Yoorrook Justice Commissioner to walk 400km to Victorian parliament
As the Yoorrook Justice Commission prepares to hand down its final report next month, its deputy chair Travis Lovett is preparing to walk on country, inspired by historic Indigenous leaders who resisted colonisation before him.
In the late 1800s, Wurundjeri leader William Barak, known as "the last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe", led a walk to Parliament House where he successfully petitioned the government to keep the Coranderrk Aboriginal Mission open.
In 1939, Uncle Jack Patten was arrested when he and about 200 residents of Cummeragunja Station, in southern New South Wales, walked off in protest against horrible living conditions.
Today, Commissioner Lovett will embark on the Walk For Truth — a 400-kilometre trek starting in the far south-west Victorian city of Portland and ending 25 days later at Parliament House in Melbourne.
For Commissioner Lovett, Portand is personal.
He has strong family connections to the area, with lineage that goes back generations; his ancestors were among those who fought back against colonisers, helping earn the title "the fighting Gunditjmara".
"There's connection for me, being a proud Kerrupmara and Gunditjmara man from these lands," he says.
"And the story of colonisation in Victoria started here … the current systems are informed by the depth of the colonial past.
"Our people have walked on country for 60,000-plus years. This Walk for Truth that I'm doing builds on those legacies."
During the walk, Commissioner Lovett will visit significant cultural and historical sites throughout regional Victoria to bring attention to the commission's work ahead of its final report being handed down next month.
The report details an official account of the impact of colonisation on First Nations people in Victoria and is based on four years of hearings and submissions from more than 9,000 people.
He says it's devastating work but healing cannot happen without truth.
"Some of our people have come and shared truths with us representing three generations of injustices," Commissioner Lovett says.
He says he draws strength from those who have shared their stories.
"They have entrusted us to turn their lived experience in the state of Victoria into recommendations for change and transformation," he says.
One of those people is Gunditjmara Yorta Yorta woman Keicha Day.
"Before I wrote the submission, I was always asking wider community and the local council to engage in mature conversations around the true history of this country — it was never forthcoming," Ms Day says.
"This process has really catapulted me into having those conversations and I've found it challenging but also healing."
Ms Day has been working to de-colonise Portland's landscape by pushing for the removal of colonial monuments and the renaming of public spaces that hold colonial monikers.
Those efforts have made Ms Day a public-facing figure in the truth-telling conversation, something she says she's reluctantly coming to terms with.
"It's really hard to put yourself out there and be perceived by people who are sometimes committed to not understanding you or giving you and your mob empathy," Ms Day says.
"I feel like partaking in the Walk for Truth is a physical release of all the anxieties I've had along the way."
She says despite it all, she continues to show up for truth-telling because she sees it as the only tangible solution to the problems faced by her community.
"We're coming up to Sorry Day and in this process I've seen three lots of family groups have their children taken away from them," Ms Day says.
Sorry Day is Australia's national day to remember the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families.
"I've seen despair, unhealed people in my community that turn to suicide and I've seen the continuance of black deaths in custody and that's just unacceptable to me," she says.
Ms Day says once the commission's report is handed down, the state government must be held accountable to action the recommendations.
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