Melissa Lucashenko

They failed to do it.

They failed to do it with guns.

They failed to do it with infected blankets.

They failed to do it with missions.

They failed to do it through banning languages and stealing our children.

So I think with all the challenges that we face...

We are people with brains in our heads and we have eyes and ears and we have mouths and we're not going to be silenced.

The days of if you're black, get back are behind us and I think the genie's out of the bottle and we will be heard.

And it's not necessarily being heard in an oppositional way either, but, you know, leadership from the societies that have been here for so long.

You look at the bushfires, you know,

the terrible bushfires of 2019 and the ones that have followed.

We've got the ecological knowledge in our nations to prevent that kind of loss and destruction.

Look at the Murray Darling, you know, look at salinity, look at all these issues.

Blackfellas have worked this stuff out over 100,000 years.

So to me, the answers are self-evident.

We take the mother culture that has been here forever and we add onto it the things that the Europeans brought that are of value, like technology, and we make a decent future.

We build an Australia that works for everyone.

The next door neighbour has horses and... Do you want to sneak down there like you did when you were a kid and just jump up?

Well, I've got a bug knee these days, so it's a bit difficult.

I don't know.