"Only 11 years before I was born," said proud Yorta Yorta woman Rachel Muir on Monday afternoon, "the '67 referendum made changes so that Aboriginals could be counted as citizens in their own country, instead of being classed as flora, fauna or plants and animals."
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"Never mind we'd been here for 85,000 years and were the oldest living culture in the world," she added.
Her sense of frustration at that unyielding indignity was palpable with every passing syllable, yet unsurprising.
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It is, as Cr Belinda Coates pointed out, difficult for non-Indigenous people to fathom what it means to be reduced to less than human for so long, and yet still - to this day - experience discrimination due to the colour of one's skin.
"[First Nations] people have, in their daily lives or through their ancestors and lived experience, faced incredible oppression and racism," she said, referencing the unbroken trauma carried by the twin waves of genocide underpinning, first, the frontier wars and, second, the Stolen Generations.
"It's been a long haul for Indigenous Australians and we've got a lot more work to do."
The 1967 referendum did not, contrary to popular opinion, mark the end of discrimination for Indigenous people in Australia - it neither extending them voting rights, social welfare nor basic wage justice.
It merely recognised that First Nations people shared the same basic humanity which unites all persons - something incidentally accepted under US federal law with respect to native Americans nearly a century earlier. Progress is, on any view, slow in Australia.
Yet the occasion is marked as a central milestone in Reconciliation Week precisely because it speaks to the profound change ordinary non-Indigenous Australians can achieve in the slow march for Indigenous justice.
"The word 'Ballarat' in Wadawarrung means 'resting place'," said City of Ballarat mayor Daniel Moloney on Monday. "But we shouldn't be resting at all."
"The challenge goes out to all Australians to tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation so we can make change for the benefit of all Australians."
It was a sentiment echoed by Ms Muir, who emphasised the impossible task of reconciliation without non-Indigenous and Indigenous people walking side-by-side.
"Aboriginal people only make up three per cent of the population - without allies, we wouldn't have a voice," she said.
"Reconciliation Week is everyone's business; its goal is unbiased and reconciled country, which can only be achieved when [Indigenous] people can equally contribute to the daily life of this nation.
"Until that happens, Australia will not meet its full potential."
The theme for this year's Reconciliation Week is 'be brave, make change'. With a second referendum for Indigenous justice on the horizon, historic change is within grasp.
But so too is immediate change of a seemingly less profound nature, Ms Muir said. "Change begins with brave actions in your daily life."
Reconciliation is, as she put it, something which must necessarily live and continue to live in "the hearts, minds and actions of all Australians as we move forward [as] a nation."
Click here for everyday actions you can take to mark Reconciliation Week.
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