A four-year truth-telling report has been tabled in Victoria, finding British colonisation subjected Aboriginal communities in the state to “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”.
It’s the first such truth-telling process and report in Australia.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission has made 100 recommendations, including a redress scheme for losses and a treaty between the Government and First Peoples.
The Victorian Government said it will consider the recommendations.
Background
Victoria launched Yoorrook in 2021.
‘Yoorrook’ means ‘truth’ in the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba language of the First Peoples of north-western Victoria.
Senior government figures and officials, including Premier Jacinta Allan, police, and historians, have appeared at the truth-telling hearings.
The four-year process has sought to create an “official public record based on First Peoples’ experiences of systemic injustice since the start of colonisation.”
Final report
Yoorrook Justice Commissioner and Kerrupmara-Gunditjmara man Travis Lovett led a 25-day Walk for Truth last month.
It covered 500km from Portland in south-west Victoria to the steps of the State Parliament in Melbourne. Portland is where the British first began colonising Victoria.
The walk signified the final stage of the commission before the publication of its report.
Findings
Yoorrook’s report details some of the hundreds of clan groups across Victoria prior to colonisation, who spoke 40 different languages.
When the British landed in Victoria, they enacted “massacres, disease, sexual violence, child removal, cultural erasure and linguicide [deliberate killing of language] — which amounted to the near destruction of First Peoples across the state,” the report says.
The report’s five authors summed up the experience: “This was genocide.”
The report noted poorer outcomes for First Peoples in Victoria compared to the rest of the population.
Your contribution ensures The Daily Aus can continue doing the work you love.
I want to give $10 monthly to help TDA keep doing the news.
Your details:
Aboriginal people in the state are twice as likely to report poor health, have lower weekly incomes, and are 10 times more likely to access homelessness services.
High rates of First Nations people in the criminal justice and child protection systems are linked to successive government “assimilationist” policies and widespread “dispossession”.
The report says these “injustices” all “flow directly from colonisation”.
Recommendations
The 100 recommendations are categorised across various areas, including treaty, self-determination process, health, education, and housing.
The final area relates to redress — a compensation scheme to “correct or remedy rights violations and other harms”. It could take the form of returning land, tax exemptions, or direct payments.
The Commission says redress should be offered for tangible economic losses (e.g. land) and non-economic losses (cultural and language deprivation).
Another key recommendation relates to the Treaty process in Victoria.
A Treaty is a legally binding agreement between First Nations people and the Government, which would ensure “freedom and power” for Aboriginal communities. Victoria’s Treaty process is already underway.
Yoorrook also recommended the First Peoples’ Assembly be funded as Victoria’s official truth-telling body to continue to gather testimony and “build the public record”.
Premier Allan said the government would “carefully consider” the recommendations.
Opposition
Last year, the Victorian Opposition withdrew its support for a Treaty process with First Peoples.
The then-state Coalition leader John Pesutto warned the process would leave the community “divided”, following the failed Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.
TDA reached out to the Victorian Liberal Party after the Yoorak recommendations, but did not hear back at the time of posting.
