The true path forward starts here

AUNTY STEPHANIE CHARLES, WEMBA WEMBA / KOORI COURT ELDER, SWAN HILL

“I brought up a lot of my grandkids myself as a single mother and I'm still looking after a grandchild today. My son, he came to my home one night and I’m still livin’ where he came and he was drunk and stoned. And I said to him, because I had my cousins and her kids and I said, 'Son, you can't be here because because you’re drunk and you’re stoned.' He said okay mom. He gave us all a kiss and he went. He got to the mailbox and he said 'I love you.' Sang out, 'I love you mom.'”

“And I said, 'I love you too son.' And he walked away. The next morning, seven o'clock I get a phone call to say he hung himself. My son hung himself over at Balranald on the mission over there, because there was no help. There was no help for him to be drug and alcohol ... you know ... someone to be worked with. No organisations that can take up that fight to help him, you know.

Then as a mother on, you know, I have never, ever had counselling about this. Never, ever been approached about it, never been asked.

I had to be strong and just move on with my life and try. And it still hurts me today. But I can talk about it a little bit better now because I want to, you know, I want to share my experience with people.

But not everyone is as strong, you know. I think that I'm strong. I think I'm a strong black woman, and I'm very proud. But at some stage, you know, where do you find someone that can show you a little bit of empathy and a little bit of, you know, support?”

UNCLE JOHNNY LOVETT, GUNDITJMARA & BOANDIK ELDER, HAMILTON

“They may not have killed an Aboriginal but they certainly had workers who worked for them that did. It was a slaughter. They came across some sheep that got stolen and they looked for the sheep and ... I'm amazed you know, I've worked a lot with sheep in my life and there's always these big numbers, mass numbers of sheep and cattle being stolen by Aboriginals.”

“Aboriginals are not familiar with how sheep and cattle react when you drive them along. So all of a sudden they were expert shepherds? There may have been
one or two sheep ... next minute there are 150 and 300 that have been taken and so it calls for a massacre. It incites a massacre by the settlers.

But by the same token, how many Aboriginal women had been raped and murdered by the same mob but they've never been massacred for doing it by Aboriginal people.

I believe we had the greatest weapon of all times to combat early settlement and we never ever used it because we weren't that type of people. And we were the Masters of Fire ... we still are. That was the best weapon we ever had. And if we had unleashed that sort of thing there wouldn't have been too many survivors within white settlement in those days because we would have wiped them out.

But we didn't do it because we are not those people. We are not that way.”

UNCLE COLIN WALKER, YORTA YORTA ELDER, CUMMERAGUNJA

“I spent 16 years sitting on the Koori Courts. I'm interested in Justice. I know we said in the Koori courts that you're responsible for your own actions. You know, we don't feather 'em up. We spoke to them the way our elders spoke to us. We hurt them with words.”

“Cummeragunja years ago we had our Law men along with our Aunties. If you touch your partner and you're walking up the street here years ago and you said 'How you going Uncle?', they wouldn't speak to you. A couple of days later they'd say to you 'Come here boy, I wanna talk to you.’ And you were a man ... and they called you a boy. 'Don't you ever touch that girl again or else.‘ Ah Jeez that hurt.

So then you'd have to face the Aunties then. A couple of days after the Aunties would call you over. 'Now I heard you gave that girl a bit of a rough time. Don't you ever do that again.'

You see we had our Law here. Our Law was straight. I said to the Magistrate, 'I don't like your Law. It's like a snakes back ... too many crinkles in it.’ Our Law was straight.”

UNCLE PAUL BRIGGS, YORTA YORTA, BARMAH

“I was involved in an opening of an art exhibition. After I spoke, an old fella, a non-Aboriginal fella came up to me and we were having a talk. I knew the area where he come from and after he was talking a bit longer I knew who his family was. He was a bit teary. He said 'Paul, my grandfather used to sit me down and talk to me about going out on Yorta Yorta country hunting on weekends.”

“He said, 'Paul, they were out hunting your people. They were shooting your people.' Like that was in his living memory of his grandfather talking to him. And he's all emotional. And he's carrying this.

So this is about the untold truths inside non-Aboriginal people, and the fear that they hold for bringing it out into the public space. And how to do that ... how to effectively do that.”

AUNTY LAURA BELL, GUNDITJMARA ELDER. LAKE CONDAH

“I never lived on the mission… I was six months old and we lived in a tent, just down from the dormitory and there was a tent there. ”

“My memory is living out at Greenvale and coming down to the mission of the church on Sunday.

My memories of growing up on the mission were very fond.

You had your family and that, but then when they closed the mission, they thought they were closing us down but that didn't happen. And we are still here today, and I still have memories of the day they handed back the mission. It was just full on right here.”

AUNTY ZETA THOMSON, WURUNDJERI & YORTA YORTA ELDER

“I am Wurundjeri of the Yarra-Yarra Clan through my father and grandfather and Yorta-Yorta of the Ulupna Clan through my mother and grandmother.

In the fight for justice and equality for all our people, my mother travelled to Canberra with a group of leaders in the 1930’s to speak with government officials to strongly object to Aboriginal prisoners being chained around their necks.

The response given was that it was better to have their necks chained so at least that their hands would be free to hunt the flies from their faces.

That was the thinking of the times.

My father got discarded material from the rubbish tip to help make shelter for our family. He made a little tin hut on the riverbank in Mooroopna after they all walked off Cummeragunja with other community members due to poor conditions.”

After this, Dad and Mum moved to the orchards then living in sheds with all us kids. The orchards were gifted to new settlers after the war, but no land given to our people. A lot of the Aboriginal community would work for them in the fruit seasons.

Together with my sisters and brother, our upbringing strongly determined the course of our lives, and I have always been involved in Aboriginal affairs providing many cultural and healing programs throughout the years for our people to maintain the old ways.

“The mission manager would walk around with a gun standing over people, they were treated inhumanly. Mum and Dad often spoke of those times. Living on the river flats, they would have to move to higher ground when the river rose as they would often be standing in water.”

The true path forward

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