Words in Action | Yoorrook’s bold steps towards truth and justice

This 2021 report followed the Victorian First Peoples’ Assembly decision to work with the Victorian Government to establish a truth and justice process to “formally recognise historic wrongs and address ongoing injustices against First Peoples in Victoria”.

The report laid out how the assembly wants this truth and justice process to proceed.

As the report clearly states, “Truth and Treaties must go hand-in-hand.” Or, as Alice Pepper so clearly described it, you need to know where you have come from to know where you’re going.

This is the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

To gather information so we can all clearly see and understand where we have come from so we can craft a new future together.

Many of us know some of the history of this state. In school, we learnt about the Gold Rush, and we can see the evidence of the prosperity this brought to the colony in the grand Victorian buildings in Ballarat, Bendigo and Melbourne. We studied the opening up of the land through stories of the early explorers, such as Major Mitchell.

But this was a view of history through a certain lens — from the perspective of European colonists.

There was another lens — another view of this time — that of the First Peoples of this state.

This history was very different.

This history held much pain and loss, and the holding of these stories and this history was — and is — a huge load to carry.

A load carried by First Peoples.

It is the documenting of the complete history of Victoria that Yoorrook is charged to do.

To “… lay the evidence clear for all to see, as a foundation stone on the path to Treaties and self-determination”.

To ensure the previously unstated or unexamined side is included — the “in your face or hard to swallow” history.

To “set the tone for a new, inclusive and just future” for all Victorians.

So that this history and its truths become everyone’s history and truths.

After many submissions and after hearing many accounts of the impact of past and current child protection and criminal justice practices, Yoorrook’s For Justice report was released in September 2023.

It called on the Victorian Government to recognise the urgent need to tackle systemic injustices in the areas of child protection and criminal justice. The report made 46 recommendations.

The government responded to the report on April 3 this year.

Of the 46 recommendations, four were accepted, 24 have in-principle support and 15 are under consideration. But three recommendations — the immediate raising of the age of criminality to 14, changes to the Bail Act and those relating to detention — were rejected.

The Yoorrook commissioners, in responding to the government’s announcement, noted that their investigation “found both systems remain broken for First People and that the present-day failures of these systems are deeply rooted in the colonial foundations of the state”.

Commissioners expressed disappointment at the rejection of the three key criminal justice recommendations and the government’s request for more time to consider an overhaul of both the child protection and criminal justice systems, despite the urgency clearly outlined in the report.

“Given the weight of evidence presented throughout the inquiry, which included deeply personal accounts from First Peoples witnesses of suffering which many continue to experience every day, commissioners are disappointed by the government’s decision not to support three recommendations,” the commissioners said.

“Recommendations regarding the Bail Act and the minimum age of criminal responsibility and detention are crucial given the alarming over-incarceration of First Peoples adults and children and ongoing deaths in custody.

“These recommendations were not made lightly. They go to the heart of addressing ongoing injustice against First Peoples.”

In the meantime, Yoorrook has turned its focus on issues relating to land, sky and waters; health, housing and education; and economic prosperity as the next step in the truth-telling process. This report is due in 2025.

Framing this part of the investigation are the words: “First peoples have been caring for the country for thousands of generations. The history of Europeans coming to Victoria 200 years ago and taking First Peoples’ lands is one of wrongdoing and devastating loss. But it is also a story of First Peoples’ resistance, survival and ongoing connection to country.”

In Victoria, colonisation began in 1834 when a permanent settlement was established in Gunditjmara country — an area known as Portland.

The evidence presented at the Yoorrook hearings outlined the massacres, dispossession and violent theft of land, water and resources that followed from this settlement.

This included the deliberate exclusion of Traditional Owners from wealth from land-use revenue, including native-forest logging, grazing and mineral extraction.

In his personal submission, Yoorrook Commissioner Travis Lovett posed a defining question: “How can we build intergenerational wealth when we are continually shut out of the system?”

This went to the heart of the historical and ongoing deliberate systemic exclusion of First Peoples from land and the wealth generated from it.

It highlighted the long arc of connection of the arrival of Europeans to the present day lives of First Nations people.

“We can’t move forward until we reckon with this past. We all need to understand what happened when Europeans arrived and how this continues to impact on First Peoples,” Mr Lovett said.

And to do this requires courage, compassion, care and a determination to bring the truth to light.

It is the crucial, groundbreaking work of Yoorrook that is pivotal to this reckoning of the past to allow us to shape a different future.

We can all learn from Yoorrook’s courage and determination to forge this different future for our state of Victoria and the generosity in granting the opportunity for us all to walk this challenging path together.

As Mr Lovett summed up: “Everyone can play a part — by listening to the evidence; by sharing stories of injustice or strength; by getting behind the transformational change needed to end the injustice once and for all.”

To create an inclusive future based on truth and justice.

For all of us here in Victoria.

To find out more about the Yoorrook Justice Commission, go to https://yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au/

Follow the links on the page to the commission’s reports.