*** Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article mentions people who have passed ***
Introduction by Croakey: The final report of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the first formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria, will no doubt include many recommendations of significance for the health sector nationally.
In an historic address to the Melbourne Press Club this week, the Commission’s Chair, Professor Eleanor Bourke AM, reflected on the Commission’s wide-ranging work over the past four years, and her hopes for how truth-telling will continue after Yoorrook formally concludes on 30 June.
Below is the original version of her address. Some comments were adjusted in delivery on the day.
Address by Eleanor Bourke
It is a privilege to be here addressing this room – a room of influence, of storytellers, of people who help shape what this country understands about itself. Your words build understanding. Understanding is the beginning of change. Indeed, it is foundational to change.
I too would like to acknowledge that we are on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. I pay respects to Elders past and present. I wish to acknowledge the many young leaders who are emerging now and forging new pathways forward.
Also, I want to recognise all First Peoples here today – especially our First Peoples journalists. Your presence matters. Your work matters. And your voices have never been more important than they are right now.
I also acknowledge my ancestors, the Wotjobaluk, Wergaia, Jadawadjali and Jupagulk peoples of the Wimmera. Every step I take is inspired by their strength and their stories.
Thank you also to the many allies for joining us today. As First Peoples, we can’t do any of this alone. We need you with us, so thank you for being on the journey.
I left full-time employment at the beginning of this century but continued to serve on statewide committees.
Then came an opportunity to take on the role of Yoorrook’s Chair. I knew it would be the hardest and most important work of my professional life. And so it has proved to be.
And yet, in around six weeks the Yoorrook Justice Commission will deliver its final report to the Government and First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria.
It will be a defining moment for Victoria – and, I hope, for Australia.
Making history
In 2021, Victoria made history by establishing the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the first formal truth-telling process in this country.
Not a gesture. Not a box tick. But a bold commitment to listen to the voices of the oldest living cultures on earth.
Yoorrook, means ‘truth’ in the Wamba Wamba language. Yoorrook is an Aboriginal-led process with the powers of a royal commission.
There is, of course, an inherent contradiction in being a ‘royal’ commission.
The British Coat of Arms is affixed to our founding document, the Letters Patent.
The same Crown that sanctioned invasion, dispossession and violence now commissions us to tell the truth of its consequences.
And yet – this paradox and status gave us power. Power to compel testimony. To unearth records long buried.
Truth-telling was missing. Now we had the legal mechanisms to face contradictions and clarify the truth: terra nullius was a lie!
Yoorrook’s mandate is nothing short of gargantuan – charged with investigating all systemic injustices faced by First Peoples from the beginning of colonisation to today – more than 190 years.
Yoorrook looked at the strength and achievements of Victoria’s First Peoples, which exist despite more than a century of harmful so-called “protection” legislation.
However, it is the broadest terms of reference of a royal commission ever conducted in Victoria as far as I am aware.
It might be the broadest mandate of any truth-telling process conducted in the world to date.
Listening
Over the past four years, Commissioners and staff have travelled across the state to hear people’s stories.
We listened to thousands – mostly First Peoples, but also descendants of settler families who built the systems we have now interrogated.
We heard from people in prison and premiers. From descendants of those who took the land, and descendants of those whose land was taken. From those who wrote the laws, and those broken by those very laws.
We’ve listened to Elders who buried their grandchildren taken by the state and sat with mothers criminalised for being poor.
We’ve heard about Aboriginal babies being marked for removal by child protection from before they were born.
We’ve listened to communities fighting for access to their own Country. And to men whose lives were swallowed by prisons before they ever had a chance.
These are not stories from the distant past. They are stories now.
Yoorrook went back to the beginning of colonisation in the state, commencing its hearings into “land, sky and waters” in Portland in southwest Victoria.
This is where the Henty brothers landed in 1834. They illegally established the first permanent European settlement in what would become the State of Victoria.
This moment marked the beginning of Britain’s newest colony, and the end of the world as First peoples people knew it. Sixty-five thousand years of continuous connection to Country suddenly thrust on a path to obliteration.
Before colonisation, First Peoples had long been the sovereign custodians of this land.
Our ancestors built nations with systems of law, knowledge, culture, and technology. They endured and adapted through an ice age, mega droughts and rising seas. They read the landscape and seasons, and managed the environment sustainably.
Then in 1834 came the Henty brothers. And with them, a wave of settlers that changed everything.
Devastation
What followed was nothing short of devastation: conflict, mass killings, disease, rape, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure and environmental destruction. And later, the removal of children and policies of absorption and assimilation.
Our people resisted. But spears were no match for guns and mounted militias.
Forty-nine recorded massacres of First Peoples were carried out across the state. As Professor Marcia Langton told Yoorrook, this was just ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
From the mid 1800s, surviving First Peoples were confined to missions and reserves, where language and traditions were suppressed and Christianity was forced upon us. We were not allowed to speak our languages.
Ancient cultural heritage, sacred sites and the lands that had nurtured our people for millennia were, at best, disregarded and forcibly suppressed. Or worse, desecrated – cleared, mined and paved over in the name of progress.
Yoorrook heard evidence that the State had generated billions of dollars in wealth from the land from gold, timber, grazing, water and revenues from land sales. None of this wealth has been shared directly with First Peoples.
The Government later changed the so-called “protection” laws – expelling Aboriginal people of mixed heritage from the missions. They were forced to assimilate into a society that refused to recognise or accept them.
Those same laws gave authorities absolute power to take children from their families simply because they were Aboriginal.
This was the beginning of the Stolen Generations – a systemic, state-sanctioned policy that ran well into the 1970s.
Though the language of law has changed, the practice of removing Aboriginal children continues today – at 20 times the rate of removal of other children in Victoria.
Our people experience catastrophic rates of incarceration and homelessness. We are also far less likely to finish school or to own our own home than other Victorians, and are far more likely to suffer poor health.
We are not closing the gap anywhere near fast enough – a devastating phrase centred on deficit rather than possibility.
Courage
Some of the people who shared their experiences told Yoorrook how the past continues into the future.
I have been so humbled by the courage, wisdom and humility of First Peoples and other Victorians who gave evidence.
There are stories and people I will never forget. One of these was Aunty Vickie Roach.
Vickie was made a Ward of the State at the age of two after her own mother had been removed from her mother as a baby.
Like many Aboriginal children placed into care, Vickie was given a criminal record for “being neglected by way of destitution”.
This began her life of institutionalisation.
Vickie said: “they separated me from my brother and the receptionist of that office took me home, like a stray puppy: but she didn’t want the boy – she didn’t want the boy puppy”.
By the age of 14 she was a heroin addict and a sex-worker. Vickie spent three decades in and out of prison.
She said, “It takes very little to institutionalise someone”.
Vickie’s evidence was delivered with candour and quiet authority. She called out racism within the prison system, and questioned incarceration as a tool for rehabilitation and deterrence.
Vickie talked about the “demeaning” and “terrifying” practice of routine strip searches before and after family visits. This was particularly traumatic for women who had suffered abuse.
I will never forget the rawness of Vickie’s evidence, nor the horror of the injustice cast upon her by authorities. But most impressive of all was the dignity with which Vickie told her story.
We also heard from Suzannah Henty, a descendant of early coloniser James Henty.
The same Hentys who landed on Gunditjmara country in 1834.
Suzannah sat across from Gunditjmara people and told the Commission how her family had been involved in “an organised ethnic cleansing” of First Peoples.
She shared her understanding that Aboriginal people had been “enslaved” at a homestead her family built, and that massacres of First Peoples had taken place on Henty properties.
As a child Suzannah was encouraged to distance herself from these aspects of the Henty legacy, she said.
A clip of her evidence remains one of the most watched videos the Commission has ever released.
Suzannah’s powerful evidence inspired other descendants to come forward – so many that Yoorrook held a special hearing day for descendants.
The referendum
I also want to touch on the referendum because it was a significant event during our term.
Political campaigning and media reporting opened the floodgates for racism, misinformation and fear-based narratives.
It was a difficult time for our people, regardless of their personal view on the referendum proposal. There were knock-on effects for Truth and Treaty too.
National polling showed support for Treaty plummeted from 58 percent to 33 percent following the campaign, even though Voice and Treaty were independent processes.
Suddenly, after years of progress in Victoria, Yoorrook was operating in a very different political and media environment.
First Peoples matters had once again become lumped together – a political football.
At the same time, other states and territories were rolling back their truth and treaty commitments, as did the federal government.
This was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.
During the referendum campaign, by far the most effective slogan to gain traction was ‘if you don’t know, vote no’.
Finding out can be challenging. Where do you access reliable information? What sources can be trusted?
A core purpose of truth-telling is to find out.
Connecting past and present
By learning about the past from First Peoples’ perspective, we can better understand how that past connects with the now.
You might find out about the Henty brothers, and their role in the initial decimation of traditional Aboriginal life in Victoria.
You might discover that Major Thomas Mitchell led a surveying party that carried out a massacre of Aboriginal people near Mildura in 1836.
Yet he was later appointed by the colonial government to the position of “Surveyor General”. To this date his name appears on roads, rivers, towns and shires across the state.
You might learn that former prime minister Alfred Deakin was closely involved in the introduction and passing of the 1886 Protection Act (often called the “Half-Caste” Act). This was the law that led to the mass removal of Aboriginal children from their families and the start of the Stolen Generations.
Such men were written into history books as founding fathers, pioneers and heroes.
They were cogs in the colonial machine, which was charging full steam ahead, leaving a wake of death and human devastation behind for our people.
For a long time, this version of history is what was taught in schools. Of course, it is very different to the experiences of our people.
Some ask, why should people feel guilty about something that happened 200 years ago?
We have never wanted other people to feel guilty. Yoorrook’s goal has never been to encourage shame or guilt.
Instead, listen and learn. Open your heart, and your mind, to our story, as told by First Peoples. Learn more about where you live!
Understand that colonisation wasn’t an event two centuries ago, but a structure set in place back then which continues to impact First Peoples today.
The Victorian Government has listened and learned throughout this process. Ministers have been brought to tears during their testimony and made profound commitments to do better.
Yoorrook heard 16 formal apologies from Victorian Government Ministers and officials about harm caused by the State to our people – in child protection, justice, policing, education, mental health, housing, land rights and environmental management.
These apologies were important. They are important, historic even. But without action, what do they actually mean?
There has, of course, been a long history of governments going back on their word when it comes to implementing meaningful and enduring changes to improve First Peoples’ lives.
Every decision not to act has the added effect of maintaining the status quo.
For example, in March, the Government repealed bail laws which had only come into effect a year earlier. Laws that were the culmination of decades of relentless advocacy, coronial inquests and Aboriginal deaths in custody.
I want to be clear, we Aboriginal people want to live in safe communities just like the rest of society.
However, as adults our people are 14 times more likely to be imprisoned than other Victorians, and our children are at least 10 times as likely to be in detention.
We know that these laws will have a disproportionate impact on our people.
The justice system was not designed by, for or with our people. If you cast a net wide, as these laws promise to do, there will be collateral damage, like those experiencing poverty, homelessness and intergenerational trauma.
When I heard this news, I thought about three Aboriginal boys whom I had met during a youth justice centre visit.
Sitting inside a room with heavy metal doors and stainless-steel tables bolted to the floor, I learned that each of the boys was a product of Victoria’s child protection system.
One told us he was taken from his mother at birth and put into foster care, where he had lived his entire life.
Another said he was first imprisoned at the age of 11 and had been in custody tens of times.
As they spoke, I sensed their trauma. They were weighed down by what had happened to them.
Conditions inside the prison didn’t appear to support them. We were told the boys had barely been allowed to leave their rooms for weeks because of staffing shortages. This was just after COVID. They believed staff were targeting them just for being Aboriginal.
One of the boys paced around the room the entire time we were there. Not in an aggressive way, but like a caged animal that finally had a little space to move.
I can still picture him – the face of a child robbed of childhood. I couldn’t help but wonder what his future would be.
There is a wealth of evidence showing that without appropriate intervention and support, these boys were on the well-trodden path from child protection into the adult justice system.
Treaty matters
Examples like this reinforce why Treaty is so important.
Treaties have been successfully developed in many parts of the world including the United States, Canada and New Zealand. But they are still a mystery to many here.
A Treaty is simply an agreement between a Government and First Peoples to resolve past differences and work together for the future. While they recognise diversity, they bring people together and help unify the community.
Treaty is a common-sense approach to deal with important matters affecting First Peoples.
A Treaty could give First Peoples the ability to make decisions about these issues as they relate to our people. It can help future-proof the progress we have made here in Victoria.
Treaty is about how we move forward together.
In our final report, Yoorrook is expected to make more than 100 recommendations based on the evidence that we have received.
These recommendations include significant reforms to broken systems, and a range of practical solutions to problems the government can implement now. Other recommendations will be suitable to be taken forward through the Treaty process.
Yoorrook also wants to see improvements to education, such as the way history and other subjects are taught in school. This includes better teaching methods for First Peoples students and for all children to be educated about the true history of this place now called Victoria and its impacts on First Peoples. This also requires appropriate training of teachers.
Victoria leads the nation with the establishment of the First Peoples’ Assembly and the Treaty Authority, which is overseeing Treaty negotiations. However, these organisations need long-term security and self-governing mechanisms.
There is also a pressing need for ongoing truth-telling to take place in some form after Yoorrook ends.
Inevitably, following an election, political parties reflect and recalibrate their approach.
My hope is that the recent federal election will lead to a recommitment to bi-partisanship when it comes to First Peoples policies – at both federal and state levels.
It is time to come together to create real and lasting change – for our people, and for all Victorians.
Defining moments
I think about how far we have come in my lifetime, and I am hopeful about the future.
I was born during the Second World War – a war in which thousands of Aboriginal people served. They went as soldiers but returned home as second class citizens, excluded from the Soldier Settlement Scheme. Some had their land taken while they were serving their country, including members of my family.
At that time, the policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families because of their race was in full force.
I was the only Aboriginal child at my primary school near Swan Hill and the only Aboriginal student in my class at RMIT.
I was 19 before Aboriginal people were allowed to vote. It was still lawful to racially discriminate against me until I was 32.
However, the turn of this century also saw a turn for the better in terms of many of these issues affecting our people.
I was 62 when my people’s Native Title was recognised by the Wotjobaluk determination. There have now been four successful native title cases in the state.
In my 60s and 70s, a series of laws were passed to protect cultural heritage, to improve land rights and create the foundations for recognition and treaty. We also saw the historic establishment of the First Peoples’ Assembly.
I have seen some momentous changes in my lifetime and I hope to see more. This includes the government’s acceptance of Yoorrook’s report and the official public record, and the successful negotiation of a Treaty in Victoria.
Today I stand before you, proud of what Yoorrook has achieved over the past four years. This includes completion of successful inquiries into child protection, justice, land, education, health, housing, the economy, political life and access to public records.
Come the end of June when our work ends, we will have fulfilled our gargantuan mandate.
We still have 48 days left. We plan on using every day, don’t we.
Next week, Yoorrook will launch a public education campaign which will be promoted through key Victorian cultural institutions.
The campaign will share some of the incredible stories of our people heard by Yoorrook. It will run until the end of June.
A few days later Commissioner Lovett will begin a 25-day Walk from Portland to Parliament. The Walk is about bringing Victorians together to listen, learn and create a better shared future for every one of us.
Yoorrook then will hand over its final reform report and official public record to the First Peoples’ Assembly and to the Victorian government. There will be a final public event to celebrate the Commission’s life.
These events will each be defining moments on Victoria’s truth-telling journey, helping forge a legacy for future generations.
I hope all Victorians will take this unique opportunity to be part of the celebration.
Selfless leadership
Coming to the end of our work at Yoorrook, I can’t help but also reflect on the Elders and leaders we have lost along the way – not only during Yoorrook’s life but in the decades long fight to make truth-telling and Treaty a reality.
I pay my deep respect and sincere thanks for their immense contributions. Uncle Jack Charles, who contributed so much to society while facing such unimaginable injustice and adversity over the course of his life. Who could ever forget his distinctive, deep, resonant voice.
We also lost Uncle Kevin Coombs, who was left with paraplegia at the age of 12 after a hunting accident. He went on to become a champion wheelchair basketballer and Australia’s first Aboriginal Paralympian, while dedicating his life to improving the health outcomes of Aboriginal people and helping others.
Aunty Fay Carter was among the Aboriginal leaders who successfully lobbied for the Aboriginal Community Elderly Services, otherwise known as ACES. Fay worked in childcare and health agencies and was involved in negotiations that achieved a landmark Traditional Owner Settlement Act agreement for the Dja Dja Wurrung People in 2013.
I miss all of them dearly. They each gave so much, while facing many of the injustices Yoorrook has investigated these past four years.
Now their stories, told by them about their lives, are on the public record for us all. They demonstrated such selfless leadership, inspiring many more to come forward.
In the past, history has divided us. That must not be our future.
We are again in historic times.
Historic because of how far we have come in the state of Victoria compared to the protectionist welfare past.
Historic because an Aboriginal-led commission has, for the first time, interrogated the State about matters of importance to Aboriginal people.
Historic because Yoorrook’s final reports and recommendations will now be markers in time.
Historic because, at last, I hope, Victoria will see genuine, lasting change that we can all be proud of.
As Victorians, we are fated to share this country that all of us call home. Together I believe that we can build a new relationship based on truth, understanding and transformation.
Thank you.
Further reading
More than 900 submissions to the Yoorrook Justice Commission can be read here, including 99 on health matters.
See the Commission’s reports published to date.
An invitation to join the historic Yoorrook Walk for Truth. We are keen to hear from Croakey readers who plan to participate.
See Croakey’s archive on the cultural determinants of health
