Barawaa 'Polly' Cutmore

Grateful for being invited & looking forward to representing at the First Peoples Free Land Camp in Brasilia "For the Climate and the Amazon THE ANSWER IS US". WE have the answers to this climate/environmental crisis, time to listen to the indigenous people of the world @cop30amazonia.bsky.social

Inspiring to meet community leaders at the #MulticulturalLeadershipInitiative in Melbourne and Sydney. People of colour need to walk together in the tough times ahead.

It's #WorldWildlifeDay so here is my country and some of its creatures. Worth fighting to save? Yes I think so. #MtKaputar

Thanks to NSW #CrownLands for allowing us back on our country to hold cultural events. The old hall never looked better. Back in the day it used to be where rations were given out by the Protection Board. Now we've come home. #Dhirriaayaay #TerryHieHie

Great to be part of the committee to help get native grain production and products into the hands of the Gomeroi community. Great supporting work from #UniversityofSydney www.thecourier.com.au/story/888711...

Getting the keys to my country is my greatest wish, for me, my family, our future.

Thank you for that. It's all up in Tribunal's hands re. Santos, so waiting. But my main focus now is water and getting a First Nation water holding body set up in the Murray Darling Basin and protecting important water sites. Also getting back my family's country to look after.

Another massacre occurred only 5 weeks later up-river at Myall Creek where some 28 people were killed on a station where they thought they were safe. Seven men were eventually hanged for this crime, but no justice was ever given to the victims of the previous substantive massacres.

"They went to all the dark people, called them in, killing a bullock. Them all come in get some meat. When they all come in they just, told ‘em to come into the yard and shot ‘em down and knocked the kids in the head they say. I don’t know why.” George Jenkins, 1974.

But there was another massacre of my people only 5 months later at Slaughterhouse Creek, when a large group were led by deception to a station but were betrayed and murdered. Cutmore family history recalls some 140 were killed

An inquiry was held into the matter some 18 months later, but no further action was taken by the Colonial Executive Council. It accepted the view of the inquiry that the deaths at Snodgrass Lagoon were justified to repel an "aggressive attack" by First People.

Well summed up by Missionary Lancelot Threkeld, “… when the tribe was driven into a swamp surrounded and fired until destroyed and where it is said the stench is intolerable from the carcasses of the slain, the number must be considerable but known (only) to those engaged in the slaughter.”

It is not known how many people died that day on country not taken up by any white settler, but between 100-300 people are thought to have perished at the hands of 50 mounted men armed with pistols, swords, whips in a killing spree which lasted hours.

January 26th has a special place in Australia as the First Fleet carrying the soldiers and convicts arrived at Port Jackson on the east coast of 'New Holland' they renamed New South Wales in 1788.

But the same day commemorates a massacre upon my people on an inland lagoon in 1838, 50 years later.

Enough of stupid white people (Twitter), I'm looking for empowerment, connections and conversation. With 60,000 years of history, I have something to say.