Abstract
We have just seen well over 1000 people out in the streets for the NAIDOC march in Naarm. Be encouraged. I am.
This turnout on a winter’s day follows the thousands of people who intermittently strapped on their walking boots to join Commissioner Travis Lovett in the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s Walk for Truth. He, and they, stepped out the 500 km from the Convincing Ground mass killing site near Portland to Melbourne which was itself the site of a violent and lethal mounted police ‘dispersal’ under the command of Major Lettsom in 1840. Arriving at Parliament House, Commissioner Lovett and other senior Aboriginal people gave the government message sticks that spoke of the insistent need for change. Be inspired. I am.
Where does this all sit with the excesses and ugliness of our colonial past?
The Yoorrook Walk for Truth follows many others.
Many people now know of the great Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper walking from Footscray to the German Consulate in 1938 with a petition which he and others signed, to stand up for the rights of Jewish people against fascism.
Some of you reading this will have heard of the walks that other great man, William Barak, made with leaders like Simon Wonga, striding out from Coranderrk to La Trobe’s cottage. One of Barak’s walks took place in the shadow of the death of his young son. Unimaginable. Lobbying with unfeeling administrators for the rights of your people as a child is struggling.
On another occasion, Barak walked the 20 miles from Coranderrk to speak to La Trobe only to be turned away after having waited all day – distinctly, deliberately? Unheard.
With others, the thoughtful negotiator Simon Wonga walked away from the Acheron Reserve near the present town of Taggerty to Coranderrk. That was a walk of despair and anger after they had their crops torn out and their fences destroyed. The two men who cynically and corruptly worked to crush their ambitions, Peter Snodgrass and Hugh Glass, had little reason to be so virulent. Glass was a squatter whose land theft enabled him to fund and build a £60,000 mansion in 1852 (complete with an artificial lake and greenhouses) and whose holdings and wealth outstripped even those of ‘Big’ Clarke. Snodgrass was a founding member of the Melbourne Club, a member of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly, and he led the mass killing of Aboriginal people around the Ovens and King Rivers.
Thousands of smaller walks have been conducted over time. People have walked up to the ‘main house’ or mission building for rations. Women have walked into the centre of town to work for the ‘missus’. Children have walked to schools only to be turned away by communities who didn’t want them mixing. Whole families have walked from town camp to town camp seeking out the meagre offerings seasonal work would provide. People walked out of town all over the country at 6pm as they were the subject of prohibitions.
The Yoorrook Walk was designed to remind us of these matters and to raise our interest in contributing to better outcomes.
Some of us will have heard the evidence given to the Yoorrook Commissioners about the resource stripping and economic inequity that has occurred since colonisation began. Ministers and the Premier of Victoria told us this.
As to water rights – over the decade to 2024, the Victorian government extracted $83 billion in water revenue. None of that money went back to Aboriginal people. Traditional owners hold less than 0.18 per cent of water entitlements across the state.
As to gold – 2400 tonnes of gold have been extracted from Aboriginal country since 1851. Current value would be $287.4 billion.
As to grazing and the benefits accruing from public land – from 2010 to 2023, Victoria extracted $1.89 billion in revenue from grazing, forestry and public land. Not a dollar has been returned to Aboriginal people.
Yoorrook’s final report, Yoorrook: Truth Be Told, contains 100 recommendations.
I want to use this commentary to encourage everyone who reads the final report to take ownership of it.
The report is the ‘word’ of Aboriginal people. We don’t need to flail around seeking direction.
Pick a single recommendation you care about. For teachers it could be curriculum, for lawyers it could relate to remedying the economic inequity of land theft (including the failure to provide Soldier Settlement land grants – just one of many appalling stories). Then, I urge you to run with it.
Take responsibility. Lobby your union. Write to your parliamentarians. Tell your political party this report is not for sleeping on. Speak to your family. Consider your role in building a country where ‘closing the gap’ is not a regular hand-wringing exercise. Talk about reparations. And then act with purpose and support the next stage, which is Treaty.
Remember the words of William Barak: I am an old man; all my people are dead – my wife and children are dead. … I know all the lands belonging to my people; you have got them.
