WHAT IS TRUTH TELLING?
Reclaiming the Noongar Voice
Reclaiming the Noongar voice is about acknowledging Truth:
- Acknowledging – that long before colonisation, Noongar families cared for Country through sophisticated cultural knowledge systems, seasonal understanding, and deep spiritual connection to land and nature.
- Acknowledging – that less than 200 years ago, Noongar people were brutally dispossessed of their traditional lands, removed from sacred places, and forced to the margins of society.
- Acknowledging – how government policies — including child removal, restrictions on movement, and the banning of language and cultural practices — have deeply impacted Noongar families across generations.
- Acknowledging – the continued strength, cultural pride, and resilience of Noongar people — kura (back then) and yey (today) — in the face of ongoing injustice and hardship.
To begin Truth Telling, and then Healing – Aboriginal people need to tell their history, and non-Aboriginal people need to listen (Truth Listening). This is part of truth, justice, and healing for everyone in our community.
Image: On country at Gugulja (Avon River) at the junction of Boyagerring Creek - River Blessing Ceremony (Ancestoral Blessing)
Gnulla Karnany Waangkiny (Our Truth Telling)
Newcastle Gaol Museum
This 2023 National award winning Gnulla Karnany Waangkiny (Our Truth Telling) installation was a collaborative project - led by NKAC - with Shire support through their Reconciliation Action Plan, and funded by LotteryWest. Through a Noongar 'voice' GKW highlights traditional life pre colonisation and the dark history and unjust treatment of Noongar people post colonisation. View GKW installation at the Newcastle Gaol Museum. The Shire, in partnership with NKAC, is the first local government in WA to research and show case the local 'Truth Telling' as a significant permanent display in the Museum in a dedicated space.
LEARNing THE TRUTH
Australians should not be afraid of truth telling. It can be done in a respectful way that simply acknowledges the truth in our shared history.
For over 45,000 years, Noongar moort (families) moved across this valley — an area rich with fertile land, freshwater sources, and sacred places. Families held clear responsibilities to their moort-boodja (family lands) and rights to specific waterholes. Then in the 1800s, colonial attitudes and a hunger for land — to graze livestock and establish farms — led to aggressive land grabs and violent clashes on the frontier. Many of these confrontations were brutal, often involving only small groups of 1–3 Noongar people at a time, and were never formally recorded by government or authorities. In many cases, Noongar people simply “disappeared,” their absence unspoken and unacknowledged. Noongar clans were forcibly and violently displaced from their lands through tactics of discrimination, massacre, and control. A high level of lawlessness and intimidation by those taking the land was legitimised by the racist government policies of the time.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Following 1836, hundreds of settlers occupied land along the Avon River, disregarding Noongar people and their customs. This sparked a period of despair and conflict for the Noongar. In 1834, Captain James Stirling had led the Pinjarra Massacre, killing up to 80 Noongar people to instill fear and weaken resistance, later writing that the only way to deal with Aboriginal people was to "reduce their tribe to weakness by inflicting such acts of decisive severity as will appal them as a people." Stirling’s government granted Noongar land to Europeans without consent, with newspapers warning of further violent reprisals. Colonisers dismissed thousands of years of Noongar wisdom and sustainable land practices—an inconvenient truth challenging their claims of superiority. Facing these truths is essential for national healing, as understanding the impacts of the past brings reconciliation. Head to Toodyay's Newcastle Gaol Museum to read more.
The AUSTRALIAN FRONTIER WARS
The term Frontier Wars refers to conflicts between European colonists and First Nations people, beginning with the British arrival in 1788 and lasting into the 1930s. As the British established a colony in Australia, First Nations groups resisted, resulting in violent wars marked by organised battles and open massacres.
While exact death tolls are unknown, University of Newcastle research has recorded at least 10,000 Indigenous people killed in 416 massacres between 1780 and 1930. Historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan noted that most occurred from 1860 to 1930. Frontier massacres increased as colonial forces moved across Australia, including Western Australia. Laws and legislation often escalated frontier violence. Despite growing research, our national curriculum still largely denies the Frontier Wars. To learn more, view The Australian Wars documentary on SBS. Here in our region — across the Avon and Toodyay valley — stories handed down within Noongar families speak of unrecorded massacres, often involving small groups, never documented by authorities. These local truths remain part of the living memory, carried quietly through generations.
Images of Dark history story boards:
