Yoorrook chair Professor Eleanor Bourke talks truth-telling and treaty ahead of hearings on land injustice, health, more

Victoria’s truth-telling chair has hinted at multiple treaties being struck as she called for more ‘public education about what did happen to Aboriginal people’ as a result of white settlement.

Chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission Eleanor Bourke ahead of the truth-telling body's new round of hearings. Picture: Tricia Rivera

Victoria’s truth-telling chairwoman has hinted at multiple treaties being struck across the state and claims some of the wariness and misinformation on treaty involves “a degree of racism” and “a degree of ignorance”.

In an interview with The Australian ahead of a new round of hearings, Yoorrook Justice Commission chairwoman Eleanor Bourke also called for more “public education about what did happen to Aboriginal people” as a result of white settlement.

She indicated that the defeat of last year’s voice to parliament and executive government referendum had demonstrated this and emphasised the need for more public education.

“What we’ve seen, what happened recently and last year, is that there’s a degree of racism, it’s a degree of ignorance,” Professor Bourke said.

“There’s a need, I would say, for public education about what did happen to Aboriginal people under legislation that caused us to be in the situation that we’re still in, and the losses that we had of language, land and aspects of our culture.”

Professor Bourke said the ­discussion of treaties could come across as vague as it had “never been on the table before”.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission is charting Victoria’s road map towards an Indigenous treaty and later this month opens its latest round of public hearings ­focusing on land justice, health, education, housing and economic outcomes.

The hearings will call on First Peoples, descendants of colonisers, senior bureaucrats, ministers and Premier Jacinta Allan.

The evidence given will help form recommendations in the commission’s final reform ­report to be handed to the First People’s Assembly, which is in charge of negotiating a treaty with the state government, in June next year.

“I think the plan for First Peoples (Assembly) is to do a statewide treaty, which is one treaty, but there is the potential for traditional owners to do treaties around their space, where there are specific things to them,” the Wergaia/Wamba Wamba elder said.

Yoorrook Justice Commission chair Eleanor Bourke. Picture: Tricia Rivera

“The statewide treaty is going to be interesting because it’ll be up to the elected body to be saying what’s in it … whereas individual treaties where people are in spaces and on their country in their original lands, there’ll be other expectations.

“Some of those groups will have to decide what it is they want, whether it’s about schooling, whether it’s about health, whether it’s about an education program, whether it’s about ­bilingual signs in Victoria with Aboriginal place names. It’s quite open, really.”

The Victorian government has allocated a $44.4m budget to Yoorrook.

The hearings are slated to begin on March 25 and are ­expected to run for a number of weeks.