By Mario Pinti
On 17 June Footscray Park became the staging ground for the penultimate day of the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s Walk for Truth. Having started out on 25 May on Gunditjmara Country at Portland, the walk was making its way to Parliament House via Footscray to deliver the Commission’s final report on the historical and ongoing injustices experienced by Indigenous people.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission, established by the Victorian Government in 2021 with the support of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, was given the task of investigating and documenting these injustices.
Its interim reports and many of the submissions made by individuals and organisations across Victoria can be found on its website. They make for difficult reading. How can the truth about the dispossession and dislocation of an entire people be otherwise? Nevertheless, the work of the Justice Commission also reveals a story of Aboriginal survival, resilience and connection to land that is loud, proud and thriving.
And so it was that under blue winter skies Travis Lovett, Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission took to the microphone to address the thousand-plus-crowd who had come to join him on the 10km leg from Footscray Park to Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens.
Lovett, a proud Kerrupmara/Gunditjmara man and Traditional Owner, spoke of the importance of truth telling as the state moves towards a treaty with Indigenous people.
‘Truth telling is not divisive,’ he said. And while history has traditionally been written by the oppressors, Indigenous people now ‘get to hold the pen’ to tell the story of how parliament since the mid-19th century ‘has made decisions to destroy and harm Indigenous lives.’
Lovett, who led the walk from Portland, spoke without acrimony or grievance. ‘We don’t want to take anything from people. We are not asking for apologies,’ he said. ‘We want to walk with all people. We want everyone to be proud of the oldest living culture on earth.’
With that thought in mind the assembled crowd made its way along ancient Wurundjeri lands and waterways. At several stops stories of other First Nation walks were shared. Such as the story of William Cooper, founder of the Australian Aborigines’ League who, while fighting for Aboriginal rights in the 1930s had the moral clarity to understand and courageously condemn the Nazi persecution of European Jews. From his Footscray home in 1938 the League walked to the German consulate in town to protest this persecution.
The Walk for Truth is done and dusted. The Victorian Government will this month receive the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report and with it the demand that it negotiates a fair and just treaty with the state’s Indigenous people. Has it the same moral clarity that William Cooper had to do what’s right?
