Anonymous 1373

I’m aware of the many dispossessions and massacres that occurred from first contact into the 20th Century. That there was a complete lack of understanding and respect for a different way of being in the landscape from the early settlers towards First Nations people.

When I was teaching year 9 history in the early 1990s, we began with a short unit on Indigenous experience. It opened my eyes to the variety of Indigenous ways of living, as previously I had only been exposed to the early film “Aborigines of the Western Desert”, during my own schooling in the 1950s. We showed our students the first episode of the TV series: Women of the Sun; an episode that brought home to me the complicity of my own ancestors who had benefited from the appropriation of land in the Wimmera.

This is controversial, but I want to see a broader acceptance among indigenous groups of each other. There needs to be a process where elders come together in community to present an agreed position. As an outsider, the conduct of some groups in the recent past who have denied the rights of others who identify as indigenous, while negotiating with the government to their own advantage, looks opportunistic and self-interested, and undermines trust. The case for Treaty will not be advanced unless it is seen that all Indigenous Victorians are included and involved.

By listening and accepting that the oppression that Indigenous Victorians were subjected to was wrong and needs to be faced up to.

By listening and accepting that the oppression that Indigenous Victorians were subjected to was wrong and needs to be faced up to.