Genocide in Victoria: Yoorrook Justice Commission Reveals Findings and Urgent Next Steps
After more than four years and over 1,300 submissions, Australia's first Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry has handed down its final report. It has found the First Peoples of Victoria have endured crimes against humanity and genocide since the beginning of colonisation in Victoria — and they are still being impacted by systemic injustice today as a result. The report has outlined 100 recommendations aimed at redressing these injustices. Here are some of the key takeaways. What did Yoorrook find? The commission concluded that colonisation in Victoria involved widespread massacres, cultural destruction, forced child removals and economic exclusion . "Yoorrook found that the decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria … was the result of a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups," it said. "This was genocide." Th...