to Rotorua and beyond, we stop merely surviving. We start rewriting what success looks like on our own terms. That is what collaboration truly means, and that is where our strength lives.
