As part of the crimes against humanity in Australia, I’m part of the group today known as the Stolen Generations. I was taken away at birth as part of the continued British colonial practices of genocide towards my people, the First Nations people of Australia. I was taken because that was the government policy of the day.

Some people say forgive and forget. We say we should never forget. We can’t change the past. We can only change the way that we attach emotions to past events.

Forgiveness to me has religious connotations; it’s different but similar to a cultural practice that I have been taught that we call ‘letting go’ which is done as a ceremony. Letting go of the emotions that control us, letting go of the things our behavior comes from, if we haven’t addressed them, and if we aren’t intimate with those emotions. Doing ceremony supports us emotionally and supported us socially as individuals, as part of a community, to live a healthy life. To be intimate with that emotion so it no longer controls us.

When the British sailed into Sydney Harbour and planted the flag on Gadigal land, they claimed it on behalf of the Crown, and set up a penal colony. Some people celebrate it as Australia Day; we commemorate it as a Day of Invasion. We are still a nation divided. A new system was introduced to our land. The conflict began and continues today.

We were once 100% of the population of our land; today we make up only 3%. For most Indigenous people there is despair, there is intergenerational trauma. We experience racism, like other minority groups in Australia. We have the highest rates of youth suicide in the world. Even though there have been attempts to assimilate us, we have survived and hold strongly onto our identity and culture. We need to move to a place where we can address and look at the truth. We need to step into a process of restorative justice.

We are the oldest surviving living culture on the planet and all of our ceremonies are very human at their core and essence. To understand our world, I describe it as a triangular balance. There is a sacred world, a human world, and the physical world, the environment. When that is in balance, then we are happy and we are healthy and we are at peace. When one of those things is taken away, it’s like the three-legged milking stool - it simply falls over.

The things we want to share with humanity are important and are about living more sustainably.

The earth is shifting on its axis and we’re moving into a feminine Dreaming track. It speaks to us as humans and to the duality of who we are. We are born with a gender and we also embody the masculine and the feminine within us all. It’s time for the feminine to come forth in men and women, so we can do things differently, with balance.

The cultural principles that we embody are about connection and belonging. You take what you need, not what you greed, and you only move as fast as the slowest. In traditional terms, the slowest are children, mothers carrying babies, and older people. Our wealth was not in monetary terms. It was seen as having water, food, shelter and family. If we had those things, we were rich and had abundance. It was enough.

When you are born, the analogy is that you are given light-coins. You are born as energy, you are light. The choice is, if we live life with purity and tolerance, you are given light.  The more you do that, the more light you receive. If we live in the shadow, then you live spending your light-coins. If you keep living that way, you not only spend your coins, you consume the light of your children, and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren. Your future family line is born in deficit.  So the choice is ours.

The work that I’ve been doing to build trust through the Gaimaragal Group has been to bridge the gaps, to break down the barriers and try to build trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia, because we can’t afford any more time doing what we’re doing. So it’s about bringing forth the ancient knowledge and wisdom for modern-day application, and we’re working to change some of the mainstream systems to see who we are as Indigenous people in Australia. We want to share our cultural knowledge, and we want to dovetail that with the mainstream thinking, whether it’s in health, housing or education.

Whilst there have been things that have harmed us as Indigenous people, my culture is very beautiful and it speaks to our humanity. I want to share a small ceremony with you today that I have been taught and given permission to share, as a gift to all of you. This normally would be done with ochre (a type of paint) and we would be honouring Mother Earth through the scared ochre when putting four dots of ochre on our face.  The words were changed for the conference to honour the divinity in all of us, whatever cultural and religious or spiritual background we come from.

May the sacredness in me open my higher self to the oneness of creation so I may honour it.

May the sacredness in me open my mind to the different ways and beliefs of others so I may honour them.

May the sacredness in me open my ears so I can truly hear what others are saying so I may honour them.

May the sacredness in me only allow words of kindness and wisdom to pass through these lips.