Walking Together Towards Treaty: The Victorian Journey to Australia’s First Treaty with First Peoples

Side Event of the 25th UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

On the 21st of April 2026, the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria gathered at the UN Headquarters in New York to present, ‘Walking Together Towards Treaty: The Victorian Journey to Australia’s First Treaty with First Peoples’ at the United Nations Permanent Forum, reflecting a transformative moment in Australia’s political and moral landscape. Australia’s historic memory and progress towards reconciliation with First Nations’ Peoples remains a contested terrain; marked by historical trauma, systemic discrimination and realities that were often silenced within mainstream national narratives.

Most recently, the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum – calling to constitutionally enshrine a ‘voice’ for First Nations Peoples to make representations to government – failed resoundingly, undermining the central aspirations of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. The Statement’s call for Voice, Treaty and Truth, envisioned ‘makarrata’; the coming together after struggle by establishing a pathway for substantive recognition and justice through Indigenous representation and national truth-telling. However, the referendum’s defeat, with 67.1% of the population voting against enshrining a constitutional voice in Federal Parliament, exposed enduring divisions within Australian society surrounding Indigenous recognition of sovereignty and constitutional reform. Reflecting not only political polarization, but further, the persistence of colonial anxieties embedded within the national consciousness, the nation was “suspended… in an era of profound self-reckoning” (Teela Reid, Senior Academic at the University of Sydney Law School, 2026).

Yet amid this climate of uncertainty, Victoria’s treaty process emerges as a significant counterpoint – championing a journey for Australia’s first treaty with our First Nations Peoples. As explained by Prue Stewart at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Statewide Treaty Act (2025) effectuated the foundational principles of the Uluru Statement from the Heart by embedding a mechanism for negotiation and self-negotiation within Victoria’s state government.

In doing so, the treaty, ‘Gellung Warl’, provides a permanent body for First Peoples to make representations to the state. Translated directly from Gunaikurnai language, Gellung Warl translates into ‘tip of the spear’; symbolically evoking the strength, direction and collective purpose generated from empowering First Nations communities to lead decisions affecting their peoples. Intending to operate as a central institution within the democratic life of Victoria, Gellung Warl will bring First Peoples into decision making forums of the state, rectifying longstanding exclusion and working to reconcile the historically strained relationship within government.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Victorian process is its emphasis on historical accountability and truth-telling, realised through the Yoorrook Justice Commission. As Australia’s first formal truth-telling inquiry, the First Nations-led Commission operates alongside Gellung Warl to confront the enduring memory of colonisation by documenting experiences of dispossession, systematic child removal, cultural erasure and systemic discrimination. In doing so, the Yoorook Justice Commission challenges the selective historical memory that has shaped the longstanding Australian national narrative, insisting that reconciliation and the journey forward cannot occur without an honest reckoning with the past.

Presented on the international stage at the Permanent Forum was hence monumental; it situated Australia within broader global conversations surrounding Indigenous rights, decolonisation and the recognition of unceded sovereignty. Relative to other nations with complex histories of colonisation such as Canada and New Zealand, Australia has historically lacked treaty with First Nations peoples; marked rather by the “ad hoc establishment of an advisory body by one government and its repeal… sometimes replacement by the next” (Williams et al., p. 54, 2010). This unstable pattern reflects the fragility that has long defined the political approach to Indigenous affairs.

Thus far, the movement towards reconciliation has been inhibited largely due to the passive acts of inclusion operating within colonial structures. As such, the Victorian journey towards treaty foregrounds Indigenous political agency and sovereignty – offering valuable lessons for other jurisdictions as the nation considers how reconciliation may be realised through structural reform rather than rhetorical acknowledgement alone. By centralising self-determination, truth-telling and dialogue, the treaty offers the nation the opportunity to confront the unfinished legacies of dispossession and reconsider the political foundations of the national identity.

References:

Hobbs, H., (2025) ‘Victoria’s groundbreaking treaty could reshape Australia’s relationship with First Peoples, University of New South Wales Newsroom.

Government of Victoria (2025), What Treaty delivers.