In the coming weeks, legislation for Australia’s first Treaty – between the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Victorian Government – will be introduced to the Victorian Parliament.
This is a historic and hard-won moment. One that builds on over 200 years of First Nations advocacy, led with strength, patience and generosity by Aboriginal leaders across this state. Like many Victorians, I support Treaty – because I believe in truth-telling, in justice, and in creating a better future together.
To secure Treaty long term, it needs support from across Parliament – including from the State Opposition.
That’s why I wrote a letter to Opposition Leader Brad Battin. I wanted to share my own story and express my support for Treaty – and now, I’m sharing it here in the hope it encourages you to do the same.
Your message doesn’t need to be as personal as mine – though adding a personal touch can really make a difference. Our friends at the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria have drafted a letter to help you get started, and you’re more than welcome to use and personalise it.
I hope you enjoy my story and letter shared below. Please take the time to write your own letter to Opposition Leader Brad Battin, and together let’s stand with First Peoples on the journey to Treaty.
SEND A LETTER TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR TREATY
Dear Mr. Battin,
I want to share with you my own story and why I am a supporter of Treaty for all Victorians.
It was 1948 when my Grandpa Juozas was finally freed from a concentration camp in Germany. After being marched away from his family home by Nazi’s at age 17 and surviving 4 years of horrors, abuse and starvation, his luck would finally turn. Faced with the reality that returning home to Soviet occupied Lithuania was a death sentence, he was offered a chance to make a new life, in a new place.
So, thanks to the desire for cheap, directable labour to shovel coal and fire the furnace of a rising “young” nation, and the White Australia Policy, my Grandpa had won a lucky ticket to Australia and proceeded to join the workforce at the Yallourn coal mine.
He was tall, tanned, blonde hair and blue eyes – he could have walked off a Baywatch set. He was distinctly Baltic, but white enough to “keep Australia British”. So, he anglicised his name to Josef, fell in love and raised his four kids as little Aussies, grateful for this opportunity to start a new life here in Victoria.
My Grandpa didn’t need a letter of permission to leave town, get married or drive a car. He was free. And he was able to work hard and eventually buy land and build his own modest but comfortable home. This meant that his children, and theirs, were well placed to do the same.
But this was not the same reality being lived by the people of this new land, the people whose lives, livlihoods and relationships were still tightly controlled by the state, and whose lands we now occupied.
Because what was well enough hidden, or well enough ignored, jutting out of coastal lands and bush not too far away, were the concentration camps of corrugated iron and church steeples – rations of flour, sugar and tea. That same White Australia policy that offered my Grandpa the ability to share joy with his family in safety and dignity, was simultaneously tearing small children from the arms of their loving families, and with meticulous intent slicing each thread of culture and identity.
In 1991, the world rejoiced with Lithuania – finally independence was won. A sovereign nation, free again to teach their own language and history in schools, and the people could take control of their own lives, land and affairs.
The parallels are deeply unsettling, when there exists still today, such inequality – built on these uneven foundations – under the false promise of a fair go for everyone. We need only to compare markers of health, financial security, life expectancy and incarceration to know all is not well here in the lucky country.
Underfoot, the foundations are rotted. Our rights, as settlers, in the legal and moral sense, to own, farm, mine and extract wealth from these lands and waters, does not and has never existed. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Treaty is a chance to address these wrong-doings and make right the legacy of inequality that exists today. To enable the people of this land to make decisions on their own country and affairs and have the resources to do so effectively.
And while this act of making Australia a more equal place for all of us to thrive, is in and of itself honorable and worthy of striving for, Treaty also offers us all, and especially those of us who’s families come from other shores something more subtle.
It offers a remedy to the ill ease that is baked deeply into our cultural psyche. We are offered a chance to come into right relationship and co-create a vision, and plans, to address the many challenges we face together as Victorians.
Treaty is a profound and generous offering from the First People, the people of the many Nations that make up this land. Strong, determined leaders who, on the shoulders of their own grandparents, continue to shine a light forward with, wisdom, anan open hand and open hearts.
Treaty is a chance for us to move forward and realise the hope that we all have deep inside – the longing for our children to live in harmony with one another.
I call on you, Mr. Battin, along with your colleagues in the State Opposition to assess the bill that comes before you on its merits and support Treaty that will allow Victorians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to walk forward together.
I look forward to hearing a response from you on this matter.
Yours sincerely,
Hayley Sestokas