On the weekend I attended an event presented by NORPA in association with the Byron Writers Festival at Brunswick Picture House, Bunjalung Nghari-Indigenise, meaning story gathering.
This is where four Bundjalung writers are set a challenge, to write a piece for sharing in a reading. The topic set was to reflect on their experiences of ‘Living with Occupation’. A beautiful form of ‘truth-telling’, the stories had various subjects but all a common theme. The pain of the Aboriginal voice not being heard.
I came away feeling fiercely impassioned about the importance of the ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum and also inspired to stop and contemplate what I would write if set the topic, ‘living as an occupier’. And I don’t mean in a landowner/rental sense, but as part of the whole non-indigenous population of Australia. Every one of us descends from those who came from elsewhere. This is a question we can all pause to reflect on.
Usually when discussions of ‘occupied territories’ are spoken about it is in the Palestinian/Israeli context, but Australia too is guilty of occupation. Crimes have been committed, suffering inflicted, intergenerational trauma created, injustice, physical and emotional health damaged. We are all complicit in not only the damage to the First Nations peoples of this country, but the ravaging of its natural resources.
This year we are being asked to recognise in the Australian Constitution, our nation’s most important legal document, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of this country. This isn’t an insertion of a racial clause – that already exists, the Constitution currently includes provisions to make discriminatory laws based on race.
Voting ‘Yes’ is accepting that we need to stop subjugating the original inhabitants of this country and let them be heard. Anyone who continues to crawl down rabbit holes to justify their reasons to vote ‘No’, anyone who thinks their white opinion is threatened by listening, anyone who truly thinks that everything is totally fine with the lives of the Indigenous people of this country and listening to their plea for a recognition with a Voice in the Constitution will threaten them, needs to do some deep soul searching.
It is said that voting ‘No’ doesn’t mean you are racist, but just know that all the racists will be voting ‘No’ – we are judged by the company we keep.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
