Jeanine Leane shares her truth about the importance of walking for Indigenous Australians.
Jeanine Leane shares her truth about the importance of walking for Indigenous Australians.
From Sole to Soul
by Jeanine Leane
Delivered on 15 June 2024
Australia is made for walking. Long before it became a nation and was given a name under a foreign tongue. This land is made for walking.
First peoples learnt to know Country from the ground with our feet – we learnt to know it, to hear it, to feel it, to care for it, to love it from our grandmother’s feet on the ground, through our mother’s feet on the ground our ancestor’s feet on the ground, our feet on the ground. We learn Country from sole to soul. Country remembers all who have walked it, long after our footprints are gone. Long after they have been erased by time. Long after the lands that hold them have been invaded, stolen, built on. Country remembers each imprint – its shape, its tread, its feel, its walk.
We walk first. We walk last. We walk through time. We walk to remember. We walk to hope. We walk to be heard. We walk to say we are the first walkers of this place – still using our feet to speak. We walk for justice. We walk for our ancestors. We walk for our children. We walk for truth.
Birraung Marr – place beside an ancient river highway that has been walked since time immemorial holds the footprints of Wurundjeri Elders, all those who cared for, walked on, raised their children on, sung on, danced on, told stories on, laughed on, loved on, passed their spirits on. It holds all the memories of the East Kulin Nations of Naarm – the place also known as Melbourne. It holds all the stories of place that no colonial archive, library, gallery or museum ever can. It holds the memories of all those who walked before us for justice and truth and will hold all those who will walk after us.
Woiurung Elder, Lore-Man, Leader, Artist, Storyteller, and Activist William Barak was initiated along the banks of the Birraung. Barak walked for truth along this river. Through the streets of this city. Across the water-ways where a bridge now stands in his honour, and to remind us that we’re still walking for the same truths. Truths that William Barak and his people were never afforded.
Barak and other elders walked from Coranderrk all the way to Parliament House in Melbourne to approach parliamentarians several times, to protest the mistreatment and colonial oppression of his people. He also used newspapers to further the truth of invasion and destruction.
William Barak walked all the way from Coranderrk to Melbourne with his son David, ill from tuberculosis on his back, only to be refused entry to hospital under the directions of Captain Page, secretary of the Aboriginal Protection Board. He carried the child all the way to Kew to the home of his supporter Ann Bon. David was admitted to hospital but died soon afterwards. His father was not permitted entry to the hospital to be by his side.
It was said that a heavy sadness descended on William Barak’s eyes ever after. But he continued to walk Country for truth. The Birrarung holds his footprints. The Birraung holds his story. And we walked through the centuries for truth. For hope.
In 1927, on Wiradjuri Country north of here, Elders Jimmy Clements and John Noble walked over ninety-three miles (150 km) from Brungle Aboriginal station near Tumut in southern New South Wales to attend the opening of Parliament House in the presence of the Duke and Duchess of York. Uncle Jimmy Clements and Uncle John Noble, walked for three days; and were not the first to walk for activism and truth. And colonial history has become a long line of Aboriginal activists to the Commonwealth parliament. Uncles Jimmy and John were both around eighty years of age. A reporter from the Melbourne Argus described them as ‘very old and grey and raggedly picturesque,’ while another reporter from the Canberra Times saw them as ‘lone’ representatives ‘of a fast vanishing race’ who had come only to salute ‘visiting royalty.
The Uncles walked from Brungle Aboriginal station, whose residents for a full fifty years had opposed the board’s control and worked out strategies to defeat it. Far from saluting visiting royalty, the two Elders came to declaim the injustices they had endured all their lives. But nobody in authority listened. Uncles Jimmy and John made the trek to Canberra to remind Australia that equality for white citizens was built on the exclusion and exploitation of Aboriginal Australians. And that our rights were not recognised. Our sovereignty had not been extinguished. Their walk to Parliament House bears testimony to perseverance, continuance and tenacity of Aboriginal people in the wake of invasion and dispossession.
The reporter couldn’t have been more wrong. Far from disappearing, we keep walking.
We walked on January 26 1938, for the first National Day of Mourning under the leadership of Uncles and Elders Jack Patten, William Cooper and William Ferguson to tell white Australia we’re still here 150-years on from dispossession. We walked to say this is not your beginning – this is our dispossession. We walk every year ever after.
We walked on January 1988 from all across the length and breadth of these lands. We walked in our thousands across Sydney to say: We’re still here. And we walked to say: White Australia has a Blak History. And colonialism can’t stop its flow, its spread, its truth after 200-hundred years of invasion, dispossession and destruction colonialism can’t stop our story as we spread it across our Countries under this nation from sole to soul – always was – always will be.
We walked at the dawn of a new century. We walked with settler-supporters across the bridges on this nation. We walked for reconciliation. We walked in the hope of an apology, for the last two hundred years. We walked with the hope of healing. We walked in the spirit of truth. We walked as the Prime Minister walked away from our truth.
We walk through the twenty-first century because white Australia keeps walking away. We walk to say ‘Blak Lives Matter’. We walk for Treaty. We walk for Blak sovereignty never ceded on these lands.
We walk in honour of our ancestors. We walk in honour of our children and their children’s children.
We’ve walked a long way for truth in this Country. We’ve walked a long way through colonial lies, theft, dispossession and genocide. There’s still a long way to go.
Every time we walk across each inch of ground – Country remembers. Country holds all our footprints; Country holds our stories; Country holds our memories; Country holds our spirits; as we walk sole to soul for truth.