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We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.

This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.

How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution. 

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together  after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

1

OUR STORY

Our First Nations are extraordinarily diverse cultures, living in an astounding array of environments, multi-lingual across many hundreds of languages and dialects. The continent was occupied by our people and the footprints of our ancestors traversed the entire landscape.

Our songlines covered vast distances, uniting peoples in shared stories and religion. The entire land and seascape is named, and the cultural memory of our old people is written there.

This rich diversity of our origins was eventually ruptured by colonisation. Violent dispossession and the struggle to survive a relentless inhumanity has marked our common history. The First Nations Regional Dialogues on constitutional reform bore witness to our shared stories.

All stories start with our Law.

The Law

We have coexisted as First Nations on this land for at least 60,000 years. Our sovereignty preexisted the Australian state and has survived it.1

‘We have never, ever ceded our sovereignty.’ (Sydney) 2

The unfinished business of Australia’s nationhood includes recognising the ancient jurisdictions of First Nations law.3

‘The connection between language, the culture, the land and the enduring nature of Aboriginal law is fundamental to any consideration of constitutional recognition.’ (Ross River)4

Every First Nation has its own word for The Law. Tjukurrpa is the Aṉangu word for The Law. The Meriam people of Mer refer to Malo’s Law.5

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this surviving and underlying First Nation sovereignty can more effectively and powerfully shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.6

The Law was violated by the coming of the British to Australia. This truth needs to be told.

1 Hobart Record of Meeting (ROM), p2; Broome ROM, p2; Dubbo ROM, p3; Perth ROM, p4; Canberra ROM, p2; Darwin ROM, p1; Melbourne ROM, p3, p6; Ross River ROM, p5; Cairns ROM, p2.

2 Sydney ROM, p1.

3 Brisbane ROM, p6: ‘Belonging to country and spirituality are central to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity, and these need to be the basis for far-reaching structural change.’

Torres Strait ROM, p2: ‘Communities here should be in control of their own affairs. This is not a new concept. People in the Torres Strait did so for thousands of years prior to invasion.’

4 Ross River ROM, p1.

5 Perth ROM, p2: ‘We’ve got to continue the fight for the unwritten constitutions. We know there were 260 language groups, and in each language group there were unwritten constitutions. … Prior to white man coming, there were 260 unwritten constitutions, rules, policies, procedures governing Aboriginal People and their lands.’

6 Cairns ROM, p2: ‘No one gives you sovereignty, you go out there and practice it and go out there and enforce it. But we are in a position that there are certain laws that mean we can’t go out and practise our sovereignty.’

2

Invasion

Australia was not a settlement and it was not a discovery. It was an invasion.7

‘Cook did not discover us, because we saw him. We were telling each other with smoke, yet in his diary, he said “discovered”.’ (Torres Strait)8

‘Australia must acknowledge its history, its true history. Not Captain Cook. What happened all across Australia: the massacres and the wars. If that were taught in schools, we might have one nation, where we are all together.’ (Darwin)9

The invasion that started at Botany Bay is the origin of the fundamental grievance between the old and new Australians: that Australia was colonised without the consent of its rightful owners.10 Now is an opportunity for the First Nations to tell the truth about history in our own voices and from our own point of view.11 And for mainstream Australians to hear those voices and to reconsider what they know and understand about their nation’s history. This will be challenging, but the truth about invasion needs to be told.

‘In order for meaningful change to happen, Australian society generally needs to “work on itself” and to know the truth of its own history.’ (Brisbane )12

‘People repeatedly emphasised the need for truth and justice, and for non-Aboriginal Australians to take responsibility for that history and this legacy it has created: “Government needs to be told the truth of how people got to there. They need to admit to that and sort it out.”’ (Melbourne)13

Invasion was met with resistance.

Resistance

This is the time of the Frontier Wars, when massacres, disease and poison decimated First Nations, even as they fought a guerrilla war of resistance.14 The Tasmanian Genocide and the Black War waged by the colonists reveals the truth about this evil time. We acknowledge the 7 Dubbo ROM, p4: ‘Delegates spoke of the need to acknowledge the illegality of everything done since colonization, the first act aggression on first contact, the extreme cruelty and violence of the government, and the impact of the forced removals.’

8 Torres Strait ROM, p2.

9 Darwin ROM, p2.

10 Sydney ROM, p3: ‘Some spoke about the possibility of having a “La Perouse” statement, that reflected the impact of

colonisation on that community. “Dispossession started there.”’

11 Cairns ROM, p3: ‘The names of our people. We’ve got nothing that bears the names of our ancestors.’

12 Brisbane ROM, pp6–7.

13 Melbourne ROM, p2.

14 Perth ROM, p4: ‘A number of delegates expressed the importance of remembering and honouring First Nations

people who had fought in wars, including frontier wars, but had not been recognised.’

Ross River ROM, p1: ‘[We] recall the Coniston massacre, and the many other massacres throughout the region.

[We] remember the Aboriginal people involved in fighting in the frontier wars…If the government wants to speak

about ‘recognition’ they need to recognise the true history, recognise the frontier wars.’

Melbourne ROM, p1: ‘People spoke of the mass slaughter of Aboriginal people during colonisation and how

genocide had been committed on over 180 clans in Victoria.’

Torres Strait ROM, p1: The meeting ‘remembered the massacres of the Kaurareg nation, and that the hurt and pain

this had continues to this day, unresolved.’