Nguy Jagunah Yugambeh

Uncle Lionel Fogarty remembered as warrior poet for Country and justice WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised the following article contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died.Last Thursday, award-winning Yugambeh poet, au...

Today, we pause to remember another painful chapter written onto this Country. In early February 1860, in what is now Maryborough in the Wide Bay region, violence once again fell upon our Old People within the Butchulla Nation. Under the command of Native Police officer Lieutenant John O’Connell Bligh, troopers rode into an Aboriginal camp near a township store, a place where families had gathered, as they had for generations along the Mary River.

What followed was not policing. It was a massacre.

Witnesses described troopers charging the camp and chasing Aboriginal men, women, and children through the streets of the young settlement and down toward the riverbanks. Shots rang out in town and along the water. Some people were hit where they ran; others were driven into the Mary River and fired upon there.

Colonial accounts — fragmentary and often reluctant — recorded individual tragedies. An Aboriginal man referred to in the record as “Darkey” was reportedly shot in the street and later burned. Another, known as “Young Snatchem,” was said to have been shot in the back by Bligh while in the river. The full number of lives taken was never formally counted, a silence that reflects how little value colonial systems placed on Aboriginal lives.

Even at the time, not everyone accepted this violence quietly. A letter published in the Moreton Bay Courier condemned the incident as a “butchering,” alleging that the troopers, possibly intoxicated, behaved like “bloodthirsty brutes.” Such rare contemporary criticism reminds us that the brutality was visible even to those within the settler society itself.

In the work of truth-telling and Nation Building, remembering matters:

● Truth as foundation: We cannot build an honest future while these histories remain half-spoken or softened. Frontier violence must be named plainly.

● Survival as resistance: Despite shootings, poisonings, displacement, and policies aimed at erasure, our kinship systems, languages, and cultural responsibilities endure.

● Sovereignty of story: When we tell these histories ourselves, our ancestors are no longer statistics or colonial footnotes — they are custodians whose Law and belonging were never surrendered.

As we reflect on those attacked along the Mary River in February 1860, we honour them through continuation: caring for Country, teaching language, strengthening family, and insisting on truth.

The frontier brought terrible loss — but it did not bring erasure.
We are still here. Our connection to this Country remains.
Always was. Always will be. 🖤💛❤️

What is a 'nation' to you? 🧐

Why “Nation” is a Political Term 👨🏽‍🏫

In Australia, people often assume that if two groups share a similar language or similar stories, they must be the same "people." But as the comic shows, we don’t apply that same logic to the rest of the world. 🌏

Nobody walks up to an Austrian and says, "You speak German, so clearly you’re just part of the German Nation and have no separate borders or government." Everyone understands that they are two distinct, sovereign political entities that happen to share a linguistic history.

So why is it different for us? 🤔

When we talk about the Yugambeh Nation, we aren't just talking about a "cultural vibe" or a language group. We are talking about Political Authority.

● Shared Culture: We share Dreaming stories, songlines, and linguistic roots with our neighbors, like the Githabul Nation or the Wahlubal Nation. This makes us family in a broad sense.

● Distinct Politics: Under Traditional Law and Custom, sharing a language does not give one group the right to speak for another’s Country.

● Sovereignty: The Yugambeh Nation has its own political identity. We do not sit in Githabul or Wahlubal political matters, and they do not sit in ours.

To call yourself a "Nation" is to claim the right to govern your own affairs and care for your own specific Country. When people lump us all together because we "sound the same," they ignore our distinct political rights and our specific responsibilities to our Ancestors' land.
Shared stories are a blessing, but distinct voices are the Law. 🙌🏽

Hard truths

A lot of the loudest anti-Israel talking points we're seeing from parts of the left are structurally identical to arguments the far right has used for decades to delegitimise Indigenous peoples, including Aboriginal Australians.

We don’t think most people using these arguments intend racism.
But intent doesn’t change the framework being used.

Some examples:

• “The Torah is just mythology.”
This mirrors how Indigenous law and cosmology are dismissed as “just myths” when they underpin land, continuity, or peoplehood; while European religious or historical narratives are treated as civilisation.

• Mocking time-depth
“Promised land 3,000 years ago” jokes aren’t meaningfully different from mocking 60,000+ years of Aboriginal connection. In both cases, ancient continuity is treated as absurd only when it challenges modern power.

• Biological gatekeeping of identity
Calls for Israelis or Jews to “DNA test” themselves echo blood-quantum logic that Indigenous scholars have explicitly rejected. Identity is reduced to racial purity instead of culture, community, continuity, and self-identification; the exact logic that justified exclusion and dispossession here in Australia.

• Replacement / impostor narratives
“Israelis are really Khazars” functions the same way as claims that Aboriginal people replaced some earlier “true” Indigenous group. These theories are unfalsifiable, pseudoscientific, and always appear when a people’s legitimacy becomes inconvenient.

We want to be very clear about something:

👉 Criticising Israeli government policy is not racism.
👉 Supporting Palestinian human rights is not antisemitism.

But denying a people’s indigeneity, continuity, or legitimacy as a people, using racialised or colonial logic, is.

What worries us most is seeing movements that correctly recognise how these arguments have harmed Indigenous peoples… then reuse the same frameworks against Jews, convinced the moral valence has magically changed.

It hasn’t.

Colonial logic doesn’t stop being colonial just because the speaker believes they’re on the right side of history.

If we actually care about decolonisation, human rights, and Indigenous dignity, then our principles have to apply consistently. Even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it complicates our politics.

Both the left and the right need to reckon with that.

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As Yugambeh people, our strength lies in our unity. It’s important that we, and those wishing to work with us, understand who truly speaks for our collective interests. 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

Danggan Balun Aboriginal Corporation is our Representative Body. Together with Yugambeh Land Enterprises, they form the democratic backbone of our Nation. 🫆👣

Why? Because they are the only spaces where every Yugambeh family and clan has a seat at the table and fair representation. It is where our whole community comes together. ❤️‍🔥

​While other small organisations exist—often with fewer than 200 members representing specific family lines—they cannot claim to speak for all of us.

​This is not to diminish the vital work of our many community-controlled organisations and businesses, such as Levinge Events, Dreamtime Artistry, Mununjali Housing & Development, and Kalwun. These groups are culturally appropriate and receive our broad support for the specific, crucial work they do. We choose them because they serve our community well—they are democratically supported in their roles, not imposed upon us by "big men" politics. They are valued parts of our ecosystem that work alongside our national representative bodies.

​If you want to engage sincerely with the Yugambeh people, you must engage with our democratic structures: Danggan Balun and Yugambeh Land Enterprises. Anything less is a misrepresentation of who we are as a united people. 🕊🦅

🤯 History Repeats? Nah, History Corrects Itself! ⚖️

Did everyone forget that two of Australia's most hardline Premiers, Joh Bjelke-Petersen (QLD) and Richard Court's WA Govt, literally tried and FAILED to get rid of Native Title with racist legislation? 🤔

● Queensland's attempt to abolish Native Title was struck down by the High Court in Mabo (No 1) (1988) for being inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA).

● Western Australia's Land (Titles and Traditional Usage) Act 1993 was also declared invalid by the High Court in Western Australia v Commonwealth (1995) because it was inconsistent with the RDA and the later Native Title Act.

If the old-guard right-wing heavyweights couldn't legally erase Indigenous land rights with race-based laws, what makes people think any modern politician stands a chance? The law is clear: racial discrimination doesn't win. ✊🏾

Truth ✊️

Australian Constitutuonal Law recognises that Aboriginal Australians have a special connection to this land, a connection central to the many distinct systems of traditional law and custom across the continent. From that, the High Court recognised the rights and interests given by Aboriginal law as Native Title - while it can be extinguished, no government can dictate the fabric of traditional law.🏛

In 2020, the High Court recognised that this same connection means no definition of the word 'Alien' could ever include an Aboriginal-Australian. For others, they need citizenship, but us, our traditional law and custom and recognition by our traditional authorities is all that's ever needed to set foot in this country. 👣

So, when States and the Commonwealth refuse to Treaty, there is always the legal recourse to ask - What else does this 'special connection' mean? 🤔

🤣

This is what Australians should really be protesting. 🤔

How is that many people who call themselves 'Irish/British/French/Italian-Australians' are not recognised as Irish/British/French/Italian citizens? Is this not discrimination by your homelands? 😅

If they can decide their citizenship, why do you question our right to decide ours? 🤨

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OUR TRUTH, OUR POWER, OUR FUTURE! ✊️