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It is impossible to reconcile the events that have occurred during National Reconciliation Week.
Last week Yawuru Elder and former Senator Pat Dodson issued a stark warning that the current reality in Australia is tracking to erase Aboriginal people and enact genocide against First Peoples.
The devastating death in custody of a vulnerable young man makes this truth unavoidably clear.
And then the federal government grants commercial rights that risk the desecration of Murujuga against the wishes of some Traditional Owners. A desecration that will affect the Country and the people, and will be irreparable. All while contributing to the climate crisis.
The assault on First People, Country, identity, rights, history, voice, safety – is pervasive.
These devastating truths barely make the media headlines. Every day, the system sustains outrageous levels of imprisonment, child removal, harassment, racism and threats to safety, while families are dealing with unimaginable realities.
The bodies of loved ones who have passed away going missing, family members sitting around hospital beds and waiting for the worst in ICU, and communities attending funeral after funeral. Every day people deal with substandard housing, living in tiny sheds and broken-down homes with no running water and sewerage backing up due to poor plumbing.
At the same time, they are managing complex health concerns and more broadly, facing basic services that deny them access, dignity and respect.
First Nations people have carried the burden of truth-telling, resistance, and survival for over two centuries, offering solutions, sharing land and resources, greeting and welcoming non-First Nations people to their stolen lands with generosity and peace.
The responsibility for reconciliation lies with all non-First Nations Australians—with those who hold power, platforms, and privilege—to stand up, speak out, and act without hesitation for justice.
Last week, on May 18, 2025, 24-year-old Warlpiri man Kumanjayi White died after being restrained by plainclothes police officers at a Coles supermarket in Alice Springs. Witnesses reported him being placed in a bear hug and ‘slung’ to the ground. This young man lived with a disability. He lost consciousness and died.
In what can only be described as vile, and brings into question police impartiality and prejudice, the police have chosen to portray this young man as a criminal and reject the need for an independent investigation.
His family have reasonably demanded transparency, including access to CCTV footage. There remains a question over how a young man in care and living with a disability did not have carers in his immediate vicinity.
Many gathered at Coles to mourn his loss, in sorrow, not anger, simply asking for justice and fairness and an independent investigation. For a community that has now experienced two deaths in custody, this is a fair and reasonable request.
This tragic loss adds to the more than 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission, and in this time, not a single person has been held criminally accountable.
It underscores the systemic issues within the justice system that continue to disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples, at a harrowing cost for families.
Last week the federal government approved Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project to operate until 2070. This decision threatens Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula) sacred lands and one of the most significant areas for rock art, culture knowledge and history in the world. With over one million ancient petroglyphs, the rock engravings reveal 50,000 years of continuous cultural life of the Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples.
Raelene Cooper, a Mardudhunera woman and founder of the group Save Our Songlines, has been at the forefront of legal challenges against the project. She filed a Section 10 application under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act in 2022, seeking protection for the Murujuga rock art. Cooper has initiated further legal action in the Federal Court to prevent the extension by requesting consideration by the Environment Minister Murray Watt of her application in 2022 under the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act. The project poses irreparable and immediate threats to the environment, as well as cultural song lines, sacred sites, history, knowledge and wellbeing. These are sovereign and unceded lands.
Pat Dodson’s recent warning was a clarion call.
He spoke of the high rates of young Aboriginal people in prison and the devastating levels of child removals as an ongoing genocide against First Peoples.
“It’s an assault on the Aboriginal people. I don’t say that lightly… It’s to destroy any semblance of any representation, manifestation in our nation that there’s a unique people in this country who are called the First Peoples,” Dodson said.
“That’s what the new assimilation is about—completing the obliteration of Aboriginal people from the landscape.”
The young man who died in custody arises from this injustice. There is an enduring and brutal disregard on one hand, and determined attack on the other, by the justice, child protection, educational and health systems against the sovereign, cultural and human rights of First Peoples.
First Nations people have led the resistance. They have shared their knowledge, buried their children, stood on the frontlines to protect Country, taken their fights to courtrooms, to Parliament, and to the United Nations.
Reconciliation is not an ‘event’. It is a responsibility that extends beyond a moment, beyond a day or a week. Reconciliation is action. Enduring action. It is truth-telling. It is stepping into discomfort and using your power, influence, and voice.
If you are not First Nations, this is your moment. This is your test.
Demand national truth telling from government so that all Australians can understand First Nations history. Stand with the families and demand an independent inquiry into Kumanjayi White’s death. Stand with the Traditional Custodians and call for heritage protection laws that prioritise First Nations voices and protect Country and culture. Hold corporations and governments accountable. Call on insurance companies to deny insurance over projects that threaten cultural and environmental harm. Ask governments why children are being removed in record numbers. Ask governments why First People are abhorrently overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Ask governments why support for community led solutions is so poor. Where you see racism and discrimination speak out.
Speak to and write to your MPs. Demand answers.
To be silent now is to be complicit. To be neutral is to stand with the status quo. Reconciliation is not something First Nations people owe to Australia. It’s something Australia owes to First Nations people.
In practice, reconciliation means:
Back in 1991 the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established with Pat Dodson as its founding chair. It was established as an invitation to Australia to understand and reconcile with our history, to embrace and celebrate the living cultures of these lands and to walk together with dignity for all.
Justice begins with the people. As we come to the end of National Reconciliation Week, ask yourself—not what you believe, but what you are doing.
Now more than ever, it is time to act.
Jane Vadiveloo
CEO, Children’s Ground
