Joshua Creamer has climbed Everest. He isn’t sure if his new challenge is harder.
From Monday the Waanyi and Kalkadoon man is chairing a committee charged with the following goal: “A healed and reconciled Queensland, based upon a shared understanding of a full and complete history.”
Aboriginal people have been waiting for a long time for the state to tell the truth about its history. Queensland’s truth-telling and healing inquiry will have three years to achieve it, although a change of government in October could put an end to the inquiry altogether – and put Creamer out of a job in just a few months.
In a way it’s the sunshine state’s biggest murder investigation. Queensland’s record of violence includes an estimated 60,000 murders by the Queensland Native Police.
As a barrister, Creamer – Commissioner in the Queensland Law Reform Commission and Chair of the Bar Association of Queensland and a specialist in native title and human rights law – represented two noted groups of victims of colonial violence, in the “stolen wages” case which forced the state to pay back $190m confiscated from Indigenous Queenslanders up to 1972. And $35m was paid to 447 residents of Palm Island for racially discriminatory police raids in 2004.
In both cases, the victims were still alive. But Creamer says even this recent history remains unknown to most Queenslanders.
“People don’t really know much about our history,” he says. “They might know a lot about ancient Egypt or they might know a lot about the first world war or the second world war, but very few understand Queensland’s history. That was the attraction for me.”
Ignorance isn’t the only challenge. Politics also puts pressure on the inquiry process.
When the pathway to treaty and truth was legislated in May last year all sides of politics celebrated. The state’s first Indigenous minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships, Leeanne Enoch, called it a “history-making moment”.
Then in October Queenslanders cast the most decisive no vote in the country. Just 31.79% voted for the Indigenous voice to parliament; more than 68.21% voted against it.
Days later the state’s bipartisan support for voice, treaty and truth evaporated. The opposition leader, David Crisafulli, had voted for the legislation creating the inquiry and a parallel treaty-making process. But after the voice vote he declared “this process will not go ahead” under a conservative government because it would “fuel further division”. Ahead in the polls, Crisafulli could be premier after the October elections.
Do Queenslanders want truth-telling?
“I always thought truth-telling should have come first,” Creamer says.
“Having worked on those cases, and native title and other cases for 15 years, I have a really deep comprehension of our history. And I just think that was actually the missing piece with the voice.
“Our role is around public awareness. And I think once people start to understand this history – and it’s our history, it’s black history, it’s white history, all of our history – that people will really draw a lot from it.
“I know that Queenslanders are decent-minded people and they’ll learn a lot from the work we’re doing.”
Asked what he can do to convince sceptical Queenslanders – like the opposition leader – Creamer says: “We all want a better future for our children.”
The state’s inquiry process will be different, he says, because the state’s history is different – and not just because it’s larger.
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For example, a “huge amount of the population got moved to missions and settlements”, meaning stories are spread everywhere.
Like Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission, the investigation is granted the powers of an inquiry – akin to a royal commission – and can compel or invite witnesses.
Jacinta Allan, Victoria’s premier, testified before Yoorrook in April.
Creamer says whether Queensland’s premier will be asked to front up is still to be decided.
The first priority is to get on the road. The inquiry will be the largest history-gathering exercise of its type in the state.
“There’s a real focus for us, I think, in that first 12 months of capturing the history of people who lived it, and that’s largely our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders,” Creamer says.
“And the other importance to that is we’ve lost a lot of them over the last two, three, four or five years. And it’s important that they get an opportunity to participate as early on as we can.”
Even with much of the history documented, it’s not all kept in one place, which Creamer hopes to rectify.
“There’s no limit to the information that’s available. I mean, we’re limited by time.
“The documentary material out there, the things that are sitting in archives or universities, there’s a huge amount of material out there, we will never have enough time to review it all.”
The other members of the inquiry are Roslyn Atkinson, Cheryl Buchanan, Ivan Ingram and Vonda Malone. The body will be assisted by a staff of 44, though it is independent of government.