Dear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,

The time has come for us to look honestly at ourselves and form an agreed truth about our past.

As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous allies, as community leaders, workers, families and young people, we write together under the banner of Walk For Truth because the story of this country is still unfinished and truth is the missing chapter.

We are a nation built on stories. The ancient stories of this land carried for countless generations and the newer stories that too often begin in 1788 and leave out the violence, dispossession and survival that followed. A country that turns away from the truth of its own beginnings cannot be at peace with itself. A country that silences the voices of First Peoples cannot claim to be fair or just.

Truth-telling is not about blame. It is about healing. It is about finally listening to those who have carried memory and hurt, culture and resistance, through invasion, frontier war, stolen children, stolen land, prisons and policies that have too often treated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a problem to be managed rather than as sovereign peoples to be respected. Truth-telling is an act of respect and an act of national repair.

This is why we are walking.

Walk For Truth is a collective journey that says, with our feet and our voices, that our country needs healing. We walk for those who did not live long enough to see their truths believed, for children who deserve to grow up in a nation that does not lie to them about how it came to be and for Elders who have carried the weight of other people’s denial for too long. We are walking because love of country means loving it enough to change it.

Truth-telling cannot remain scattered and fragile, held only in commissions, courtrooms, archives, or the memories of those who remember. It must become national. It must be embedded in our laws, our institutions, our schools, our media and our public life, supported by a clear, resourced process that honours and builds on the work already done, not one that starts over or looks away.

We call on you, Prime Minister, to publicly commit to a national process of truth-telling led in genuine partnership with First Peoples. We ask you to resource it properly and legislate for it.  We ask you to ensure that the truths shared through this process are not just heard and shelved but deeply listened to.

We invite you and all Australians, to walk with us. The walk may be literal, on the roads and tracks we travel as Walk For Truth. It is also moral and political. Choosing to hear what is hard to hear, to sit with discomfort and to stay at the table long enough for something better to be born. A nation that can tell the truth about itself is a nation strong enough to heal, to repair and to imagine a different future.

We Walk For Truth because this country is worth the effort of healing. We ask you to meet us on that path.

Signed

Travis Lovett
Walk For Truth

On behalf of the communities, organisations and individuals who Walk For Truth and a healed Australia.