Australia’s state of Victoria has passed the country’s first treaty with Indigenous peoples, a landmark act of recognition long denied to the country’s first inhabitants.
Cheers and applause rang through Victoria’s parliament as lawmakers passed the bill late on Thursday night, a deeply symbolic moment that caused many onlookers to burst into tears.
The treaty will establish an elected assembly of Indigenous representatives, support a truth-telling process to address past grievances and form an advisory body focused on erasing health inequalities.
Making up less than four percent of the current population, Indigenous peoples still have lives about eight years shorter than other Australians and are far more likely to be imprisoned or die in police custody.
Indigenous leader Jill Gallagher, who spent years working towards the treaty, said “history was made”.
Generations of Indigenous Australians have tried, and failed, to strike similar treaties with Australia’s federal government.
It is seen as a crucial act of recognition that Aboriginal Australians held sovereignty over the continent long before the arrival of the colonial fleet in 1788.
Australians in 2023 overwhelmingly voted “no” in a national referendum that sought to better recognise Indigenous peoples in the country’s constitution.
Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan said the landmark treaty would re-define the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the state government.
“Treaty gives Aboriginal communities the power to shape the policies and services that affect their lives.”
A government inquiry in Victoria found earlier this year that colonial settlers committed genocide against Indigenous people.
Mass killings, disease, sexual violence, child removal, and assimilation had led to the “near-complete destruction” of Indigenous people in the state, it said.
The arrival of 11 British ships to set up a penal colony in Sydney Cove in 1788 heralded the long oppression of Indigenous peoples, whose ancestors have lived on the continent for more than 60,000 years.
