Rueben Berg

I feel really lucky to be an Aboriginal person living in Victoria today with all the work that’s happening around treaty around voice, not voice I’ll try again. I feel really lucky being an Aboriginal person living in Victoria today, with all the work that’s happening around truth and around treaty and the amazing work that’s happening, and really proud that we’ve got such a strong, resilient culture here.

I had a very simple level. Self-determination is there’s no more Minister for First Peoples. All her powers are given over to First Peoples. That’s self-determination.

Well, our families are lots of Aboriginal families have been advocating for greater rights for our peoples for a long time. And I would hope that for my children, that’s over. They just they live in a world where they get to exercise those rights. They’re no longer having to fight for rights.

Yeah. Water is a really critical thing for our people to have better access to. It’s a very complicated space, water, space. But at the moment we don’t have enough access to water for traditional owners, and we need to make sure there’s a change in that space because water is integral to looking after country.

There’s slowly some work happening. I was a part of the Victorian environmental water holder, and we were looking at ways of transferring responsibility around that to First Peoples, but I think we still need to enhance that. And there’s a long way to go.