This week is Naidoc Week and it got off to a strong start with some powerful speeches at the flag raising ceremony outside the Civic Centre on Sunday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Pastor Peter Smith spoke about how the British colonisers brought the idea of a flag raising to Australia in 1788 but now Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were reclaiming the idea - and what it symbolises - for themselves.
In her welcome to Kalkadoon Country Jenny Watts reminded those present of the theme of this year's Naidoc Week: Voice, Treaty, Truth.
"Voice, Treaty, Truth" were three key elements to the reforms set out in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. These reforms represent the unified position of First Nations Australians but were sadly rejected by the nation's politicians in 2017.
Twas ever thus, a "great Australian silence" about Aboriginal affairs first noted by the great anthropologist WH Stanner in the 1960s, in what he called a "cult of forgetfulness".
The fact that "voice" is the first word of this year's theme shows that Indigenous people are not going to accept this silence and forgetting any longer.
The Uluru Statement is built on generations of consultation and discussions among Indigenous people on a range of issues and grievances.
They demand consultations about the further reforms necessary to secure and underpin rights and to ensure they can be exercised and enjoyed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
It specifically put out a set of reforms: first, a First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution and second, a Makarrata Commission to supervise treaty processes and truth-telling.
I'm pleased to hear that the new Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt, himself a proud Aboriginal man, is considering a response to the Statement later this week.
Australia needs to accept the fact that this land had prior owners in 1788 and treat with the descendants of those owners.
The nation will never come to terms with itself until we deal with the silence and forgetfulness of its painful founding.
Indigenous people have found their voice, they want a treaty. That is the truth.
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
