Just a warning before we get started. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware that today's episode features the voices of people who have died. This episode is the first part in a two part series.
Welcome Uncle Jack, Thank you.
We are delighted and honored the Duke to join us today.
One of the first people that we heard from in the Commission was the late great Uncle Jack Charles as well.
I am a well known nun Collingwood Vitroy Bloke, Melvernion, and I am self proclaimed in my community as the local goodcha man law man feed afoot of the Smeth Street Strip.
In April twenty twenty two, Uncle Jack Charles told the story of his life to the York Justice Commission. Uncle Jack is known and loved for his work as an actor, but the role most important to him, the one that he focused on when he gave testimony at Yuruk, was his role within his own community.
And that's my job as an elder. We've lived experiences to be yet a source for people to gravitate towards in their own journey of coming out of their own heart of darkness, and it's been.
Proven sadly it was probably unless there's something else. I'm not aware of his final public act as an elder because he died shortly afterwards.
Over four years, thousands of Victorians shared their stories with the York Justice Commission. It had all the powers of a royal commission and was the first truth telling process of its kind in Australian history. Yesterday its findings were handed to the Victorian government. My co host Daniel James, has spent the last seven months documenting Europe for the official report, Truth Be Told. It's a powerful, unflinching account of Victoria's past and present. I'm Ruby Jones. This is
seven AM today. Daniel James on how knowing the truth of the past sets us up for a better future. It's Wednesday, July two. Daniel, thank you for being here. Let's talk about Uncle Jack's testimony and how it's set up the stage for how Europe unfolded from there.
Of course, his testimony was very moving. He talked about the impacts of being a member of the Stolen Generation.
Being born under the Assimilation Policy EL babies was supposed to be taken from the hospital bed from their mothers and then placed into babies' homes City Mission over in Brunswick managed to keep me for flaw months and I was discovered with her a dasher's paddock.
And so he was put into a children's home where he was abused both physically and sexually. How that led to a life of petty crime, all.
B eggs and pain. The woes of existing, you know, with a heavy addiction and having to do, you know, burglaries to do to support the funding of the drugs and etc. Came to a stop, a full stop.
But also the great thing about his hearing was that he was able to you know, quote unquote redeem himself. He was able to make something of himself in the face of all of that. And it wasn't until very very late in life that he was actually able to discover who his father was.
But Edinburgh re Gardens, I was given this side below and I opened it up and there was Hilton Hamilton Bosh and leaning on a walking stick which he carved himself. And the irony there struck me between you know, and the eyes that when I found my mum at eighteen on the air whichever between mill I mean, what else? He was carving walking sticks, snakes around walking sticks.
And that was a process that thankfully became a circular moment for him and I'm so glad that he got to realize exactly who he was and where he was from before he passed away, and Uruk assisted with that, and.
Uncle Jack was one of thousands of people who gave testimony to the commission this process. It's been a long time coming. So tell me where the story of rock starts.
The story actually really starts at the point of first contact between European settlers and First Nations people really in the western districts of Victoria, and what Euruk has been doing is trying to investigate the fallout from that point and everything that's followed subsequently. I think one thing that's really important to note is that Victoria was probably the heaviest populated section of this land mass that we now call Australia at the time of invasion, and so there
has been a plethora of political movements here. Europe is a wamba wamba word for truth, and it is something that is the combination of a movement that has been going for generations and generations. It started at a place
called cornderk on or Andrey Country near Hillsville. There was a mission, one of the early missions that were established once Melbourne was settled, and the residents of Coron Dirk, headed by a fellow called Uncle William Barrick, protested not only their conditions but the colonies I guess reluctance to let them play a full and vital role in the life of the colony and the life of their local communities by participating in the economic life of where they
were situated. They wanted to grow hops to feed some of the emerging buries that were being established around the place, so they were quite entrepreneurial in that way. But they didn't get what they want, so they petitioned the colony and they eventually marched from Cronder to what is now State Parliament to protest their rights, their land rights, their rights as citizens.
Quite a new media people saying I don't like the black man, but he's then blood to live in a black man's country.
All the things.
I am calling a crowbie of all the leaders in New South Wales to send a petition to the King in an endeavor to improve our conditions.
And there's been a series of movements since then, and in many ways Europe is a major, major chapter in that story.
And so at what point would you say that those protests and political movements really crystal into what we're seeing now.
I would say probably around the early seventies there was a very strong push to establish some of our own organizations.
So we've got things like the Victorian Original Legal Service, which was the first community controlled organization in Victoria, the second in Australia, that, in combination with the establishment of health services and cooperatives around the state, really enabled Aboriginal people to talk about the politics of our plight, to talk about ways of moving forward across portfolio areas like education and health. So the steps towards treaty in particular
really sort of started around that point. It was seen as a way of not only improving outcomes for Aboriginal people, but also moving towards things like land rights and native title,
which was all to come much later on. But if you were to look at how that actually crystallized into the very sort of jagged path we're on now towards truth and treaty, the formal process of Europe would have started about seven years ago once the First People's Assembly of Victoria had been formally established, because it was them who called for.
It, and so they're calling for this commission. How does the eurok Justice Commission become a reality?
Though? So, the First People's Assembly, in one of its first acts, called for a truth telling process.
Victoria is one step closer to a landmark treaty with its First People's Indigenous leaders delivered a stirring address on the floor of Parliament marking laws to create a special authority.
Their view is, and I think it's a view that's proven around the world in many ways, is that you can't have a treaty process without a truth telling process. And so what they were doing was calling for the first truth telling process to be formalized in Australia in which we could actually hear for the first time from a first people's slash Aboriginal people's perspective on what happened.
And here there's no escape in the harsh reality that actional people have suffered immensely at the hands of the Victorian state.
And only once the broader Victorian public and the broader Australian public understands what happened here can you actually start treating negotiations in good faith.
We cannot move forward using the same systems that have been used against us and that have held us back.
So they were the ones that called for it, and the Victorian government, led by Dan Andrews at the time, to their credit, said yes, you can have that.
For far too long we've had white belts telling our first nations, Victorians how it ought to be and I don't intend to do that.
And so one of the major challenges in the first place is okay, well, what does this look like, what powers is it given, and what do we want from it. A tremendous amount of work went into that, both from the First People's Assembly but also through the establishment of the Commission itself, which had to work out what it was, areas it would explore and what outcomes it was looking to achieve from exploring those areas.
And I want to talk more about those parts of the Commission, but as it moved forward and established itself with their other challenges.
Yeah, there were a number of challenges. Major one was this has never happened before in Australia, It's happened in other parts of the world. How much does it cost, who do you get to chair it, what areas does it look at, where do you house it? I mean, one of the things that I discovered, to my astonishment, was when the Commission was looking for premises to house itself, it meant what one would call sort of passive resistance.
They would get to a point where they were close to negotiating a lease, and then once the landlord sort of discovered that it was an organization run by and for Aboriginal people, those lease would sort of fail to materialize. So it wasn't until the Victorian government, by chance happened to be building a new government building in Collingwood that the Commission was actually able to house itself and create an environment where people coming in and providing testimony before
the Commission could actually feel safe. One of the things that seemed to take a while for a number of people to get their head around was that the Commission had all the powers of a royal commission. So a royal commission can request any document that at once and get a hold of that document, they can summoned people
to appear before the commissioner androde testimony. One of the early hurdles was a tardiness from the Victorian bureaucracy in terms of getting the thousands of documents that commissioners and the Commission itself had actually asked for and it got to a point where they had to actually all a direction's hearing for non compliance.
So the state's response over the past few weeks to Yurook's request for documents to me demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the truth telling process.
They've brought all of these senior public servants in and the people that were in charge of these systems and said, listen, we're telling you nicely now that this is a royal commission. When we ask for something, you give it to us.
The state recognizes that compliance dates for recent notices have passed oologizers to the Commission for the delay in providing responses to the notices, and.
Was from that point on that I think not only did the bureaucracy start taking Europe seriously, interested parties within the Victorian community realized that this was very much the real deal when it comes to inquiries.
Coming up after the break. The Formidable woman chosen to lead Europe.
Racism and inequality affect First peoples in almost every aspect of our lives, from schooling and work, to getting housing and to accessing healthcare.
Daniel let's talk more about the direction that the Commission took once it was established. Tell me about the chair.
Well, the chair is a remarkable woman, Auntie Eleanor burke Am. She is a Wagaya Wamba Wamba elder.
There is an unbroken line of injustice which runs from the original theft of our lands and waters until today.
She is someone who has dedicated her entire life to Aboriginal people, one of the first Aboriginal public servants in Canberra.
The truth is we cannot secure justice for First peoples without transforming the laws and policies which by design continue to disadvantage us.
She is now eighty two years old, so she would have been in her late seventies when she was called upon to be the chair of this commission. Her main area of interest has been education and research, and so she's a professor and director of the Aboriginal Research Institute at the University of South Australia. She's been inducted into the Victorian Honor Roll for women here in Victoria and also into the Aboriginal Honor Role. She's someone that is
universally respected and has been tireless in her efforts. I couldn't think of a better chairperson to undertake this role because it not only is still a resolve, it requires a truckload of empathy and has required a truckload of strengths as well. To hear some of the things that these commissioners have heard over the last four or five years has been amazing.
Well, tell me more about that. What have they heard? What has stuck with you?
Yeah, there are a number of massacres that took place that I didn't know about that came to light. Those sort of revelations were profound and very moving and very distressing.
But the hardest thing from my perspective, and I would dare say from a commissioner's perspective, would be hearing from members of the Stolen Generation in particular, and hearing their first person accounts of what happened to them or that they missed out on the clinical brutality of the state taking children away from the clutters of their mothers and fathers.
So hearing what happened to people in the first person with the most moving moments from a people who had had horrific ordeals with the child protection system, either as a parent or as a child, seeing their bravery in terms of fronting the commission, which is something that so many original people don't want to do because why would they trust systems, Why would they trust another inquiry? Why would they trust a royal commission? Given what's happened previously?
And as you say, truth telling is important because how do you attempt to change things if you haven't even identified what was wrong? But what else changes when the truth goes on record like.
This, Well, one of the things that does change, and it's something that requires a little bit of lateral thinking, but shame and guilt no longer become a concern. So the truth has been told. We've heard from Indigenous people, We've heard from descendants of some of the early landholders in Victoria. We've heard how they are descendants of people that were complicit in the attempt to genocide of aoriginal people in this place we now call Victoria. And there
were no ramifications for them, there was no pushback. They were heard respectfully and openly. And so the idea of being able to then move forward with the truth means that not only does it empower First Nations people, but it also lifts the veil of shame and guilt on non Aboriginal people who have been involved in some of the things that have harmed us most. And we don't have to keep revisiting the past because the past has now been written and is now part of the public record,
and it's there for all to see. So what has happened in many ways in the past is not our business, but what happens next is and that's what telling the truth has enabled us to do.
Thank you for listening to this episode of seven Am. It's the first part in a two part series about the York Justice Commission. Part two is available in a seven AM feed now