Australia’s first treaty sealed by handprints on kangaroo skin

With a wild shout of celebration, the enthusiastic stamping of many dancing feet and the hugs and handshakes of old friends from country and city, Victoria’s Aboriginal people gathered to proclaim the state’s first treaty.

The members of the First Peoples’ Assembly – from many of the state’s First Nations, from the Wemba Wemba in the north-east to the Yorta Yorta in the north, the Gunditjmara in the far south-west, the Gunaikurnai of the south-east, and numerous peoples and language groups in between – laid their handprints on a document written on kangaroo skin.

The ceremony at the Aboriginal Advancement League’s Sir Douglas Nicholls sporting complex in Thornbury symbolised the cultural ratification of the end of a long process to win recognition for their people from the state of Victoria.

The kangaroo-skin document was later taken to a ceremony at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena.

There, Premier Jacinta Allan and the co-chairs of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, Ngarra Murray and Rueben Berg, added their handprints to the document to complete “cultural assent” of the treaty, and to mark a new beginning for both black and white.

Delegations of Maori from New Zealand and chieftains from clans of several first nations of Canada – all of whom have enjoyed treaties for many generations – came to witness this celebration of this first treaty in Australia.

“We come to this new world, this treaty, after generations of being told to be silent, to call it loss, misfortune, tragedy, as if our attempted erasure were natural, and when the worst had passed, we were told to get over it as if no one was to blame,” said Aunty Esmeralda Bamblett, an elder of the Bangerang, Taungurung and Wiradjuri people, a member of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and co-chair of its Elders’ Voice.

“But we have always known the truth, and we name it for what happened.

“It was genocide, planned, concealed and undeniable.”

As the large chattering crowd on the Sir Douglas Nicholls sports oval at the Aboriginal Advancement League in Thornbury fell silent, Bamblett read the often poetic and sometimes hard words of the Statewide Treaty Declaration.

In celebrating the treaty, “we are tending to a fire that has warmed our families for generations and that many said would burn out”, she said.

“It flickers still; therefore, this is not a new beginning, but a rekindling of lore, a chapter written in honesty; honesty guided by justice, carried forward by ancestors and the children who will speak our names.

“This treaty means a future where children grow up proud of who they are, walking confidently in two worlds, knowing their language and history, where their rights are honoured.

“It is a future where Victoria is defined not by what it has taken, but by its deep respect of First Peoples and by how we thrive together.”

Several elders cloaked themselves in long possum-skin cloaks despite the heat of the summer’s day. The Maori delegation brought more possum skins, presenting them in the spirit of returning what was taken.

Possums were always sacred to Australian Aboriginal people, particularly in Victoria, the crowd was told, but colonial authorities denied them the right – and still do – to hunt them.

But possums were introduced to New Zealand, where they have become a pest.

“The possum is one of those species that was taken without your permission and given to us without our permission, and it is wreaking havoc in our forests,” said Melanie Mark-Shadbolt of Te Tira Whakamātaki, an independent Māori charity working to eradicate possums from New Zealand.

She promised that many more possum skins would be brought to Australia to add to the several dozen her organisation presented on Friday.

And with that, dancers from 18 groups from across Victoria took to a circle of sand in the centre of the oval, eucalyptus leaves waving in their hands and their feet stamping ancient rhythms – a high-energy celebration in the summer sun by people placing their hopes in a new compact between all the citizens of the state.

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