The 1881 Parliamentary Coranderrk Inquiry marked the only occasion in the history of nineteenth-century Victoria when an official commission was appointed to address Aboriginal peoples’ calls for land and self-determination, and one of the few times that Aboriginal witnesses were called to give evidence on matters concerning their own lives and interests. As such, it is a rare and historically significant moment in the history of relations between Victoria’s indigenous and settler populations, in which Aboriginal peoples’ claims to justice were addressed by the colonial government in an official forum. For the Kulin clans living at Coranderrk, the stakes could not have been any […]
