Hope truth-telling through education will improve understanding of Indigenous issues after failed Voice referendum

Cherie Sibosado says it is time to start educating people about First Nations people and their issues. (ABC Kimberley: Rosanne Maloney)

Since the Voice to Parliament referendum failed last year, Nyikina and Bardi woman Cherie Sibosado says she’s needed time to heal.

On October 14, 2023, she learnt Australians had rejected “something Indigenous peoples had worked so hard” to create.

“I cried the entire next day,” she said.

Ms Sibosado was the Kimberley delegate and signatory of the Uluru Statement and an advocate for the proposed constitutional recognition and advisory body.

Speaking at Notre Dame University’s Nulungu Research Institute’s Talking Heads Seminar Series, she said after time to heal and reflect, “we now need to start to re-educate people and start to embed it in all structures of education”.

Not enough Indigenous education

During debates over the proposed legislation, information and the lack of education about Indigenous issues and how the Voice would work were consistently highlighted.

Ms Sibosado said it became a saddening example of how uneducated people were about the history and existing plight of Australia’s First Peoples.

She said the “heartbreaking” campaign slogan, “If you don’t know, vote no”,  built and thrived off a lack of awareness.

Australia’s “faltered education system” and lack of Indigenous education meant people misunderstood “what we were trying to do in effecting change”, she said.

“We need to re-educate people about what is the plight of First Nations people in this country, what are our issues.

“There’s this disconnect … It’s something [many Australians] are not aware of, nor interested to find out.”

Ms Sibosado said formal education at all levels — primary to tertiary — needed to improve its content, and individuals needed to make an effort to learn about Indigenous issues.

A path to truth-telling

Butchulla Jagera woman Jodie Bell, who has lived in the Kimberley for more than three decades, said there was still hope for truth-telling, even after the failed Voice.

The Uluru Statement called for a body to supervise the process of “agreement-making” — or a treaty — and “truth-telling” between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the federal government.

“Education is obviously another way of [truth-telling] — they’re a little bit one and the same,” Ms Bell, an Uluru Dialogue facilitator, said.

“How can you go forward when you don’t even acknowledge what your country did in the past?”

Ms Bell said an Indigenous curriculum was about teaching factual history, culture and issues.

She said education needed to be created alongside Indigenous Australians and ensure it recognised cultural, linguistic and issues-based diversity within tribes across the country.

Starting again

In her final National Press Club Speech as outgoing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner June Oscar said Indigenous issues had fallen silent since the referendum.

“Many of us needed time and space,” she said.

“I think as we arise from these places where we’ve been in quiet contemplation and reflection … we need to come together and have conversations around how do we do this.”

Ms Sibosado said it was now up to individuals, businesses and formal education systems to ensure awareness grew in the community.

“Aboriginal people have been doing this for a long time where we’ve been knocked back and knocked back and knocked back,” she said.

“We get up and we start again.”