First Contact Speaking Tour of UK/EU
First Contact 1770, The Day That Changed Australia Forever...
Berlin Nov 9-11 , Amsterdam Nov 18-19 , London: Saturday Dec 2-3
SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKERS RODNEY KELLY (sixth time great-grandson of the warrior Cooman who stood on the beach when Cook landed in Botany Bay in 1770),
ROXLEY FOLEY (son of Gary Foley, founder of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy)
& VINCENT FORRESTER initiated Luritja Elder from Central Australia. Rodney Kelly tells the authentic story of first contact passed down through his family Roxley Foley discusses the modern day predicament & Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Vincent Forrester will tell dream time stories & talk about Australia before 1770.
1770 First Contact Speaking Tour The First Contact speaking tour will teach about how life was for Indigenous Australians for more than 60, 000 years before Cook arrived, and how an act of violence and theft in 1770 was to become the first of many more, from massacres and concentration camps to the loss of entire tribes.
The Original people of Australia are the world's oldest continuous culture with customs, language and stories passed down for more than 60,000 years. Today we are subjected to many unjust and oppressive policies from the Australian Government including assimilation, cultural genocide, deaths in custody and stolen children. We face discrimination on a daily basis.
Hear first hand, the oral history of the first contact event that has been passed down through the Gweagal clan for the past 246 years. Rodney Kelly is the custodian of this story of first contact. Hear him talk about why he is travelling to the UK to return the artefacts of his ancestors from the British Museum to the Gweagal clan of the Dharawal tribe in Sydney to form the centrepiece of an Aboriginal Living Cultural Heritage Museum.
These tales will be brought to life with a never before seen multi-media, multi-sensorial experience.
This is a unique opportunity to catch a dose of Australia's Original culture from three intriguing speakers perspectives...
Hear Didjeridoo, Dreamtime Stories, Tales from the Tent Embassy and stories from pre contact times & first contact in 1770.
Don't miss out on this speaking tour about 'the Day that changed Australia forever...'
All Enquiries : Media & Bookings ; sovereigntyparliament@gmail.com
April 28 1770. The first musket round ever fired over Australian soil rings out across what would come to be known as Botany Bay near Sydney, announcing the arrival of the British Empire and disrupting more than 60,000 years of continuous occupation.
That first shot put a hole in a wooden shield held by one of the first Indigenous Australians ever sighted by the British. His name was Cooman and he challenged the landing of 40 British marines with a spear and shield.
Today that shield still exists and it resides in the British Museum. That shield, known as the Gweagal shield, has become the centrepiece in a campaign to decolonise Australia's history and set a course for justice for its dispossessed Original inhabitants.
The significance of the Gweagal Shield is that, in a single artefact, it provides concise, poetic and irrefutable proof that from the very moment of first contact, Australia was not peacefully settled as in the myth told to the world.
Despite the violent history of the British Empire up until then (and beyond) on this occasion it was not supposed to be that way...
There were express written orders from the Admiralty and the King to make peace with the Natives in Australia. Those orders were disobeyed. April 28 1770 is the day that changed Australia forever…
This astonishing story is told by the British invader''s own diary accounts and the oral history of the Gweagal people whom were there that fateful day...
