Held in Melbourne, Uncle Colin said he had lived on Country at Cummeragunja, or Cummera as he refers to it his whole life.
Now 87, Uncle Colin said he had seen first-hand the changes of the land, much without consultation of Yorta Yorta people.
He said the forest and the Murray River, Dhungala, were once more than plentiful resources.
“It was our supermarket for our food, and it was also our protector when we'd have to run away from the welfare, we would just jump into the river and swim to another state,” he said.
“That was the story of our Elders, and that protected us ― so we learnt to swim at a pretty young age.”
Uncle Colin has a conditioned response on how the environment has transformed.
As kids, they would have competitions on filling a bottle of water and throwing it into the river, seeing who could find it first.
“We would throw that in the river and dive for it, you would open your eyes and you see that bottle,” he said.
“You open your eyes under the water now, they get infected, more or less.”
Uncle Colin told the hearing he was four years old when the Cummeragunja Walk-Off occurred in 1939.
He said the walk-off showed the strength of his Elders.
He referred to the Cummeragunja Mission as “like a concentration camp”.
“It made worldwide news, Aboriginal men and women sticking up for better living conditions,” he said.
“But they all come back, even though a lot of them left Cummera, they had never forgot Cummeragunja is our home, what it means.”
Living under the Aboriginal Protection Board Policy, he reflected on being given rations and poor mistreatment.
“And a lot of younger ones said to me, "Uncle Col, you should be a bitter man." And I said, ‘No, I'm not bitter’,“ he said.
“I could pass this on to the younger ones that never knew about the way things were on ― probably every mission was about the same.
“I respect every Aboriginal mission because they were nearly all the same in the way they were treated.”
The son of Yorta Yorta woman Hilda Day and Yorta Yorta Moira man Frederick Baggott-Walker, Uncle Colin was delivered by his grandmother, Florence Hamilton ― by the very same hands that taught him about his culture and Aboriginal lore.
His grandparents raised him, his two brothers and his sister following his mother’s passing at seven years old.
He said at the mission was where he learnt respect from Elders ― for culture, for one another and for family.
Knowledge he’s now trying to pass down.
Uncle Colin sat on the Koori Court for 16 years in Shepparton and has dedicated much of his life advocating for younger generations.
Now, he’s advocating to stop deaths in custody after the passing of his family members Tanya Day and Veronica Nelson.
Uncle Colin said for reform, he wanted to see “matured women” working in prisons treating young women to reinforce the cultural respect and connection.
“In the prisons, there has got to be a change, there has to be,” he said.
“Because you get mothers losing their daughters, other families losing their brothers and sisters and uncles losing their nieces and their nephews and their cousins.
“In effect — our women are still crying, our women are still crying up in the country.”
The block of hearings were to hear from Victorian First People Elders whose experiences illustrate the impacts of colonisation still felt today.
Uncle Colin’s truth-telling from Friday, May 27, closed the second week of hearings, with findings to be included in the publication of Yoorrook’s interim report due in June.
