Tommy Wilson: Australia had already been discovered 65,000 years ago

Surely, now is the time for the first nation - first arrivals people of Australia to have their voice, their language and their knowledge - that kept them surviving for 65,000 years, to be heard? Photo / File

When you try and convince your 14-year-old daughter that visiting an art gallery and a library in Sydney is going to be cool, you really have to dress it up as a silk purse - or better still, French perfume.

My angle was there is a really amazing sculpture of Captain Cook done by a Māori artist and if you don't like it you I will buy you your perfume of choice at the airport when we fly home that night.

We had made the quick jump across the ditch for the State of Origin mate against mate Grand Final but there was a quinella to our ditch jump, and that was NAIDOC week

NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee and up until 1992 Australia did not recognise anyone else owned the land prior to Cooks arrival on April 29, 1770 in Sydney's Botany Bay.

This injustice had always driven my desire to know more and try to learn and understand how and why indigenous cultures were colonised and in the case of the Aboriginal first nation peoples of Australia – almost wiped out.

So we walked and we talked and I let the conversation take her - and us- to a better understanding.

"You love these people eh, Dad?" was her comment as we walked down to the ancient ceremony site in Sydney where her mother and I were married.

"Yes I do darling, I have always admired how they have lived on this land for 65,000 years, never wanting to own it and never putting profit before people by poisoning it - and yet, others have come and in 300 short years they have pretty much buggered it up" was my preacher-like answer.

That left her eyebrows raised in a frown and a hundred unasked questions going on in her mind.

The Australian Government is about to pour $50 million into a memorial of Cook's first landing and then sailing a $7 million replica of the Endeavour around Australia and across to New Zealand to celebrate Cook's arrival and discovery of their respective countries.

The truth is, Australia - just like New Zealand - didn't need to be discovered by Cook when he arrived aboard the Endeavour, as it had already been discovered 65,000 years before.

As I stood on the Darling Harbour jetty with my daughter and looked at the replica of the Endeavour I couldn't help but think white Australia has a black history that one day their country like ours, will have to be brave enough to face.

After 65,000 years of survival pretty much in harmony with each other and the environment, in a few short hundred years the first arrivals to Australia would see their culture, their people and their land almost wiped out.

How sad is that to a 14-year-old who hasn't been blinkered by an inconvenient truth?

The irony of this is we - today's so-called clever people, call the Aboriginal peoples backward.

Thankfully my daughter already knows who first discovered the country she calls home and she will always be connected to her culture.

Michael Parekowhai's Captain Cook masterpiece "The English Channel" at the NSW Art Gallery in Sydney. Photo / Supplied

As a parent I would like her to have an empathetic understanding of all cultures on the planet and now thanks to a mate against mate game of grand final league, she now knows Australia is one of the few liberal democracies around the world which still does not have a treaty or treaties or some other kind of formal acknowledgement or arrangement with its indigenous minorities.

In my opinion as a direct descendant of both Pākehā and Māori ancestors there is no shame to be invoiced to any of us for what happened 400 years ago and everything to be proud of by learning from what history teaches us about greed before need.

Quite simply we were never told, or taught, the truth.

Thankfully we on this side of the indigenous ditch have a Treaty to live by and honour our true history.

Critically, treaties are inseparable from truth and the first nation - first arrival people of Australia deserve both the truth to be told and a treaty to be implemented and honoured, as it is in our country.

2019 is being celebrated globally as the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages.

Surely, now is the time for the first nation - first arrival people of Australia to have their voice, their language and their knowledge - that kept them surviving for 65,000 years, to be heard?

This is the truth a 14-year-old understands and can share with her mates like the fresh fragrance of a duty free bottle of French perfume. An inconvenient truth hidden in the words of the national anthem, proudly sang before kick-off and yet to be told.

Then and only then can they sing In history's page, let every stage Advance Australia Fair.

Until then it could well be Advance Australia Where?

Tommy Kapai Wilson is a local writer and best selling author. He first started working for the Bay of Plenty Times as a paperboy in 1966 and has been a columnist for 15 years. Tommy is currently the executive director of Te Tuinga Whānau, a social service agency committed to the needs of our community. broblack@xtra.co.nz