*** Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article mentions people who have passed ***
Introduction by Croakey: In delivering the 2025 Lowitja O’Donoghue Oration, Romlie Mokak, Djugun man and a member of the Yawuru people, considered the importance of love and its effect on policy, language, power and closing the gap.
He spoke about languishing progress on the Priority Reforms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, the promise of Australia’s Measuring What Matters framework and the need to centre Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, perspectives, priorities and knowledges.
And he called for immediate action in implementing recommendations from a Productivity Commission review of the National Agreement, including the inclusion of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, and the establishment of a Bureau of Indigenous Data, governed by an Indigenous Data Board made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have long held a deep and enduring love of our kin and Country. This is at the very heart of our existence. It defines who we are and where we belong…This deep and enduring love, across space and time, connects us with our ancestors, who are present with us each and every day,” he said.
In 2024, Mokak finished his five-year term as first Aboriginal Commissioner at the Productivity Commission, where he led a body of work including reviews of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. He was previously CEO of Lowitja Institute and the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association. Below is his Oration in full.
Speech by Romlie Mokak
I acknowledge the Ancestors and Elders of this special place, Kaurna Country.
And Uncle Frank with your generous and warm Welcome to your Country, my Liyan, my wellbeing is strong and is good.
I am grateful for the permission to speak on your Country tonight.
Thank you Professor Simone Tur for your very warm introduction. I give thanks to the Don Dunstan Foundation for the invitation to be this year’s speaker, the 18th speaker since Lowitja herself delivered the first oration back in 2008.
I acknowledge the Foundation Chair and Lord Mayor, the Honourable Dr Jane Lomax-Smith and the Honourable Reverend Dr Lynn Arnold. I acknowledge the Deputy Premier, the Honourable Susan Close, the Attorney General and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, the Honourable Kyam Maher and all parliamentary colleagues.
I acknowledge Oration partners the Lowitja O’Donoghue Foundation, the Lowitja Institute, Reconciliation SA, Adelaide University and Flinders University.
And special thanks for Lowitja’s family – in particular Lowitja’s nieces Deb and I know that Amy couldn’t be here tonight, and grand-nieces who are present.
And to my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family, whether you are in the room or online tonight, my love and respect for all of you; for all you do to keep our people safe and strong.
I see people who I have travelled the road together with over many years here tonight, and sharing this space with you makes my Liyan even stronger.
Fighter for Indigenous rights
The enormity of the invitation to deliver the Lowitja O’Donoghue Oration this evening is not taken lightly.
Lowitja was and continues to be a towering figure in our world.
Our matriarch; our leader; our guide.
She was a leader of vital institutions – the National Aboriginal Conference, Aboriginal Hostels, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, delivering unswerving and tireless service for our people.
She was a fighter for our rights. Fighting to always keep our mob in focus and at the centre. Standing strong in the face of racism and discrimination, both institutional and interpersonal.
Showing us the way – the right way – with the fire to keep our resolve strong; and the fire burning within. She was known and respected the world over.
Before meeting Lowitja, I had long admired her work. It was the work that shaped my thinking, and my doing. How to hold myself and to hold others at the frontline of policy. And the threshold that we must aim for as emergent leaders.
I met Lowitja for the first time twenty years ago in 2005, as a rookie Chief Executive Officer with the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association. I was somewhat daunted, but her embrace, her warmth and her generosity were all the ingredients a first time CEO could ever have asked for.
We were truly blessed that Lowitja was AIDA’s patron, and better still, alongside co-patrons Uncle Jimmy Little and Sir William Deane. Luminaries, each of them.
From that day forth, my life would never be the same.
Lowitja had great clarity, you knew where you stood when in conversation with her. She had laser sharp inquiry, quick wit, cheeky, and a story for every occasion.
She was across all the news of the day. Our conversations would cover much ground.
So many leaders – Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike – sought counsel in Lowitja, including many previous Lowitja O’Donoghue orators. Including myself.
Love
When asked why she lived the life she lived by biographer Stuart Rintoul, Lowitja simply replied, “because I loved my people”.
Lowitja’s response is much more than one person’s love for her people. It is about the power of our love for one another as Indigenous peoples.
It goes to our very essence as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Love is the human condition. And a lot like power, you know when you don’t have it.
At a meeting some years ago, in fact at the very start of the Closing the Gap campaign, I shared a poem by Wiradjuri poet and playwright Kevin Gilbert. It is called International Year of the Child, and it goes like this:
Australians just love to break records
Maybe that’s why we’ve got the highest
Aboriginal infant mortality rate in the world.
Wouldn’t it be great if Australians
Held the record for LOVE.
We love to break records, if only we held the record for love.
Kevin makes visible the invisible. He calls out the indefensible: the deaths of our babies. With a provocation, or is it a plea, that one day the nation could be better.
How animated is the nation and its citizens to not just wish for change but to actually drive the change that’s needed? To deliver a different result.
As if to indulge ourselves for a moment, and muse about the quest for Australians holding the record for love.
Well, what would that look like?
What would an Aussie value of love for one another look like, beyond the so-called values of mateship and a fair go. And what would we need to overcome to get there?
Love of our people
It might seem strange for someone like me, having spent 30 years working in public policy, to focus on something so intangible as love.
What is this thing, how do we measure it, and by goodness how might we even contemplate a cost benefit analysis on it?
How could a former Productivity Commissioner be so loose as to call for a focus on love?
Tonight, I will not reveal some new econometric model to give us a measure of love. There will be no cost benefit analysis.
But I will ponder the idea of love – the love that we have, the love that is lacking and its ripple effect on everything from policy and leadership to language and power. Its effect on reconciliation. Its effect on closing the gap.
As people, as neighbours and as citizens, we should look toward love.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have long held a deep and enduring love of our kin and Country. This is at the very heart of our existence. It defines who we are and where we belong.
Through relationality and reciprocity, it is the foundation of how we relate to one another.
This deep and enduring love, across space and time, connects us with our ancestors, who are present with us each and every day. I know they are with us here tonight.
Whether we are on our ancestral lands, or far distant from our Country. We are always connected to our Country, and grateful for Country that has embraced us.
We share in the joy of witnessing our people doing great things – small things and big things, in our communities and across the planet. Worrying for and working for our communities and for the planet, in caring for Country and culture.
In the arts, law, science and technology. In philosophy, culture, environment and health. On the stage, on the field, with the power of the word, and the power of song. In our communities and across the planet.
Our love for one another is in the raising of our littlies to be the good people for a better tomorrow. This is what is most important. The love we have for one another, so that love continues through and across generations.
But – is our own love for kin and Country enough?
A much unloved people
In his 2022 Boyer Lecture, Guugu Yimidhirr man Noel Pearson said:
We are a much unloved people. We are perhaps the ethnic group Australians feel least connected to. We are not popular and we are not personally known to many Australians. Few have met us and a small minority count us as friends.”
We are a much unloved people.
How has the public made up their minds so decidedly?
In forming their views, have they privileged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices or authorship?
Have they heard and valued Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives ahead of others?
Uniformly not.
Palawa academic Maggie Walter says that:
Aboriginal people are largely invisible, as people and as peoples, in conceptions of everyday Australian life except as pejorative (statistically informed) stereotypes.
This lack of knowledge fosters the building of non-Indigenous to Indigenous relations around pejorative stereotypes and this can be heard through the patter of almost thoughtless denigration and casual disrespect of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culture, society that pervades our society’s conversations.”
Commentators are all too quick to express a view about what we should be and how we should behave.
For more than 200 years, we have been the statistical Indigene, the problematic person.
And particularly elevated at certain times. Like some sort of periodic inflammatory condition; presenting itself in three-year cycles. A benign diversion or distraction, where commentators and politicians alike reproduce harms for perceived electoral advantage.
These culture wars, as they’re labelled, are not an abstraction. The pain is real. And the hurt and suffering are deep.
Lowitja experienced all of this. And because of her work, more acutely than most.
But Lowitja was about love. Her love for her people.
Lowitja also loved poetry. One of her favourites was Song of Hope, by Noonuccal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
The last few lines reflecting love for our Elders and young ones to come:
To our fathers’ fathers: the pain, the sorrow
To our children’s children: a glad tomorrow
Kevin Gilbert’s provocation to strive for a world record for love is aimed at the nation state, and the psyche of our nation.
For our nation to finally come to understand and be at peace with itself.
It is a call for our nation to measure what matters.
To determine and design measures of what’s important for and to people.
Bhutan and happiness
In a small and remote region in the Himalayas, this importance is placed on happiness.
With a development framework based on Gross National Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product, Bhutan works towards:
the deep and abiding happiness that comes from living a life in full harmony with the natural world, with our communities and fellow beings, with our culture and spiritual heritage.
And whilst some may have dismissed Bhutan’s approach as a reflection of its isolated land and therefore not relevant to the West, this focus on new ways of thinking has momentum around the world.
With eminent economists – Nobel prize laureates no less – like Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz highlighting people and place; human flourishing and equality.
Another, Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel prize laureate, in appraising his profession said this:
Without an analysis of power, it is hard to understand inequality or much else in modern capitalism.
We get little training about the ends of economics, on the meaning of wellbeing…or on what philosophers say about equality.
We often equate wellbeing with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people.
In Australia, the Commonwealth government is making its own attempts through Measuring what Matters – Australia’s first ever national wellbeing framework.
And I quote:
… so we can better align our economic and social goals in our communities and right across our country…putting people and progress, fairness and opportunity at the very core of our thinking about our economy and our society, now and into the future.
And locally, the vision of the South Australian Economic Statement (2023): is for an economy that is fit for the future, improving the wellbeing of all South Australians. An economy that is smart, sustainable and inclusive.
This is about putting people at the centre.
About just, equitable and thriving societies not simply predicated on a relentless pursuit of growth at any cost.
Indigenous people know about living in harmony with Country – land, sea and sky. Indigenous people know what it takes. Love for one another is a key ingredient.
Lowitja’s directions
This same wisdom, that of love, wellbeing and equity, formed the foundation of the Lowitja Institute, established in 2010.
Lowitja’s directions to Chair Pat Anderson, board and staff were clear, and these were some of the things that Lowitja said:
Employ courageous people, committed to social justice and equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Match words to action.
Deliver real, tangible and immediate outcomes.
Aboriginal people and organisations must be fully involved – not just consulted – in the initiation, design and implementation of research.
Aboriginal participation at all levels, building capacity, empowering communities and individuals – it’s bottom-up, not top down.
Local solutions for local problems.
Funding to massively increase.
Monitoring outcomes and ensuring accountability.
Disseminate findings widely.
Work must be done… and must be seen to be done.
And fearless work for change and improvement in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people..
This was Lowitja’s list.
Little did I know then that four years later, I would become the CEO of the Lowitja Institute.
And from day one, my goal was to ensure that Lowitja was honoured; her spirit and energy embodied in the organisation that I led.
We would be unwavering and unapologetic in our actions to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were at the centre of our research.
In the priority setting, conduct, translation and utilisation of our research.
I have worked for thirty years in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy and the contested space of evidence building, translation and use.
Spending time within black organisations and governments has been an asset, because without insights from each, it’s harder to understand the other.
To be in close proximity to what counts as evidence, what value is placed on different forms of evidence. To interrogate the biases of others; the blind acceptance of seemingly objective data as truth.
Often ahistorical, decontextualised and aggregated, far distant from people’s lived realities.
This is when the finger of blame is too readily pointed in our direction – where Indigeneity is framed as a risk factor, not a strength.
Meanspirited deficit discourse that render us as problematic people. Undeserving, unloved.
Proprietors of own misfortune and misery, perpetuating harms upon our children, with legislators knowingly passing laws that create and amplify further harm.
It is within this context that Closing the Gap has operated as a national policy framework for Australian governments for almost 20 years.
In 2005, Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma, who was last year’s Lowitja orator, argued for health as a human right and set a goal of achieving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality, measured as life expectancy, within a generation, meaning by 2030.
A collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations came together to form the Close the Gap Campaign for Indigenous Health Equality.
The campaign still runs to this day. A campaign to have the gap closed, not just a process toward closing the gap.
I don’t need to tell you how we are going with Closing the Gap.
Why are we still languishing with results that reinforce Kevin’s plea for a nation that does better?
Fighting for our Voice
In 1990, the year the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission commenced, Lowitja addressed the Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration.
In her aim to ‘sensitise white bureaucrats to the idea of Aboriginal control’, Lowitja made the point that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people…
for so long have felt themselves powerless and voiceless in the process of government…at the heart of these issues are the rights of Australia’s Indigenous population and the maintenance of an ancient culture with roots deep in time.
As is powerfully expressed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the torment of our powerlessness reveals the structural nature of our problem, as we continue to see our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers, when they should be our hope for the future.
Words that should tug at one’s conscience and indeed go straight to the heart.
But for how long do these words sit, before fading into the background.
The fade is not an option for our mob. No choice here. Not ever for our people. It is our daily companion. Our lived experience.
And thirty-four years after Lowitja’s address, the Productivity Commission – a predominately white institution with its proud history in evidence-based policy advice to governments – arrived at the same place.
That Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have for so long, in Lowitja’s words, felt themselves powerless and voiceless in the process of government.
Productivity Commission and the National Agreement
The Productivity Commission is a key research and advisory body to Australian governments – a statutory body, protected to do its work through its own legislation.
And in April 2019, for the first time in its history, I became the first blackfulla at the Commission table. It took legislative change in 2018 in order for that to happen.
One year later, in 2020, Australian governments, the Australian Local Government Association and the Coalition of Peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, signed a landmark National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
It was the first national agreement that included a non-governmental party, the Coalition of Peaks as a signatory, and it demanded a commitment to radically change the way governments work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The Agreement sought to overcome the entrenched inequality faced by too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so their life outcomes are equal to all Australians, and consisted of four Priority Reforms and 17 socio-economic outcome areas; of those 17, there are 19 targets.
The Priority Reforms focused on partnerships and shared decision-making, building the community-controlled sector, transforming government organisations, and shared access to data and information.
And five years into the Agreement, there is still no data to measure progress against these Priority Reforms.
The Commission’s latest update on the socio-economic outcomes, published in March this year, also shows that only four targets are on track to be met. Four are going in the wrong direction, going backwards. Some others show improvement but are not on track to meet the target.
Meaning they are not going at the rate or pace in order to meet that target.
The Review
At its core, the Agreement is about services that should be available to all citizens.
These are matters of citizens’ rights – these are matters of human rights. This should be for the love of the people.
And in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, doing away with the persistent, glaring inequity, potential unrealised, lives shortened.
In 2024, last year, a bit over 12 months ago, the Commission delivered its first Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, led by myself, and my colleague and co-Commissioner Natalie Siegel-Brown, with two clear messages from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:
- The persistent barriers to progressing the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms result from a lack of power sharing for joint decision-making; and
- There is a failure of governments to acknowledge and act on the reality that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people know what is best for their communities.
These messages held a mirror to Lowitja’s words delivered more than 30 years ago.
While the Review found there have been some pockets of good practice, it also recognised that implementing the Priority Reforms has been weak, with actions overlayed onto business-as-usual approaches.
It wasn’t hard to find examples of government decisions that contradict commitments in the Agreement, and one that is glaringly obvious is in youth justice.
The Commission proposed a number of recommendations and associated actions to move forward, and I want to highlight two recommendations in particular that demand immediate attention.
First, that power needs to be shared. The Commission found that the commitment to shared decision-making is rarely achieved in practice. Specifically, that governments are not sufficiently enacting the sharing of power that needs to occur if decisions are to be made jointly.
Too many government organisations are consulting with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on a pre-determined solution, rather than working together to identify priorities and co-design the best approach to achieving them.
This is problematic.
For meaningful progress, the Commission recognised that governments must share power for decisions that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Governments need to trust that by relinquishing control they are enabling better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
An example of power sharing was work done through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander COVID-19 Taskforce. The response was collaborative, with knowledge and decision-making shared and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities’ expertise recognised.
A second recommendation was that Indigenous Data Sovereignty needs to be recognised and supported.
The Commission found that government needed to implement changes to data systems and practices so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people could participate in decision making about data and to use data for their own purposes.
It also found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations had difficulties accessing government-held data, and often data that government holds does not reflect the realities of, or hold meaning for, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
For change to occur, the Commission recommended the Agreement be amended to include Indigenous Data Sovereignty; and the second, to establish a Bureau of Indigenous Data, governed by an Indigenous Data Board made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I cannot emphasise enough the need for immediate action on these, and in fact every other recommendation of the Review.
For too long, we have witnessed government stances in multiple jurisdictions disregarding evidence, disregarding human rights legislation, disregarding commitments to the Agreement.
Governments have passed or amended legislation willingly, knowing that further harms will be the result for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This reveals the limitations of the Agreement – that it is not binding.
The Agreement should be strengthened without delay, and a process to amend the Agreement should be accelerated.
And while every party to the Agreement has responsibility, the Commonwealth must play a leadership role. Actions not just words, as Lowitja would say.
Closing the Gap and practical reconciliation
In 1995, Lowitja wrote:
Our history since 1788 has been a painful one, one dominated for the most part by disease and genocide, dispossession, resistance, attempts to assimilate us, poverty and marginalisation. We do not seek to divide the nation. Rather, we seek special recognition of our status within the nation. We seek to be included, because our past has been one of powerlessness and exclusion.
In this post-Voice referendum world, Closing the Gap is a given.
During the recent Federal election campaign, both leaders re-affirmed their commitment. The National Agreement has been signed by all governments.
Closing the Gap is a given. But it is not enough.
The re-emergence of the language of practical reconciliation – reducing reconciliation to a set of delivery outcomes rather than addressing the deeper, historical issues – brings this into question.
Closing the Gap is about service access and living standards outcomes, not reconciliation. Closing the Gap is about making a measurable difference.
The Agreement does not have a target for reconciliation, and for good reason. It is not a vehicle for reconciliation. I would go so far as to say it would be nonsense to even contemplate it.
The use of practical reconciliation in a policy context suggests a redefining of basic rights and entitlements as Australian citizens. And this applies only to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Practical reconciliation takes us back thirty years, with echoes of the then looming culture wars. A clever and cunning crafting of a distinction between so-called symbolic and practical reconciliation.
A redundant and damaging dichotomy.
In 2008, Lowitja spoke at a Reconciliation Week event. She said:
Reconciliation Week is always, in part, a celebration. It celebrates the belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings. And stemming from this belief is a worldview about how human beings should be treated.
Reconciliation celebrates our intentions to connect and reconnect in ways that honour our understanding of human equality and worth.”
Lowitja spoke to the full meaning of reconciliation – predicated on dignity and worth – not something so blatantly transactional and reductionist.
And let me be clear – if Closing the Gap targets are not met due to inadequate attention or resources, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be blamed for not doing our part for practical reconciliation.
Again, our fault. Again, we the problematic people. And a serious indictment on political will and policy failure.
Political and policy leaders should be taking up a self-determination agenda, not a practical reconciliation agenda. And in doing so, it will mean that communities should have the power. It will mean that communities are in control.
It will ensure that decisions are as close to the ground as the beneficiaries.
Look toward Victoria to see live examples of how voice, truth-telling and treaty making are taking shape. And in stark contrast to jurisdictions that have ripped up and thrown out commitments to all three.
We need further dialogue between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous people. To build on all our assets – our shared assets, the good things that can be built upon.
And for the nation to come clean, to come to terms with its history.
Or as Sir William Deane, former governor-general, said in the Lingiari Lecture in 1996:
…to assert our identity as a nation, and the basic fact that national shame, as well as national pride, can and should exist in relation to past acts and omissions, at least when done or made in the name of the community, or with the authority of government.
Where there is no room for national pride, or national shame, there can be no national soul.”
To arrive at a place where, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, our love for one another is something that is understood and valued by others.
Where we will all see ourselves in the frame, and in the forging of a new nation.
And perhaps then, we will be ready for successful constitutional change.
Though the Voice referendum did not deliver a successful result, and the likelihood of another referendum is unlikely for some time, there will be no substitute for structurally embedded constitutional change, whatever the proposition.
Right now, the Federal Labor Government with a powerful second term mandate must bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people squarely to the centre of its priorities.
To figure out a way forward in light of the referendum result.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was an invitation to all Australians; a gift to the nation; a promise of a different and better future.
It said:
We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.
More profoundly, despite the trauma of the past, and the continuing impacts in the present, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was a gesture of love for our fellow citizens.
The pain and suffering of the Voice referendum continues to reverberate within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and is also felt heavily by many non-Indigenous people.
Parliamentary and civic leadership must work hard to fill this reverberating void.
Reverberations like soundwaves, outside the range of some, clear and high volume for others.
Like the 6.2 million who voted Yes.
Like remote communities across the north and the centre.
Like millions who rejected the lurch toward condoning racism and hate.
Like the fair-minded people who want to see a better deal for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I am reminded of anthropologist WEH Stanner’s words a year after the 1967 referendum.
No longer can Governments, Parliamentarians and citizens alike, sit comfortably within a false reality that, and I quote Stanner:
we have been able to for so long to disremember the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so.”
So hard to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so.
The referendum result cannot just sit quietly or fade away; the equivalent of Stanner’s disremembering.
We are fatigued but not defeated, with the knowledge that the way forward does not – and cannot – sit solely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
For the love of the people, meaning all people, we must find a way forward.
We are the evidence
In the late 2000s, on a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, I came upon a magnificent work.
The names of Native American nations covering an entire wall. Emblazoned across the nations were four simple words.
We are the evidence.
Powerful, purposeful, precise.
This simple statement with immediate impact.
The work has stayed with me over many years, especially as I contemplated its application back home.
We have a parallel in our world – the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies map of Indigenous nations and languages. A full colour palette of First Nations covering the continent. Colonial state and territory borders unseen.
Unnecessary, obsolete.
The map now adorns many places – airport lounges, building lobbies, workplaces. You’ll see them in full bloom this week. Such is the attention paid during Reconciliation and NAIDOC weeks.
A useful tool for non-Indigenous people to engage with Country and language – for each to find their place, their belonging.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people it’s much more. It is a reminder that our people have been here since the beginning of time. That we carry the blood, the dreams and the promises of our ancestors – the love of our ancestors.
That we are our ancestors.
And one day we too will become ancestors of loved ones we are yet to meet.
We are the evidence serves as a reminder that sovereignty was never ceded. It serves as a reminder of the genocide and the dehumanisation of our people. It serves as a reminder of the theft of our lands, our languages, our cultures and our wealth.
We are the evidence also implores us to critique accepted wisdom and who it serves, to discard negative narratives, and to cement control of our stories and our futures.
We are the evidence centres Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, our perspectives, our priorities and our knowledges.
We are the evidence celebrates our existence, persistence, and our resistance.
It affirms our power as First peoples; and our enduring love for one another.
In closing
In 2016, at the first Lowitja Institute International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference, Lowitja said:
We must be fearless in our work for the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
We must be fearless in our work for Indigenous people the world over.
Now is the time that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people must take their rightful place at the heart of the nation.
In order to empower our capabilities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people must be at the centre of the decisions.”
And finally, Lowitja said, “I entrust you all to deliver on this agenda for us”.
And by that she meant us all – Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Tonight, we honour Lowitja.
From deep within our hearts, we thank Lowitja.
We commit to delivering on the agenda she entrusted to us.
To keep the fires of justice burning strong and bright.
I wish for all our young people to draw strength and inspiration from Lowitja.
Know that we will thrive, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, because our love for one another is timeless.
Watch the 2025 Lowitja O’Donoghue Oration here.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on cultural determinants of health
