In 2020 we chose the name Gamilaraay Voices for a project which documented the opinions from a range of Gamilaraay people linked to the Winanga-Li Aboriginal Child and Family Centre where I work in New South Wales. People spoke about the loss, survival and renewal of their language.
Last month the “Voice referendum” in Australia asked:
“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
During the campaign the Chief Executive Officer of Winanga-Li wrote a piece which linked to our language programme:
Yaama maliyaa, hello friends
In the heart of Gamilaraay country, we, at Winanga-Li, walk alongside many voices, stories, and legacies. We acknowledge the rich tapestry of our nation and the many individuals who hold its stories.
We believe in the importance of every voice being heard, and in that spirit, we stand in firm support of the proposed constitutional recognition of the First Peoples of Australia and the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. This momentous proposal paves the way for a broader dialogue and a deeper understanding between the First Peoples and the wider Australian community.
The proposed Voice offers a beacon of hope for an inclusive platform where all our stories, concerns, and aspirations can be shared and acknowledged at the highest echelons of Australian governance.
In our cherished Gamilaraay language, ‘Yawu’ means ‘Yes’. As individuals who love, live, and breathe the essence of this land, we resonate with this affirmation. We hope that our fellow Australians, both from within and outside the Gamilaraay nation, will join in saying ‘Yawu’ to this historic step.
Let’s say ‘Yawu’ to recognition, ‘Yawu’ to inclusivity, and ‘Yawu’ to a shared future.
– Wayne Griffiths
Those beautiful and hopeful words had no power against a ‘No’ campaign based on fear, division, racism and lies. When the referendum was defeated*, my colleagues were disappointed to see how low the ‘Yes’ vote had been in our Parkes electorate, at 21.2% overall. And for me even more depressing was to see that in the Queensland electorate of Maranoa, the area where my great-grandmother was born, the ‘Yes’ vote was the lowest in the country – at only 15.4%.
It is easy for those of us whose forebears were part of the settlement of Queensland to overlook the ongoing impact on the local people whose families had been living there for forty? fifty? sixty? thousand years before the European invasion. It must have been a great undertaking, perhaps adventure, for my great-grandmother’s family to come from 19th century London and work on huge sheep stations in a new country. We do not know if they were involved with any of the genocidal atrocities against local Aboriginal populations, or abuses against indentured workers from India. Those events were certainly happening at the time, and perhaps that is why the family eventually left for Brisbane.
Queensland-based Aboriginal journalist Amy McQuire highlights the ongoing 21st century effects of that history for Aboriginal communities and draws links with current invasion, settlement, and war in Palestine. She has been calling out the mainstream media in Australia for refusing to use terms such as “genocide” and allowing the voices of violent colonisers to be the only acceptable language heard:
This ‘acceptable’ discourse, that which silences the voices of the oppressed, rests on the dehumanization of Indigenous peoples – in Palestine and here, in this place.
Our early childhood programme aims to make sure the voices of Gamilaraay people are heard loud and clear – in their language, on their lands, and into the future.
* My current favourite cartoon First Dog on the Moon provides a pretty good analysis of the referendum defeat.
Language alive 