Australia’s state of Victoria has passed the country’s first treaty with Indigenous peoples, a landmark act of recognition long denied to the nation’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.
“This is a historic moment for our people,” said Ngarra Murray from the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria.
“We will tell our children about today, and they will tell their children, passing down to future generations the story of how decades of Aboriginal resilience and activism led to Australia’s first treaty.”
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 that “history was made”.
“I feel like my people have some hope now,” she told national broadcaster ABC.
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.
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