Prelude to the Departure

Sushila Ahwong’s Australia Day Proclamation, which she read on the landing at Admiralty House, Sydney, is widely acknowledged as the first key milestone event in impacting the Departure that followed.

Inhabitants of Australia

(which is a European name for a European country

permitted from 1788 until now to exist outside of Europe)

I’m speaking to you this evening

in your language

English

on behalf of the Indigenous peoples of these lands

the first peoples of these lands

the Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders as many of you

know us.

As you may be aware

our Elders have been meeting in a council this month

meeting to ensure

on this matter of the greatest significance to all of us

that every opinion and point of view among us gets its fair

hearing.

The Elders have asked me to deliver this statement to you on

their behalf.

We have known our respective lands since Dreaming.

We respect those dreams.

We respect that duty which falls on all humans and tribes who

understand

the responsibility to keep our land whole

to look after it and the living things in it and on it

and the living things in the sky and in the sea.

Settlers came to these lands uninvited.

That is understandable.

Often a guest comes uninvited

and yet we welcome the guest who we did not need to ask for

a visit.

The settlers stayed in this country uninvited

and without discussing terms with us

or with the lands we keep.

You made up lies like terra nullius

some of which you have retracted since

but you settlers never settled terms with us.

Now the harm is too great.

Now we know that there is no prospect of settlement with the

settlers.

Now we know

rebuking you is not enough

One thing you taught we shall forever thank you for:

you taught us to come together

– many of us, over many miles –

to discuss together how to respond collectively to you.

That has been good for us and for our lands.

It will be remembered as a credit to your influence.

We decided something you will not understand at first

but then you will understand.

We decided that you must go.

All non-Indigenous persons in these lands must leave them.

This will be expensive

and you may have to look to your government to assist you

but go you must.

Since 1788

you have been as guests awaiting the invitation to stay.

Many of us assumed all along

as you did

that the invitation would be forthcoming in due course.

Now we have agreed otherwise:

it will not be.

These are our terms:

you have one year to leave

each of you

to tie up your affairs and get out of our lands.

We shall do our best to negotiate with your government

but in a year and a day

we shall hold you each responsible to be out of this place.

For one more year we shall remain generous and civil to you

because we know you are leaving.

Thank you for your kind attention.