British colonists massacred Australia’s indigenous population in Victoria, found in a historic tribal-dinner investigation.
The Yooroque Justice Commission found that in the early 1830s, after the state colonial, the local indigenous population was reduced to three quarters in 20 years.
Its report included 100 recommendations for the “prevention” loss due to “invasion and business” – although many of the authors disagree with the unspecified “major conclusions”.
The Commission was established in 2021 as Australia’s first formal “true-speaking” investigation, and was tasked to investigate the past and ongoing “systemic injustice” by indigenous people in the state.
It is part of a comprehensive national push for Australia to engage in a harmonious process with tribal and Torres Strait Islander people, which community leaders say that the history, treaty-building, and the first nation of the country should be questioned as maximum political.
Conducted over the years, the Yoorok Justice Commission gave the tribal and Torres Strait Islander people formally an opportunity to share their stories and experiences.
A brief of the Commission covered a wide gamut of issues including land and water rights, cultural violations, murder and genocide, health, education and housing.
The report found that since 1834, “mass killing, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguistic, cultural eradication, environmental decline, child removal”, as well as assimilation contributed to Victoria’s indigenous community’s “close physical destruction”.
By 1851, the population ranged from 60,000 to 15,000.
“It was a massacre,” the report states.
The report, which was attracted to more than two months of public hearing and over 1,300 submissions, called for “prevention” to accept a series of human rights violations, including revaluation.
It was an important overhaul of the education system to include more inputs from indigenous people in other recommendations, and the Digars land was excluded from a scheme gifted for tribal soldiers serving during the World War and returning from the battlefields.
On the state’s health system, the report found that racism was “spatial” and called for more money for indigenous health services and policies to get more tribal employees in the system.
Three of the five commissioners – Su -Oni Hunter, Maggi Walter and Anthony North – “did not approve of the inclusion of major findings in the final report”, although no further details were provided.
In response to the report, Victoria’s Labor Government said it would carefully consider the findings “carefully”, Premier Jacinta Alan said that they “throw light on the difficult truth”.
Jill Galagher, the head of the peak body of Victoria for tribal health and good, said the massacre was “undisputed”.
“We do not survive anyone today for these atrocities,” he told ABC, “but it is the responsibility of those of us today to accept that truth – and all Victorians should accept, identify and harmonize with these factual conclusions today.”
The Commission’s report is the first of its kind in Australia, although similar inquiry is being made in other states and regions, which is with a different degree of progress, on the basis of which the party is in the government.
For example, in Queensland, a new liberal-national government was canceled after the Labor Government was replaced by the Labor Government.
In recent years, national dialogue has inspired the hot debate on how to recognize the traditional owners of Australia at all levels of governments.
In October 2023, Australians voted against a historic referendum, which rejected the change in the Constitution, which created a tribal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, which was a national body for indigenous people to advise on laws.
