Ngatha Neil, binita daya biniti Yorta Yorta lotjpa Woka. (I am Neil, born here, born on Yorta Yorta speaking country), a land where my ancestors have been before up until our current generations, since our creator beings brought our people into being.
Our peoples, with bloodline connections to this land all hold the connections to this ongoing connection within us.
That connection back to those precious times that were the birth of what was to come and what was to come is what we hold dear now.
The dear ways of our people living in close harmony with the land, or rather more than being close to the land, but in fact, a part of it.
As custodians of this land, we are a part of it.
Just as our ancestors had been for 80,000 plus years it remains now.
Something occurred on these lands in the 1840s that somewhat changed and impacted the ways that our people had been living for thousands of years.
This directly impacts every single one of us today who now live in this area which is today called Shepparton and Mooroopna.
Also in places such as Kialla of course, which takes its name from the sacred waterway Kaiela, the lifeblood of this area.
Known by most as the Goulburn River.
As a people with custodianship connected to this sacred wala dana, waterway, it is heartbreaking to acknowledge and know that sadly there was damage inflicted upon our ancestors, right here in this very area.
This began when settlers first came to this region and came upon our people in Mooroopna close with country, living in our ways of custodianship.
Living by the sacred Kaiela.
Our yenbena (ancestors) were living in a camp, which is now an area on a bend on Kaiela behind McLennan St, in what is the most popular accessible part of the river in Mooroopna today.
The area of Kaieltheban Park.
Impacts began to unfold here that sadly led to instances of tragic loss, which included massacres of our peoples, before being eventually rounded up onto Murchison Police Paddocks and subsequently to Cummeragunja.
As we know well, we were not the first affected by such actions and indeed, there were many communities impacted before us up on Bidjigal land and Gadigal lands, in what is commonly known of as Sydney today, where the First Fleet came ashore in January 1788.
For me, as a First Nations person with bloodline connections to the Central Coast of so-called NSW, I feel the pain of these impacts, but also, being Yorta Yorta born and raised, I also feel this for how those actions have transferred and shaped life here today off the back of the doctrine of Terra Nullius, which sowed the seeds for such widespread devastation across the whole continent.
On January 26, myself and others in the Mooroopna Indigenous community, with our intergenerational, and our own lifelong connections to place, have decided that it is important for us to acknowledge this moment through reflection.
To acknowledge what these impacts meant far away on the East Coast, and to all Indigenous peoples of this sacred continent, but also what it means to all people living here today, some 25-plus million people from all around the world and the 70,000 or so in the local region.
We feel that in order to move forward in a way that is unified, we must be able to reflect on what has happened before, and in doing so reflect on where healing may be required.
Where bridges may need to be built, where compassion can be sown, and where an understanding of how we can walk forward in a sense of collective understanding of how truly dear and special it is to be able to call this place home.
This dear place of sustainable practices of living that have proven, over the course of thousands of years, to be a way of living that is deeply thoughtful and considerate.
Ways of living deeply driven by care, deeply driven, ultimately, by love for place, driven by the desire for all living beings to live in a most sacred way on this land.
We believe this has been an eternal opportunity for all to step into feeling deeply the monumental moment that January 26 provides us all each year.
We believe, if there is one way we can move towards a space of collective healing and shared home on this sacred woka, then it must start with knowing and reflection.
January 26 is a beautiful opportunity for that.
And so, this year we will reflect during our January Day Dawn Service for the third year running, at Kaieltheban Park, rising with the sun, reflecting, connecting, and seeking to find that place of care, love of place, and the opportunity for the most sacred way forward on this land.
Rising with the sun, just as our ancestors have for thousands of years before in this place, but the difference now is knowing this is now a home we share with others and so, as this is our shared home, we want you to find the most pertinent and powerful way to be on and with this land as your home.
Through walking in reflection, towards healing, towards respect, reverence, and hope, for the most sacred future possible here on this our dhoma woka.
There is a galnya dana to be walked (a good path to be walked).
We invite you also, if with dhomodhomonga murrangurrang, love always.
Always, just as our Ancestors did before us and guide us to now.
Join us at Kaieltheban Park (off Archer St, Mooroopna) at 6am on Thursday, January 26 for the 2023 dawn service.