Dear National Sorry Day Committee

Due to an illness, I apologise for not being able to meet with you and talk with you today. I like all of us wear many hats, and have many portfolios in our struggle for truth, justice and healing for us as Indigenous Australians.

I think we would all agree the continued denial and lack of resources has a tremendous impact on our physical and mental well being.

On behalf of the Ngarrindjeri People I thank you all for being willing to hear this letter. I am writing about how I see what has been happening in South Australia for the victims of the wrongful and forceful removal from our families.

I regret not being able to secure the cultural display panels for display at this conference. The Ngarrindjeri successfully pursued them with the State government through the Premier’s Department in South Australia, and they show the history of our lands and waters (taking the land, stealing the children) from the beginning of the English invasion to where we are today, and include the direct political action our Elders took to stop this by their 1923 petition to the Governor. This is our true history.

So we the Ngarrindjeri have a long recorded history of speaking out against this wrongful forced removal and destruction of our traditional family life and our unique and independent community life style.

It is 82 years on the Public Record on December the 21st this year when three of our Ambassador ancestors took our Ngarrindjeri Petition to the Governor to overturn the White Parliament’s authority to empower its white Government to take our children away. Our Embassy happened 50 years before our Tent Embassy started in Canberra outside the White Parliament.

Therefore our experience in suffering which we share with all our Brothers and Sisters throughout Australia includes a long standing political direction from our Elders (our old people – Grandmothers and Grandfathers, and their Grandmothers and Grandfathers), which was acted upon by our mothers and fathers who were losing their children 85 years ago, and which I want to share with you today.

I don’t believe there has been enough sharing and caring carried out in the way that our old people did it and would want us to do it:
E.g. we must follow the examples of coming together and organising together to speak out together and to share each others pain and suffering together and confront the present White Australian Westminster System of Government because they will not speak out about any of this, through the Crown in the Governors and Governor General for the Queen, or in the Parliaments, in the courts or by the bureaucrats in executive Government, who have stone hearts, who are blind because they refuse to see, who are deaf because they will not hear, and who are dumb because they will not speak out about our pain and suffering or against the injustice we suffer as a result, and in that order.

I say this about what has been happening with the authority of this experience from protesting as our elders did and following their lines of approaching Government.

I spoke out about these directions to follow in Adelaide in 1998 to Sir Ronald Wilson and some 600 white people in Reconciliation, and from January 2000 we have put this line from our Old People into practice in our 65 Candle Light Walks around Government House coming up in October.

By doing this we have taken our pain and suffering into the open for all, or any others, to join in and work together with us, which can’t happen behind closed doors when those affected or those who want to help cannot participate.

We can to a degree sort of feel or understand what pain, suffering and confusion that our removed brothers and sisters and our families are going through. Maybe we could better direct our actions on the three fronts that we have been following to get some results for us before its too late.
Before our loved ones all die and go to their graves with no true justice for what the White system has done to them and our families.

Front number one: continue to organise the appropriate cultural types of gatherings for our people - those of us who were removed and our families who are affected, which have been going on but need to be strengthened.
E.g., more activities on our lands and waters rather than in the cities, with more involvement of our elders so they can speak about and teach our heritage and culture to our people to rekindle and build up our strength and identity from the lands and waters from where we were taken. This is a good practice that we have been doing at Camp Coorong for a long time now.

Front number two: to work towards ways of bringing together all parties who are involved and working on Indigenous issues for the betterment of Indigenous people in Australia – eg Stolen Generations Committees, Human Rights Committees, and Reconciliation Committees, and somehow come together to gather strength so we can all pull together and become one strong force to be reckoned with.

We need to build a vehicle that clearly identifies the purposes for which it will be used and that it is there for all to share in and care together about – eg those of us who were removed, our families, and our supporters who acknowledge and understand and wish to work with us for proper justice.

The vehicle must be a large vehicle, with our message written in clear bold wording, which gives the clear idea to those of us who were removed, our families and our supporters, what we are doing and where we are going. At the moment we have all been driving around in individual small vehicles with small messages in small print, and not being able to connect. This reminds me of the white man’s ways of living separately in their own square house in their own square block of land. This is not our Aboriginal way.

Front number three: we must continue to apply pressure, by using this larger vehicle against the forces in this country who are denying us the right for truth, justice, compensation through reparations, and true Reconciliation, both in the government and the private sectors of the country – eg the media, mining interests, rural and farmers bodies, and those in these institutions and their like who oppose this approach because it is seen as a threat to their power and lifestyles.

Ours in truth, justice and healing
Tom Trevorrow
Chairperson/Manager
Camp Coorong Race Relations & Cultural Education Centre

1 September 2005

(Feel free to circulate the additional background information I have enclosed on our 1923 Ngarrindjeri petition, and we hope the panels about it will be able to be sent with your support all around Australia to all our people – a small booklet will be created from the panels and will be made available to the victims, families and supporters in the wider community for everyone to read and circulate to those who need to learn about what has been done.)