Indigenous elders tell inquiry of ongoing suffering

The Yoorrook Justice Commission has handed down its interim report after it was first announced in May last year.

Commissioners of the Yoorrook Justice Commission (left to right): professor Kevin Bell QC, professor Maggie Walter, chair professor Eleanor Bourke, Dr Wayne Atkinson and Sue-Anne Hunter.

Discriminatory policies resulting in the Stolen Generations, massacres and frontier wars continue to negatively affect Indigenous people, an Australian-first ­inquiry has found.

Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission handed down its ­interim report on Monday, with two recommendations, including that the deadline for a final report be extended and that the government change the way it stored information handled by the commission.

Following yarning circles and hearings with elders from across the state, commission chair Eleanor Bourke said Indigenous people continue to suffer in Victoria.

“Each of the some 200 elders we spoke to pointed to the ongoing effects of discriminatory policies and racist beliefs, including those that led to the Stolen Generations, policies and beliefs that have not only affected them, but continue to affect their children and grandchildren,” she said.

Victoria’s Treaty and First Peoples Minister, Gabrielle Williams, said the commission’s work would play an important role “in paving the way for treaty and a fairer, more just future for all Victorians”.

Opposition Aboriginal affairs spokesman and Nationals leader Peter Walsh said the commission’s work must “go hand-in-hand with meaningful action on Closing the Gap targets”.

“While the Andrews Labor government is engaging in ­advancing treaty and the truth-telling inquiry, they have not clearly articulated how they intend to meet Victoria’s other ­existing commitments,” he said.

Yoorrook hearings had been delayed due to Covid-19 lockdowns last year, but the commission released its report as planned in July.

The commission was originally to hand down its final recommendations in 2024 to support the state’s treaty process – for which negotiations are due to start next year – but the commission has asked for a two-year extension due to the “highly complex” nature of establishing the panel, Professor Bourke said.

“Yoorrook’s mandate spans more than 200 years of historic and ongoing injustices. Time is needed to ensure the best process, right for community, so that we can create a more complete public record for all,” she said.

The report categorised findings from yarning circles into 11 themes including dispossession, political exclusion and economic marginalisation.

Elder Uncle Johnny Lovett told the commission: “I believe that in Victoria, the government truly wanted to wipe out the ­Aboriginal people to the point where there would be no knowledge of them.

“The Victorian government were so intent on dispersing ­Aboriginal people, and when they used the word dispersing, it also meant killing and massacring them,.”

The commission is also investigating the repercussions from the Stolen Generations.

“Elders told the commissioners that the welfare of their families and communities is their priority. Specifically, Elders strongly asked Yoorrook to stop the government taking children from their families,” the report read.

“Some yarning circle participants also spoke of being ­descendants of child survivors of massacres. They described that across the state, settlers used massacres as part of invasion and occupation, and they often kept one or two young boys alive and ‘adopted’ them into the settler families.”

The commission has agreed to supply a second report early next year.