With Sorry Day coming up, this time of year is a time when we see people starting to reflect on the past treatment of Aboriginal people and the impact of removal policies that created the Stolen Generations. People come together to offer acknowledgement and support to Aboriginal communities who live with the ongoing trauma of the past.
 
With it comes a barrage of ignorant opinions about how we just need to get over it. The failure to recognise why we say sorry is not a new thing. Nor is it novel that people fail to see the healing that comes with acknowledgement and fail to look beyond the mainstream narrative about Aboriginal people to see the intergenerational trauma we are dealing with. Each year this becomes more frustrating.
 
There is an increasing number of Aboriginal people sharing their stories, shining a light on truth and working to close the knowledge gap so that people can start to understand why sorry is so important.
 
I have shared before about my Aunt who suffered dementia and relived the removal of her children over and over and over again. I will never forget the first time I watched her go through that experience. I felt nausea and a knot in my stomach at the realisation of what was happening and that she could not escape it. Not that day, not ever.
 
As she made me hide in the cupboard to protect me from being taken, I knew that I was safe, that there was no risk to me.
 
As she told me to hide under the bed, I was focussed on soothing her, not worried about what might happen to me next.
 
As she told me she loved me like she would never get to tell me again, I knew that it would not be the last time.
 
But for her, in those moments, there was not that relief. Her fears were real. She was reliving the worst days of her life, the trauma fresh and never ending.
 
For her children, watching her relive this experience was undoubtedly painful as they not only felt their mother’s trauma but also their own. There was no reassurance for them when they were taken. They did not know what would happen to them. They did not know when, or if, they would see their mother again. They could not still their fears with the knowledge that it would be ok because they didn’t know that it would be. None of the stolen generations could. And it wasn’t ok.
 
As we are left with the job of healing, trying to connect all that was lost, we aren’t asking you to take personal responsibility for the past, we are asking you to show empathy and understanding as you acknowledge our story and the journey we are forced to travel.
 
Survivors of the Stolen Generations and their families navigate the impact of those past policies daily. It may not be reliving the day as my aunt was forced to do but the trauma is evident and the healing far from done. As people struggle with the loss of connection, loss of culture and loss of identity that occurred because they or someone in their family was stolen, we need Australia to see that the acknowledgement of the trauma, suffering and loss that comes with Sorry is an important part of that healing.
 
This year as you reflect on Sorry Day and you see the inevitable increase in racism, encourage people to get educated, raise awareness about the true history of Australia and the work Aboriginal people are doing to heal. 

When I was in my first year of Uni I found myself in a conversation about Aboriginal people and all the things wrong with them. It was a conversation fuelled by misconceptions and stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream media. I wondered if anyone present had actually ever met an Aboriginal person. It was awkward. When should I speak up and tell them that the people they were talking about were my people? That I was one of these Aboriginal people they spoke so negatively about. My opportunity came when one of the group stated that he had never met “a good one”.
 
‘What about me?’ I said.
 
The group stared back at me, unsure what to say. They were quiet for a minute, clearly confused and not really sure what to think. My awkwardness became theirs as they realised that they had been caught in their racism, not that they would identify it as that. Finally, one of them spoke “Are you really Aboriginal? You don’t look it”.
 
Now this is a conversation I had had a thousand times, and have had a million more times since. I explained that Aboriginal people are diverse, not cookie cut outs of the stereotypical black person that mainstream media would have the world believe and it inevitably leads to the person declaring that I am somehow different, because I don’t meet their stereotype of an Aboriginal person – that somehow by doing well I have overcome the deficit that is associated with being Aboriginal. It is a conversation that most Aboriginal people are well versed in.
 
The deficit perception, the view that Aboriginal people are not capable, is something that still persists and Aboriginal people are still forced to prove themselves when other people don’t have to. Even when we have done something that shows we are capable, a question lingers about how we manage to achieve it. The fact that we achieved something overshadows what we have actually done and many people think we were only able to achieve because of a loop hole or handout.
 
As children, people often don’t expect us to achieve much. Our kids are often not pushed to their full potential because it is assumed that we are excelling just by scraping by. We go to Uni and people assume we got there on a hand-out, a mystical free pass. As adults many of us find ourselves in jobs where we are not utilised to our full potential.
 
I believe that the deficit perception is left over from the years when Government policy portrayed us as inferior in order to justify the way it treated us. They under-estimated our abilities and worth then and that has unfortunately continued and become part of the unconscious bias against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that permeates today’s world.
 
This year I would like to actively and directly start to change the deficit perception. If you are a teacher, I encourage you to get to know your Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, see their strengths and let them know you see their potential and expect them to achieve it. Encourage and support them to do this – work with them and their community to make sure they don’t get lost in the assumption that good enough is all they can achieve. Opportunity rather than ability is the barrier we face.
 
If you are an employer, talk to your Aboriginal staff – do they feel you are utilising their skills as well as you can be? Are there growth opportunities they would like to undertake?
 
This year, Wingaru will be sharing the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who counter the deficit perception. Whose everyday life shows that our First Nations people are strong, determined and capable. That the deficit perception is the biggest myth of all.

​We often hear the phrase “Australia’s dark past” in reference to unpleasant aspects of post-colonial history in this country. It includes the deaths of Aboriginal People through disease spread by Europeans; the injuries and deaths caused by conflicts between the expanding colony and the traditional owners; Indigenous incarceration at a rate far higher than their proportion of the population; the theft of wages for forced work and the stealing of children from their families in the pursuit of assimilation.

The conflicts between the European invaders and Traditional Custodians are commonly referred to as the “Frontier Wars”. It is another term used to describe conflict between the European invaders and the traditional owners and conjures a picture of frontiers the world over where territories have been disputed and fought for. 

The advanced weaponry of the European invaders usually saw a higher number of fatalities on the Aboriginal side of the conflicts. 

Many of these conflicts have now been declared “massacres”. The most heinous of these aren’t adequately described by the term “Frontier War”. They were the massacres that went beyond disputes over property or territory and saw white law enforcers exceed their legal duty and undertake murders of innocent, unarmed Aboriginal People. And while this occurred outside the limits of Australian law, the white perpetrators were rarely brought to justice.

It is hard to imagine now that massacres of Aboriginal families could have been officially sanctioned but that was the case less than a century ago near Coniston in Central Australia.

Coniston was a cattle station in Central Australia. 1928 was a time of severe drought which meant many people - Anmatyerr mob, Kaytetje and Warlpiri - migrated to an area near the cattle property known for water springs (Yaruku and Yurrkuru).

Randall Stafford, a pastoralist, had built Coniston Station and claimed the Yurrkuru spring as part of his land. The drought in 1928 had caused him to sell his cattle and lay off his worker, Fred Brooks. Brooks set up his camp next to Yurrkuru and was the first white man that many of the new arrivals to the soakage had ever seen.

But one of the men who arrived, an Aboriginal man known as Bullfrog, was familiar with white people and keen for some tobacco. He sent his wife, Napurrurla, to the white man’s tent to ask for tobacco. Brooks made her do jobs to earn the tobacco and when she didn’t return it was believed that Bullfrog had lost his promised wife to the white man. He was so angry he went to Brooks’ tent and killed him. He quickly buried the body and fled the area.

After Brooks’ body was found the police in Alice Springs sent mounted Constable George Murray (who was also Protector of Aborigines) to Coniston Station. He had orders to find who murdered Fred Brooks, and bring them into town so he put together a posse of station workers to help him.

They found a group of Aboriginal people near the waterhole and opened fire. A few escaped to the hills but everyone else was shot and killed. Murray was supposed to question witnesses and bring suspects into Alice Springs. But, unable to find Bullfrog, he undertook a series of reprisals killing between 14 August and 18 October. Over 60 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed over the following months. 

This massacre was illegal by Australian law but the perpetrators were never charged and their actions were considered to be in “self-defence”. This August we remember the fallen at Coniston. Reflecting on one tragedy helps to personalise the staggering statistic that nearly 250 massacres occurred in Australia between 1788 and 1930!

A project to map the locations and scale of massacres across Australia is being undertaken by the University of Newcastle. You can view the results online at: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

The Guardian also has used the same data to create a map of sites where violence occurred on the Australian frontier: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2019/mar/04/massacre-map-australia-the-killing-times-frontier-wars
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These tools can help to educate all Australians about the truth of the land we now share. We need to confront this dark past in order to make a better future.

​Every time I hear someone say that racism is not a problem in Australia I am surprised because racism is an everyday factor in the lives of Aboriginal people. Regardless of our age, skin colour and social status we are disadvantaged every day due to attitudes and actions based on our Aboriginality.  And I am genuinely surprised that people cannot see it. How do they miss it?
 
You need look no further than social media to see this. Read any post that relates to an Aboriginal person and you will see the plethora of racist comments based on myth, bias and ignorance. A white person dies and the world expresses sympathy and support for the family in an outpouring of grief. An Aboriginal person dies and the family is instantly judged as incompetent, criminal and disrespectful. The ignorant comments come thick and fast.  

The recent comments on the death of the lads from Townsville is an example of this. It was instantly assumed they died committing a crime (that later reports revealed to be committed by a white man) and people felt it appropriate to write comments that are nothing short of disgusting, adding to the stress, trauma and loss a family is already facing. Why is the loss of an Aboriginal life not given the same respect as the non-Aboriginal person?
 
Australia Day is another example of the racism that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face daily. The belief that we do nothing but drink, wait for handouts and do nothing to better our lives feeds the hate that is directed towards us. Reading the comments is exhausting but I couldn’t look away because our country cannot go on the way it is. We need to find a solution and therefore need to understand where the hate comes from. Racism is complicated and I am not suggesting that the solution is simple but reading the comments it was very clear that most of the hate comes from misinformation and ignorance that continues to be spread due to fear. We can address this through education.
 
The reality is this – Australia was invaded and the country stolen from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People who despite the atrocities committed against them have maintained a connection to land. Acknowledging this takes nothing away from non-Aboriginal people. No one is asking them to pay for the crimes of the past, but acknowledging that the past happened and had a lasting impact is important.
 
Educating all Australians will help address the misconceptions feeding racism. We need to start there.
 
Closing the Gap Day is next week and it is a great opportunity to start a conversation about Aboriginal disadvantage to inform an understanding about the issues impacting on Aboriginal people and what we can all do to start to address the gap. We had a great response to our Closing the Gap Activity last year so I have attached it again in case you would like to revisit.

NAIDOC Week is fast approaching and Aboriginal communities are buzzing with excitement about the opportunity to come together and celebrate our culture and recognise the work people in our communities are doing to promote, protect and preserve our culture. 
 
Each year our celebrations seem to get bigger. It is a busy week and I love it! 
 
It is an opportunity to acknowledge the work people have been doing, check out community initiatives and come together to celebrate our people. It is about connecting and reconnecting with people. It is about pride. It is about looking around and seeing all the great things our communities are doing and taking a moment to breathe that in, appreciate who we are and our place in the world. It is a time when, just for a moment, we can move the focus from the negativity and struggles that our people face day in and day out and move the attention to all the great things we are doing to overcome the adversity. 
 
It is an opportunity to show the wider community our resilience and the great things we have achieved because, let’s be honest, our great work is often lost in the overwhelming negative voice of mainstream media and misinformed public opinion. And it is an opportunity to invite non-Aboriginal communities into our world, to experience some culture and witness firsthand the deadly people we are. 
 
For schools, NAIDOC provides a great platform to introduce students to Aboriginal people, issues and education. It is an important week for all students and offers lessons in respect, self-respect, leadership and acceptance as well as Aboriginal education. 
 
For some students, NAIDOC is the only exposure they get, the only opportunity to see through the misconceptions that permeate Australian society. It is an opportunity for Aboriginal students to stand tall and be proud of who they are and show their friends and peers the great things about being Aboriginal. It was at school, many years ago now, that NAIDOC became a key date on my calendar. I loved the activities and the fact that my parents and community came to school. The sports days, the BBQs, the art projects, the performances and the interest and respect that non-Aboriginal students showed that week. 
 
NAIDOC will look different for every school – the most important thing is to enjoy your celebrations! We'd love to see your pictures and hear about your activities so please share on our social media. 

Download our free NAIDOC poster and colouring sheets below. ​

​This week is Reconciliation Week. Reconciliation means acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the First Peoples of this land, and recognising the dispossession, persecution and oppression they have suffered as a result of Australia’s colonisation.
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Reconciliation involves developing our understanding of how this history of violence and oppression continues to shape contemporary Australian society and taking steps to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures are treated with dignity and respect at all times.

For reconciliation to be achieved there needs to be a series of real, practical outcomes in relation to the systemic disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This involves creating awareness and real education opportunities for all Australians.

I have been a long time supporter of the NSW Reconciliation Council and the great work they do to inform, support and inspire reconciliation. One of the initiatives of the Council is the Schools Reconciliation Challenge. The Challenge is an annual art and writing competition for NSW school students in years 5 to 9. It gives young people across the state the opportunity to learn about and engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories and reconciliation in an engaging and creative way.

The Challenge resonates with me because, as long time followers know, I believe that we need to focus on arming todays kids with the knowledge they need to create a better future for Australia. And this is exactly what the Schools Challenge does. It gives kids the space to explore concepts related to reconciliation and present their ideas about what reconciliation means to them.

Schools participating in the Challenge supporting with teaching resources and activities, giving teachers access to meaningful and culturally sensitive materials to foster respectful conversations around reconciliation.

Last year Wingaru started supporting the Challenge and winners of the Primary School categories were awarded with 12 month subscriptions to the Wingaru Kids Platform. We are excited to be able to provide these prizes again this year.

I encourage every NSW school to consider entering the Challenge. It is a great opportunity for kids to explore reconciliation concepts and share their views with the world. The Reconciliation Council hosts an event each year to announce winners and launch a travelling exhibition of the entries. Students works are professionally presented and on display for the public. There is something magical about watching the excitement of students as they discover their work on the walls!

Dates of the touring exhibition will be published on the Reconciliation Council’s website when they are available. I highly recommend a visit!

Details of the Challenge including key dates and information for this years competition and details of last years entries can be found on the NSW Reconciliation Council’s website at http://www.nswreconciliation.org.au/

​This post may be upsetting for some readers.
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Today is the anniversary of what has become known as the Appin Massacre.
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On 17 April 1816, Aboriginal men, women and children were murdered after Governor Lachlan Macquarie dispatched soldiers to ‘rid the land of troublesome blacks’.

The victims were rounded up and forced over a cliff. Others were shot as they attempted to flee. The bodies of victims were hung in trees as a warning to the Aboriginal community. This was a common practice of the time.

Fourteen people are officially recorded as being killed during the attack, however reports from the night indicate that the death toll is much higher. Those killed were from the Dharawal and Gandangara Peoples.

The massacre occurred as part of a coordinated effort by Governor Macquarie to round up Aboriginal People in the area following conflict between the local Aboriginal People and the settlers in the area. Three regiments were sent out and they searched the area with deadly intent.

Rounding up and murdering Aboriginal people was not rare as the Government of the day and the settlers sought land and control. The Appin Massacre is just one example of the atrocities committed against Aboriginal People. Innocent men, women and children were hunted along with those who were accused of crimes against the new Colony. It is a part of Australia’s history that is often forgotten and many Australians are not aware of these events, nor the lasting impact this treatment has had on Aboriginal communities. Awareness and a shared understanding is part of healing.

We lost people. We lost language. We lost culture. We lost.

​Why do people with a 230 year ancestry get to tell me, with a 100, 000+ year one, that they are "over" the change the date debate because they are sick of things being changed to suit Aboriginal people. Welcome to the life Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people felt since 1788.
 
CHANGE THE DATE !!!
 
Because none, not one of us alive today are responsible for what happened on the beach at Gallipoli either but ANZAC Day is always, and rightfully, commemorated with a heartfelt, respectful and meaningful ceremony where we honor and acknowledge what so many soldiers died and fought for.

There are 360 other days to choose from, many that are relevant to the post 1788 history of this country.

The tradition of having Australia Day as a National holiday on 26th January is a recent one. Not until 1935 did all the Australian States and Territories use that terminology to mark that date. Not until 1984 did contemporary Australia Day emerge. Not until 1994 was it celebrated on 26 January.

To those who make statements like that to my mob especially, but all others as well, I say this. If Australia day had always been this date, you would have some merit to your argument but it hasn't, whereas Jan 26th has always represented tragedy and trauma for Aboriginal people.
Australia Day July 30th 1915 initiated to actually raise money for WW1, July 28th 1916, July 27th 1917, even Aug 1917, July 1918 etc etc. The date varied and it was not even always Australia Day. It was First Landing Day, Foundation Day, Anniversary Day and was celebrated mostly in NSW as other States and Territories had their own dates.

So why can everyone be so patriotic about a date that is not steeped in tradition or true history but once again disrespect a day that for First Nation Peoples represents a day which cannot be changed for us.

Someone made a conscious decision to hold the day on Jan 26th, a day that decimated the Gadigal people, then other Dharug clans before annihilating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and Culture all over this country.

I guess most only remember Australia Day being Jan 26th when the Nation comes together to celebrate or let’s be honest, for most, drink and get a Public holiday. Be honest at least folks. Are you saving a longstanding tradition or just not willing to acknowledge the inappropriateness because you would have to truly acknowledge people benefit today off the loss of so many. Keeping those heads buried in the sand and feigning patriotism as an excuse is a much easier moral conscience for people to live in I guess.
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Be educated about the meaning behind, and history of, your supposed sacred day because rest assured my mob are.

Julie Jones (Webb) is a proud Dharug woman, working everyday to share culture and foster respect for Aboriginal Australia amongst communities. You can follow Julie's story on the Gumadah Byalla Spirits Talking facebook page.