My name is “KC”, and I’ve been a prisoner for 25 years. Every year I have been thinking this is where I belong, but I have started to realise that I don’t belong here. I am a proud Wiradjuri man from Latje Latje land Mildura.

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I have a few poems and stories for this paper. I hope you like what you get from me as it's from my heart and the only way I have learnt to express my emotions. I hope it helps Mob and others by the words they read as this was my only way that I could say my truth, as a proud Aboriginal man. I am also an artist. I do traditional Aboriginal art and love being connected to Culture as it’s my self-worth and gives meaning to my life. When I didn’t know what I was here for or meant to do, an Elder once came in and told me that when you connect to Culture it’s unlike anything you’ve ever known…

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KC

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I will tell you a Story, a story hidden, left in the dark of most Australians and how our land was taken from us.

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How Captain Cook took this land by saying it was (Terra-Nullius), which means a land for the taking as not a living human on it. They claimed out the land and they murdered, raped and massacred our people. Most of our people are still racially vilified and discriminated against to this day and the ancestral trauma that has been passed on through this remains.

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They tried to breed us out like we were a disease, like we were not human beings. But we have been here for over 60,000 years – the oldest living culture in the world.

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They stopped us from sharing dreaming’s talking, our dreams, or talking about our culture, so we would forget where we came from, or our way of life. ‘Gubber-ment’ made it law. Our people weren’t passed off as living humans until 1967. Yeah, not long ago hey.

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We still suffer to this day with racism, treated differently because of our looks and colour of our skin.

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We are among one of the only countries in the world to be said to be the First Nations people but not in the constitution.

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From all this we have survived from their attempt to get rid of us. We are still ALIVE.

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“ALWAYS WAS ALWAYS WILL BE OUR LAND.”

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You cannot hide history and pretend it didn’t happen because it did.

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We are fewer than 3% of the Australian population and yet we are 25% of Australians locked up. I believe in 1901 that’s when we became a nation, we were not even in the constitution then and still not, and law was made to take our children and tell where or who we could live with. Before 1967, we were known as and counted as “flora and fauna” and not citizens, jailed for speaking language.

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This is a story of truth, resilience and survival… share that story – the one they don’t want to share! Truth telling roar and in my own words as a proud Wiradjuri man: “LOUD AND PROUD.”

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KC