“Re-light the fires on May 17” - A callout from Moorgumpin-Minjerribah Elders-in-Council. - video Dailymotion

Radio RATA

TO ALL MOB: RE-LIGHT THE FIRES ON MAY 17TH!   Radio RATA reporting with a very important and powerful callout that we need ALL of your help to spread the Rata(smoke) of to all First Nations people here.   Uncle Judulu of the Woomera Sovereign Union and cultural leader of Yarrabah, travels across to Quandamooka Lands and Seas to meet with @mmeic01 - the Moorgumpin-Minjerribah Elders-in-Council, to exchange stories of Sovereign Existence and Resistance, and connect in the lead up to May 17th.   Here is Uncle Dale Ruska’s yarn to all of you mob watching - it’s time to re-light the fires, to both collectively heal, re-unite to decolonise, and remind the colony that our sovereignty has never been ceded, and never will be.   May 17th is supposedly the day Cook “discovered” these Sovereign lands, when all the mob of the East Coast asserted their sovereignty from Yuin Country right up to Zenadh Kes (Torres Straits). What the colonists thought were merely campfires, were message sticks in the sky - a display of sovereignty, unbroken.   If you mob want more info and plan to light a fire with your Nation/community and wanna let us know, send an email to mikayla.queary@mmeic.org

Transcript

00:00Now Uncle, we know from our Dreamtime stories that have been passed down to us that we are

00:13the ancient owners of this country and we know from those stories also that we were created as

00:20part of this country. Our ancestors experienced dispersal, displacement, dispossession and

00:30genocide and those circumstances resulted from the time of many changes that was caused

00:39as a result of the 1788 colonial invasion of our lands. We know also when the colony arrived

00:50just a few years earlier, Cook come past and he claimed this country on behalf of the British Empire

00:59and he claimed our country as terra nullius, as empty and void of life. Even though he's seen

01:06the smoke fires of our ancestors, he ignored the presence of our ancestors and he ignored what he

01:15observed and what he recorded in the many fires and the smokes that were seen.

01:23We now put the call out to all First Nations people to realise this truth of injustice and to stand

01:31in solidarity together right up the entire east coast of Queensland, extending right around the entire continent

01:39and instead of us recognising the fires that were observed by Cook and Banks to reinstate those fires

01:47and to recreate that smoke to symbolise our need to decolonise from the suppressed subordinate

01:56state of existence back to a liberated state of our sovereignty's freedom.

02:03And in the lighting of those fires, it's a symbol of our beginning to heal from these historical crimes of injustice

02:13and to teach our future generations the importance of our need to heal, but also the importance of our need

02:21to continue to display resilience and resistance to the oppressive nature of injustice.

02:29And for us as First Nations people, through our own liberation, we reinstate the importance of our self-value

02:38and our self-worth and we reinstate the pride amongst our young.

02:43So we ask all of the First Nations communities to stand together with us in this historical act of solidarity

02:52and to call upon our ancestors' strength to give them the courage to be able to stand proud

03:00in the representation of our meaning as First Law people of this land.

“Re-light the fires on May 17” - A callout from Moorgumpin-Minjerribah Elders-in-Council.

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