ORIGINAL SOVEREIGN NATIONS OF AUSTRALIA
FRONTIER WARS MEMORIAL SERVICE

An Annual Live Streamed Event, on Monday of the June Long-Weekend held at the Sydney Opera House.

Like many others calling for truth telling, I feel it is time the Australian nation took the time to listen deeply to the stories of the Frontier Wars and to offer respect to the many lives that were lost through this long period of our history. I feel that we can't move forward without speaking to these events and I feel it's important to start this conversation at the place where it began, Port Jackson.

We hosted the Inaugural Original Sovereign Nations Frontier Wars Memorial Service on June 13 2022, which was a public holiday for the Queen's Birthday. This date is an opportunity to reflect on Australia's colonial history and the impact of colonisation.

We invited a number of guest speakers to share stories of the massacres of Original Sovereign Peoples. With an introduction and concluding address that offers a message that all Australians can focus on as they arrive and depart this moment.

Our Guest Speakers included: Yvonne Weldon City of Sydney Councillor & Deputy Chairperson Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Nathan Moran CEO Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Monica Barone CEO City of Sydney, Professor John Maynard, Jimmy Kyle, The Hon. Ben Franklin Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Dr Stephen Gapps, Mr David Harris Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs & Treaty, Colin Watego and Michael Kirk was the Master of Ceremonies.

The Footage of this event will be available soon.

Featured the Short Film - The Killings

A Thunggutti man shares a haunting account of the atrocities suffered by Indigenous Australians at the hands of European imperialists

Sydney-based Warren Roberts is a social activist who founded YARN Australia, a grassroots organisation seeking to connect Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through storytelling. Directed by Charlie Ford and Jordana Johnson, The Killings captures Roberts telling a story, passed down from his great grandmother Minnie Quinlan, about the horrific impact of British colonisation on his tribe, the Thunggutti people, of north-eastern New South Wales.

“They killed a lot of our people, pushing them over the bluffs,” he recounts in the film. “Our tribe, there’s no one left. We were all shot out.” The Killings taps into the healing properties of storytelling by sharing the realities of the intergenerational traumas caused by the Frontier Wars.

“The act of sharing these difficult and personal stories is a vitally important step in the healing process for First Nations peoples,” the directors write in a statement about the film. “Through the acknowledgement of these stories, we can begin to move forward together, to create connection and a shared culture between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples around the world.”

Observed every year on August 9, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is an opportunity to reaffirms the rights of Indigenous Peoples across the globe, and to demand the inclusion, participation and consent of indigenous peoples within a constitutional framework that brings social and economic benefits to all. 

August 9, 2022