Evidence Library

Sian Prior, a sixty-year-old white person, acknowledges their privilege and the injustices faced by First Nations people in Australia. They call for truth-telling, a treaty, and self-determination for First Nations communities, suggesting a percentage of land tax to support these initiatives. They emphasise the need to recognise the value of First Nations culture and the contributions of First Nations people to Australian society.

In this submission, Peter Noble shares his learning about Victoria’s colonisation through various sources and advocates for treaties, improved education, and cultural site protection. He suggests non-First Nations Victorians participate in truth-telling and support self-determination. He promotes First Peoples history and culture through school and university curricula, cultural events, and place markers.

Matt Dixon discusses how First Nations people were forced off their ancestral lands, leading to catastrophic disruption of their culture and way of life. He criticises the education system for not teaching about First Nations history and advocates for involving First Nations people early in planning processes. He believes non-First Nations Victorians should support truth-telling and treaty, and emphasises the importance of self-determination in promoting First Peoples history and culture.

Anonymous 1363 discovered their Aboriginal heritage at nearly 60 years old after being adopted into a white settler life. They feel robbed of their culture and identity, and are now striving to reclaim their heritage while fighting against structural racism and advocating for Aboriginal-led initiatives.

Julie Peters, discusses the distress they feel about the relationship between First Nations and colonising people, highlighting the entrenched disadvantage, poor health, poverty and lack of opportunties suffered by First Nations people. They outline their family history and emphasise the importance of truth-telling, treaties, and eliminating discrimination for First Nations people to have genuine agency.

This submission discusses VACCA excluding Kinship Carers from the process of obtaining help through what are known as ‘professional meetings’. It outlines how these meetings are culturally unsafe and lead to placement breakdowns.

Kathryn Hegarty has worked in schools education, higher education and social work. In her submission she highlights the gap between professions’ claims of supporting Aboriginal sovereignty and their actual practices, stressing the urgent need for truth-telling and listening. Despite mandated cultural competence guidelines in Victoria, she has witnessed  ignorance, unsafe practices and a lack of accountability in key sectors. She calls for leaders to listen to and act on the guidance of First Nations leader, elders and professionals rather than perpetuating inaction and weak leadership.

In this submission, a non-Indigenous educator with 18 years of experience discusses how the education system perpetrates racism, mistruths, injustices, and cultural appropriation. They outline the lack of support for teachers who are scrambling to create educational experiences around First Nations history to meet the demands of schools. They highlight the burnout inflicted on their First Nations colleagues and advocate for truth-telling as the way forward.

This submission from Philip McKeon compares two paths to treaty between prior occupants and colonisers in Victoria: Sovereignty and Assimilation. Philip argues that Sovereign treaties “will preserve protocols of governance continuous from emergence to sustain humanity in perpetuity”, while Assimilation treaties “will be extinguished dishonourably by design with a republic, erasing governance continuous from emergence to imperil humanity’s future”.