Can we all Unite?

I LEARNED of our First Nations ancient culture, spirituality and respect for Country, many years after our arrival in Australia. These people esteemed and lived in harmony with the land that was an integral part of their spirituality, culture and community. “Everything is about balance – we never take more than we need to ensure the land continues to thrive in spite of us being there.” The First Nations culture and spirituality is tied up with country whence we come and where we return.” Deadly Website.

Over 65,000 years First People learned to adapt and live in in harmony with the changing climate. They collected grains to make flour for damper, trapped fish, dug tubers, hunted for what they needed to eat and to trade with other mobs. Needed tools were manufactured: Boomerangs (show a mastery of aerodynamics), spears, axes, stone tools, threads to sew clothing, shields, baskets, canoes, coolamons: containers for water, food, babies. Their literature was the sky and the earth which they read proficiently.

Some built their houses of stone, others of local natural materials suitable for the climate and their way of life. Budj Bim, Gunditjmara land in S-W Victoria, is on the UNESCO’s World Heritage register as one of the world’s most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems. [6] First People harvested eel, smoked and traded it. They built channels, weirs, dams. Remnants of stone houses are evidence that First People settled in villages. [7]

When traditional land was taken, thousands murdered, children stolen from families, people put on missions, adults and children imprisoned for small misdemeanours, the people’s culture and communities were broken. The consequences of dehumanised, powerless and broken communities can be seen in some First Nations people’s way of life today.

Can we return self-respect, self-determination, the power to take charge of their own lives to the First People with a YES for a voice? Halt the Thou Shalt. Allow the people to have agency over their own lives. Nothing else has worked, can we please try this different way? This is the way First People have asked for from their hearts after 10 years’ consultation with mobs from around Australia?

There is huge momentum with 30,000 active YES volunteers, John Farnham and others to back us. We can do this!

I quote Marsia Langton at the Press Club on 5/09/23, “I urge Australians who are as yet to make up their minds… In this referendum, there are only two options: a ‘Yes’ vote that delivers recognition through a voice and all the hope and healing it represents or a ‘No’ vote which binds us all closely – all of us – to a broken status quo.”

I wholeheartedly encourage all to vote YES to enable us to unite with equivalent life outcomes, help close the gaping gaps, return self-determination to the First People of Australia.

Felicia Di Stefano