Once again, the entire Ballarat community is invited to stand with First Nations people to acknowledge Survival Day, on January 26, at a dawn ceremony at Lake Wendouree.
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Running for the third time, the ceremony is an opportunity to mourn lives taken and destroyed since colonisation, and understand the region's "truer truth".
The ceremony, at the lake's View Point on the eastern shore, is organised by Ballarat's Koorie Engagement Action Group, and supported by the City of Ballarat.
KEAG's Deb Lowah Clark said people needed to hear the stories being told.
"People are shocked by it, but it's actually just the truth," she said.
"We want to talk it through, be real about it, acknowledge the displacement that's affected so many of our lives - it's the simple fact of what it meant to be colonised, as a nation, goes to the core of who we are as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."
The event will be an "opportunity to really consider that truer truth of history," she added.
"I know a lot of people say 'that was then, we need to move forward' - mostly, 'get over it' - but really, we can't do that and come together in solidarity and unification until we really do understand," she said.
"What is the truer truth? When you become involved you can't help but begin to see things from different angles, different perspectives, and that's what, as a community, all we're asking people to do."
Ms Lowah Clark said it was also essential for younger members of the community to understand the event - her daughter Mercy, 10, said she'll be going along this year "to remember Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," while young Samuel Zakkam said he wanted to "pay respect".
10-year-old Samara Zakkam said people would be able to "learn about the true history of Australia".
The event is expected to grow after a large turnout at 2020, and a livestreamed ceremony in 2021.
It's an "important shift" in the city, and heartening to see so many people paying respect, Ms Lowah Clark said.
It's also progress for KEAG, which has an advisory role to council.
"Over the last three years, things we've talked about doing for so long, we're now enacting," she said.
"Regardless of what people are thinking outside of our community, we get to stand here and we get to remember and have conversations within our community - but also come together in solidarity with advocates and allies we have in our community.
"When it comes to the capacity for KEAG, it's not necessarily being able to make decisions - we have a city council for that - but being able to listen to our community and give voice in spaces perhaps even in our own walk of life we haven't considered.
"Our role is to be listeners, dadirri - deep listening - and perhaps be a voice in that space, a very colonised space, and consider things during the Harmony Festival, National Reconciliation Week, bringing education to the difference between the National Apology and Sorry Day, they're two different things, and to be able to really embrace Mabo Day, as a time when there was a big change that happened in our political space.
"It's always about listening to how our local community want to have that reflected, and then we get an opportunity to be a voice in that City of Ballarat space."
Councillor Belinda Coates said January 26 remains traumatic for many people in the community but it was "heartening" to see how the Survival Day event had been embraced so far.
"We do need to acknowledge that part of colonisation was trauma for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - there were massacres, there were the Frontier Wars, there was land stolen and children taken away," she said.
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"That's had a profound impact on us as a nation."
The Survival Day dawn ceremony begins at 5.30am at View Point on January 26, and will be held according to COVID-safe rules.
More information is available online.
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