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.
