Hadn’t crossed the Birrarung in a while. Too long. Been busy. Emails, kids, life.
It was Travis Lovett who got us moving. This Kerrupmara Gunditjmara man had walked up from Portland – 500 kilometres so far – and he reckoned we should tag along.
Still a bit further to go, he said. Gotta get up the steps to Parliament.
We sipped coffee in the crisp June air and waited for Mob to arrive. Met some of the Elders who’d helped bring us here. Kings Domain. Not today.
Today we listened to Professor Eleanor Bourke AM, a Wergaia and Wamba Wamba Elder, holding court in the cold.
Today we walked together through eucalypt smoke, part of a story that started more than 60,000 years ago.
We looked around. School kids everywhere. “Today, you’re living history,” we heard a teacher say. It sank in.
There’d been silence after the Voice, Travis told us. Mob had heard it.
Time to do something positive.
“Silence ends here,” he said. “The time of not knowing, of choosing not to know, is over.”
Hundreds of people from across Victoria had told their truths to the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Together, they’d produced a true history of the State since the start of colonisation: its impacts and the strength, resistance and achievements of First Peoples.
This story is now the official public record. The State Library will take care of it, but it belongs to all of us.
“Truth telling is not a ritual,” Travis roared.
“It’s not symbolic – it’s a reckoning.
“It’s a commitment to change. Structural, cultural and legal.
“Truth telling is treaty in motion.”
Learn more at yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au
