Before White Settlement

This resource is related to the following Learning Area –

And responds to the following Enquiry Question –

Q22.	Where did the Kombumerri people live in this area prior to white settlement?

Resource transcript –

To our knowledge, remember there is nothing written way back before contact time, not really, that’s historically documented. So, all we can go by is we know we’ve been here, our old people told us, you can go right back… we can go right back to Warru. First one. But she wasn’t the beginning, she’d have mothers and fathers from way back, so that clearly tells us. But, there are middens within our area, not outside of our area, there are middens within our area, sit down eating places, burial grounds, sleeping grounds, Bora rings, circumcision rings and The Dreaming Mountain which has been there from time immemorial. So, we didn’t import them, they’ve been here all the time so we go right back. We can talk about the time when we knew each other, when our families interacted with visitors and all of that. So, to be able to say, “I was here, we were here X years ago,” you can only have this verified by your burial grounds, your middens. That’s pretty conclusive evidence when you got old people sitting there, laying there asleep at the Broadbeach burial ground 1200 years old. Now, who was it? We haven’t moved, therefore we must have those connections with those old people. There’s nobody else. There’s no one else. We’ve maintained connection to country and that’s one of the prerequisites for native title but we’re not worried about that part of it. We know we’ve been here all the time. We haven’t left the country. We raised our children here. Right down from great-grandchildren.