Hello, my name's Daryl Naylor. I'm the Aboriginal Health Development Officer here at Austin Health. I descend from Gundungurra which is an Aboriginal tribe in New South Wales. What I think has happened with the Aboriginal community is that we've been shunned so to speak in this multicultural arena. We only need to look at the portfolio for Amanda Vanstone, Senator for Aboriginal Affairs or Indigenous Affairs if there is such a word and also Multiculturalism and the Office of Immigration. So it's sort of like the idea of tossing us all into one washing machine and what that tends to do is to diminish our identity. It doesn't afford us the respect and status that Aboriginal people should have and demand as the first Australians. Obviously our diversity is very, very broad. There's over 200 or 250 different Aboriginal languages spoken in Australia. There's also the recognition that we have between 500 to 700 different Aboriginal tribes. From that we still break ourselves up into sub-tribes or clan groups which they number in the vicinity of 21,000.

My name's Linda Burney and I'm from south western New South Wales. I'm a member of the Wiradjuri nation and we have a huge land area, the Wiradjuri. It covers the Lachlan, the MacQuarie and the Murrumbidgee Rivers. The enormous effort of many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the 70s to demand and realise self-determination through the establishment of legal services, children's services, Aboriginal medical services, Aboriginal pre-schools is being slowly and surely whittled away - not by those communities, by in fact the philosophical position of government.

My name is Shirley Firebrace, I am born and bred in Echuca which its traditional name is 'Etchuka' and a descendant of the Yorta Yorta people. We will always be on that bus with Charlie Perkins. We will always be knocking at the doors of mainstream services to get access, equity in the rights of our people. I mean, thank God we've had our Aboriginal agencies because if we didn't have them, imagine where we would be now, our numbers we could have been completely wiped out.

G'day, my name is John McGuire. I'm a Nyoongar man from the Baladong region of Western Australia, which is out through the Avon, Northam, York, Beverly, Brookton. Aboriginal people were, and you may know, that the first Australian cricket team to tour England was in fact an all Aboriginal team that was smuggled out of the western district of Victoria and that happened in 1868. So cricket is very much a part of Aboriginal sporting identity.

Well hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Nah! My name is Kutcha Edwards, I'm a 40 year old Madi Madi man. My country is that of Balranald, Murrumbidgee River, southern New South Wales, and parts of the southern end of Lake Mungo. We have a nation of, the nation of Australia they love to, - they respect the fact that there have been, the Returned Services League for instance. They stand up and acknowledge returned servicemen. We Aboriginal people have been fighting a war here since invasion and we've had countless - when the invader first came to Australia there was obviously a confrontation and what about all them Aboriginal people who fought for this country Australia who fought for the sovereignty of this nation when the invader first came here. Non-Indigenous people just don't want to acknowledge or talk about that. They think that the Boer War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, World War I, and World War II - and they love to put the returned servicemen up on a pedestal in regards to them wars, but there's been a silent war - not a silent war - because we know it's happened here. So, we as Aboriginal people would like to acknowledge them Aboriginal people who went to war fighting for the sovereignty of this nation.