Crowd ‘all in’ on reconciliation

OPPORTUNITY was a major theme of the City of Ballarat’s flag-raising ceremony to mark National Reconciliation Week.

A large crowd gathered in front of Town Hall on Wednesday 27 May to hear about issues concerning reconciliation.

Deb Lowah Clark, a Merim woman of the Torres Strait Islands born on Wadawurrung Country and co-chair for the City of Ballarat’s Koori Engagement Action Group, said a focus of the week was to engage non-Indigenous people.

“Stepping out from the sidelines and stepping into a space where they can understand better why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are seeking voice and choice in our now, in our future, because our past has not been that,” she said.

“I think raising the flag is a non-Indigenous system’s way of presenting the fact that they’re going to – today and this week – consider what it means, the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, between Torres Strait Islander people and non-Torres Strait Islander people.”

The week is bookended between anniversaries of the 1967 referendum, when Indigenous people could be counted in the census, and the High Court’s Mabo decision.

Lowah Clark said positive progress was being made.

“When we have a Reconciliation Week and the amount of people we see here today come together in unity, I say yes, there’s something that’s shifting,” she said.

“We don’t know exactly what that will mean maybe for 20 years.

“But what I hope is that my daughter – who’s 14 – when she’s 34 she’s going to see a world where we are unified, where we celebrate and recognise all people, no one at the expense of another, and that we’re able to stand proud as human beings that we care for country and for each other.”

City of Ballarat mayor Tracey Hargreaves said the theme of this year’s reconciliation week was All In.

“It’s a real call to individuals, organisations, everyone in the community to come together and work toward reconciliation,” she said.