Phoebe with WELA CEO Victoria McKenzie-McHarg at the Walk for Truth in Birregurra on Gulidjan country.
I still think back to the empty moments after the dismal “no” result – when Australia voted down the gentle ask for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament.
I also remember feeling grateful we had Treaty underway in Victoria. As a First Peoples Assembly member reflected, still sadly: Treaty would be our voice.
In late May, Travis Lovett (Kerrupmara Gunditjamara man and Commissioner of Yoorrook Justice Commission, Victoria’s formal truth-telling process) began walking from Portland to Parliament. The walk was to bring people together, celebrate First Nations strength, and promote truth-telling. Walk for Truth gave me that similar feeling of groundness, so comforting in the aftermath of the Voice referendum.
We didn’t know my dad’s Aboriginal heritage growing up. My great-grandparents moved off Gulidjan Country to Melbourne with their children, including my grandmother. They stopped speaking of this history openly.
Some in my family call this ‘relinquished history’. Not overtly stolen, but let go. I felt parallels reading Tony Birch’s ‘The White Girl’ recently. It’s set in a different state, but around the time my dad was born. It demonstrates the (sadly never guaranteed and never complete) safety that came with silence.
20 years ago my great-aunt – my grandmother’s younger sister – asked for my dad’s help engaging the Koori Heritage Trust. She wanted to see if the whispers that ran through the family were true.
They came across records of my great-great-great grandfather, Gulidjan man Richard Sharp. They found living relatives, along different branches of the tree, whose stories never went quiet and who have generously shared their knowledge.
We’ve been on a long journey of learning and connection. Learning about our Country. About the mission in Birregurra that Gulidjan, Gadubanud and Wadawurrung peoples were pushed onto. About the sites where they went to collect supplies from the colonisers.
It’s sobering to remember that loss of knowledge and identity was an intention of the colonisers. The blank spaces were the point.
Complex as it is to now feel an identity that I wasn’t raised from birth as, it also feels simple. Owning that I am a Gulidjan woman is an act of resistance, healing and truth.
I joined two legs of the Walk for Truth. In Colac, in the heart of Gulidjan Country, I observed the hundreds-strong crowd. From little ones in strollers, to kids racing about, to older folks carefully bringing up the tail.
In rainy Birregurra, I walked with my cousins and a friend. Among the huge crowd, all of us wrapped in thick warm clothes, I was delighted to bump into WELA’s CEO Victoria. In the WELA program years back, I found a community of acceptance and support, including staunch Aboriginal women and incredible women of colour – it helped at a time when my family and I were still piecing the stories together.
Walk for Truth was about bringing the community together. To hear stories – including the stories that are still forming. And to be part of taking the next step.
Everyone will find their own place in this. The WELA community is awash with great ideas for ways to support First Peoples, and space to have these conversations.
But for anyone who is reading this and still seeking ways to deepen involvement, please keep learning about and talking about Treaty. There’s been such great progress here, but wins are never guaranteed and we’ve seen the government retreat from justice for First Peoples too many times before.
Through Treaty and treaties, we can deeply shift power away from the government and into the hands of First Peoples.