Geraldine Atkinson and Marcus Stewart talk Voice, treaty and the next generation of Indigenous leadership.
Shoelaces fashioned into little nooses and deposited in the pigeonhole of the only Aboriginal teacher wasn’t part of the arts and craft program Geraldine Atkinson had in mind for the “Manega” cultural curriculum she and other community members established at a Shepparton school in the early 1980s.
“Teachers within the mainstream school were racist towards our kids, and they were racist towards our teacher. The time she went through, it was really difficult. We had a lot of pushback. From all people, even from Aboriginal people. They thought it was apartheid, some thought we were doing the wrong thing. But it grew. Community saw what it was doing, and it grew.”
A further 11 seats are currently reserved for each of the Recognised Aboriginal Parties or RAPs, though this number could increase over the four-year term as more nation groups are formally recognised. The second assembly is due to begin negotiating a statewide treaty before the end of the year. “We wanted it to have complete independence from government and complete independence from the assembly. We didn’t want it to be a statutory body,” she explains. And that involved heading out into the regions and lobbying politicians of all persuasions.
“We never once accepted mediocrity from government. We fought for everything we’ve got. We built faith in what the assembly is. And now it’s a proven safe set of hands. It’s delivered on what it set out to do. Our record speaks for itself and that’s a credit to our communities and testament to the assembly members.”Our mains arrive and Atkinson has gone for the potato gnocchi with bay lobster tails in a chive-garlic cream sauce.
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