Victorian apology to First Nations people

Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, yesterday made a formal apology in Parliament to First Nations people. Opposition Leader Wilson, Minister Hutchins, and Greens Leader Sandell also made speeches.

Key sentences from the Premier's remarks:

Colonisation of what is now called Victoria was not peaceful; it was rapid and violent. Lands and waters were taken without consent. Communities were displaced, languages silenced, children removed, lives lost. The Yoorrook Justice Commission heard that the laws and policies of the colonial and Victorian governments enabled these acts, not by accident but by design. The actions and inactions of the state and the colony that came before it carried out through words spoken and laws passed in the chamber of Parliament resulted in profound and undeniable harms, the effects of which we are still grappling with today. We can no longer look away.

Now that we have a Statewide Treaty, a negotiation agreement between equals, we can begin to say what should have been said a long time ago. To ensure that the wrongs of the past are never repeated, we say sorry. To all the First Peoples in the gallery today and to every community across this state, we say sorry. For the laws, the policies and the decisions of this Parliament and those that came before it, laws that took land, removed children, broke families and tried to erase culture, we say sorry. For the tears shed in the dark, for the silence that shadowed their years, for the childhood taken and never returned, for the stolen generations, we say sorry. For the violence committed under the banner of the state and the colony that came before it, and for the neglect that allowed it to continue without consequence, we say sorry.

For the laws that criminalised culture and punished survival, we say sorry. For the wealth built on lands and waters taken without consent while First Peoples were locked out of prosperity, we say sorry. For the silencing of language and the erasure of words that carried knowledge older than the state itself, we say sorry. The loss of those languages is a loss for all of us, for they held truths about this ancient land that we may now never fully understand.

For the forced removal of families to missions and reserves where culture was controlled, movement restricted and identity denied, we say sorry. For the policies that stripped First Peoples of the right to move freely, to marry without permission, to work for fair wages or to live with dignity on their own land, we say sorry. For the laws and policies which removed First Peoples from their lands and allowed the sale of sacred sites without consent, we say sorry. For the laws that filled institutions disproportionately with First Peoples and made this seem ordinary, we say sorry. For the harm that was done and the harm that continues, we say sorry with resolve to work with you to address injustice in all its guises. And to those who carried the truth their whole lives but did not live to hear it spoken here, we say sorry. From today our hope is that your descendants and all Victorians hear these truths and move forward together in the knowledge of your legacies.

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Hansard. You Tube.

Related: Victorian Treaty. Victorian Yoorrook Justice Commission.

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Picture credit: William Barak, photographed by Carl Walter. Wikimedia. Esteemed ngurungaeta (headman) William Barak witnessed the signing of the controversial Batman Treaty in 1835. More.