Now imagine if a person is gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex ... and Indigenous: a minority within a minority.
Black Rainbow is a new organisation hoping to help LGBTI Indigenous people navigate their culture and sexuality in the non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities.
Gay Aboriginal man and Black Rainbow founder Dameyon Bonson is preparing to address the National Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing Forum in Perth.
Moments into his presentation, his voice breaks as he describes the case of a young Aboriginal boy, Tyrone Unsworth, whose death at age 13 late last year shocked Australia.
Mr Bonson says the boy told friends shortly before he died that he was being bullied at his Queensland school because he was gay.
"What service can this kid walk into safely? Can you guarantee? And there's many more like him. As a community, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we talk about cultural responsibility, 'cultural this' and 'cultural that,' cultural advocacy and cultural proficiency. Do you know how to work with one of our mob like this?"
Social worker Dameyon Bonson says that is why he formed Black Rainbow, to help Indigenous LGBTI people deal with their sexuality and culture.
It began as a Facebook page, sharing positive stories and images.
Then late last year, it became a social enterprise, thanks to a crowdfunding drive that netted more than $27,000.
Just recently, a house party in Sydney raised another $5,000.
One of the first things Black Rainbow has done is provide phone credit for homeless Indigenous LGBTI people.
"One of the fellas on our advisory group worked in homelessness, and I gave him a call and said, 'Look, what's the best thing to do?' And I initially thought, 'Well, school's coming up, maybe it's stuff from Officeworks.' And he was like, 'Nah, bros, phone credit and data, because it's about being connected to their friends but also being able to access services.' And he said that, 'when we've been able to give them $10 or $20 credit on their phone, it's like their birthday every day.' So that's what we've done."
Dameyon Bonson says there is no data on the number of suicides among LGBTI Indigenous people.
But he says he suspects the rates are higher than the Indigenous suicide rate, which, in turn, is higher than the non-Indigenous suicide rate.
The Broome local has worked at the front line of suicide prevention in Western Australia's Kimberley region.
He says Indigenous people can face racism from gay-support agencies and homophobia from Aboriginal health providers.
"I know from talking to some of the transgender community, the Aboriginal sister-girls and brother-boys, going into an AMS (Aboriginal Medical Service) comes with a bit of a stigma because the people behind the counter don't know how to engage with them when their birth name doesn't match their present name. And there are all types of feelings of uncomfortableness. The flipside of that is, when the transgender Aboriginal community visits a mainstream service, they can encounter levels of racism."
Dameyon Bonson runs workshops to help communities and organisations understand gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Indigenous people.
He talks about Indigenous totems such as the barramundi, which changes sex during its life, and black swans, which can co-parent young with two male swans.
"So it's stories like that, rather than trying to go through any sort of academic definition. It's showing that, well, if it happens in nature, then it happens in life. And you see that around the world, particularly in New Zealand and also in Hawaii at the moment, that's how the conversations are happening."
