It is very exciting to announce that last week, the Government of Victoria passed the law to formalise an agreement the state's First Peoples, with more treaties planned with distinct nations within the state. This is an exciting time and for many, a relief and frustration.
The ABC says, “Australia was the only developed country colonised by the British to have never signed a formal treaty or treaties with First Nations people. When the First Fleet raised the flag in 1788, there were no individual agreements — or treaties — with the hundreds of First Nations groups across the continent. The British claimed the land using the legal doctrine of terra nullius, meaning land belonging to no-one, which was overturned in the landmark 1992 Mabo case.” You can read their full report here.
First Nations peoples in Victoria have been working hard, in collaboration, for years. Their words are here.
As the First Nations site says, the beginning of what it means now is Truth Telling. And if you read no more from this post, please read about the importance of this truth.
I’ve been listening to the book, Warra Warra Wai by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick. ‘Warra Warra Wai’ was the expression called to Cook and his crew when they tried to make landfall in Botany Bay. It has long been interpreted as ‘Go away’, but is more accurately translated as ‘You are all dead spirits’. Rix and Cormick remind us that the first colonisers were considered ghost people, the dead ancestors (white, having lost their colour), come back on the wings of white birds (ship sails). Rather than there being nothing in Australia, there were 60,000 years plus of thriving habitation. When Cook wrote in his ship’s log that there was smoke near the shore almost all the way he sailed up the southeast cost, he had no idea that the smoke was alarm messaging from one nation to another.
Truth telling will allow the ancestors of the First Peoples to manage, if not, heal, their generational trauma. We pray that this is so.
