It is National Reconciliation Week, and we have taken this opportunity to make sure our acknowledgement of the first custodians of this land is included on every page of our website.
It has been a week of both bad and good news for the first custodians of our country. At the start of the week Rio Tinto blew up a 46,000 year old cultural site with the consent of the West Australian government. But then Fortescue Metals lost their appeal against a significant Native Title claim and later in the week the Tasmanian Premier, Peter Gutwein, reiterated that soon the petroglyphs from preminghana would be returned to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
There is still much to be done. We support requests for greater participation by the first Tasmanians in administration of the state’s national parks, protection of their cultural sites on the coast of the Tarkine (takayna) and a representative in the State’s parliament.
It is going to take some work, but with each day that passes if we keep trying we can get closer to meaningful reconciliation and accept that we are “all in this together”.