Tremane Baxter-Edwards is ready to pick up the baton and fight for reconciliation

West Australian

27-05-2025

WA First Nations youth leader Tremane Baxter-Edwards can see the future of reconciliation and it looks like economic empowerment, education and the respect.
It is a future free from culture wars and a world in which more Indigenous Australians learn to 'walk in two worlds', as Mr Baxter-Edwards has done as a Kimberley ranger at El Questro Wilderness Park, student and youth political adviser.
And at just 18, the Ngarinyin-Walmajarri man thinks the future of reconciliation also means that young leaders like himself must be prepared to take the baton from the generation of Indigenous elders who have spent their lives fighting for it.
Speaking to The West Australian, Mr Baxter-Edwards said he was immensely grateful for the work of elders like Patrick Dodson, who urged him to step into the spotlight for this year's National Reconciliation Week, the theme of which is Bridging Now to Next.
'Our elders and Aboriginal leaders like Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton and Patrick Dodson, we're now in this phase where these people who have been fighting their whole life for Aboriginal people and the reconciliation movement need to pass the baton on to the next generation,' he said.
'Because they grew up in a generation where it was really difficult to be an Aboriginal person, and let me please use this as an opportunity to thank these leaders.
'But now we're in a phase where we operate differently. The young people of today are becoming a bit more progressive so they're not going to have to fight tooth and nail with this particular subject. I think people today. . . their spirit is switched on and I think with the right practical view we will be able to advance the reconciliation movement a bit more.'
Mr Baxter-Edwards, who grew up in the Kimberley town of Wyndham, said the failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum had 'changed the course of the reconciliation journey' but had not defeated it.
He said empowering Aboriginal people to have economic power, equal access to education and work and the potential for intergenerational wealth were key to achieving reconciliation.
'My grandmother was paid in rations for her hard work for 30 years,' he said. 'I don't think a lot of people know how disheartening that is for me, as a young person, to hear my grandmother say that.
'Reconciliation in 2025, for me personally, I would like to see young people and their families put in the best position possible and what does that mean? Essentially self-determination: economic empowerment, economic development.
'How do we, as the next generation, work with our elders to empower us and simultaneously empower our elders to walk in two worlds?
'To walk in those two worlds successfully is a fine line: to be able to negotiate at the table with, for example, politicians and business people you're successfully walking in the western world, but to be able to go back to country and talk about country and culture as I have the opportunity to do, it's incredible.'
He said he believed most people wanted Indigenous people to succeed but did not know how to make that happen.
'It's economic empowerment — how do we put the Aboriginal people in the driver's seat is something people should be talking about today and every day,' he said.
'It's things like, for example, how do we utilise and sell carbon credits to companies who want to buy carbon credits? That's economic empowerment: we are using our country and our knowledge of the country… so when we sell carbon credits we're making the most of those carbon credits.
'Also a big one for me is jobs in education. Young people, no matter who they are, should have the same opportunities afforded to them — doesn't matter if they're from the bush, like myself, or the city.
'For people to be able to have the opportunity to work so that government and communities invest in remote communities — there are people who lived off the stations 50 years ago, they moved into town and haven't had a job since — to make sure everyone wakes up having something to do. . . and having hope, for people in government and business to entrust in these people.'
Julianne Wade is the Whadjuk Nyungar woman behind The West Australian's front page, reconciliation-inspired artwork, which uses the colours of the changing season to represent 'change and growth'.
'The blue resembles our places of water stemming from the swampland,' she said. 'The white represents the paths that people take with integrity, into reconciliation, with their own stories and knowledge and actions in the people symbols.
'I have taken inspiration with the hands holding plant materials to emphasise the movement of people coming together to dance and move around on country, and the boomerangs to emphasise the movement of sound and vibrations as we make change.'
She said reconciliation 'means more than words' and was 'more than an apology or promises that fall short to bridge a gap'.
'It's about truth, respect, actions and integrity,' she said.