Back in 2001, the literary journal Meanjin was preparing a special issue called “Poetics” and selected writers were invited to record their poems to a CD (ironically titled Enhancer) that would be sold with the journal, tucked into a plastic pocket at
the back.

I was asked to go to a place in Coburg or Brunswick, somewhere miles away from where I lived in Melbourne’s west, and read “The Immigration Experience,”
a two-part piece about what the title says.

When I got there, Lisa Bellear was at the mic. I had heard of Bellear from the “Koorie survival show” that used to be on 3CR, a community radio station in Melbourne. Lisa read two powerful short poems – “Reconciliation Spins My Head” and “Prepared to Die” – in a voice that was slow and dreamy, edged with menace.

Then Lisa hung around to watch me. I was nervous. As I reflected in an essay for Te Pouhere Kōrero, the journal of the Māori Historians Association, I had not imagined what a Koorie person would think of my work. I had written my piece with a white Australian audience in mind, I guess, and maybe a Pākehā one as well.

Afterwards, we had a chat. Lisa was a warm person with a beautiful smile. She commented on my outfit – a subtle combo of a bright-orange fake-fur maternity dress worn over striped bell-bottomed leggings – and noted that we had both made mention of cousins in our work. I felt her reference was rather more sophisticated than mine but whatever. Then Lisa got to the point.

“We don’t like it when you Māoris come over here and tell us how things shouldbe for us,” she said. Lisa was looking away from me as she spoke. Her voice was light, almost joking, but I heard her message. Do not speak for me. Do not compare your people with mine. Be respectful. Listen. Don’t ever forget who you are and where you are.

Five years later, Lisa Bellear – poet, playwright, photographer, comedian – died in her sleep and the obituary published in The Age said 1000 people attended her funeral at the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League headquarters in Thornbury.

This might sound weird, but I’ve learnt that it is a gift when someone important – say, Lisa Bellear – decides you are worth dressing down, and after reading Megan Davis’s brilliant essay, this encounter with Lisa came back to me.

In arguing for a constitutional Voice, Davis says Australians “could see an unconventional yet compelling invitation to address one of the most acute challenges for Indigenous Australia: getting the government to listen.”

The second section of Davis’s essay is called “The Torment of Our Powerlessness,” a title not easy to forget. “Parliaments do not listen because they do not have to,” Davis writes.

Bob Hawke promised a treaty (1988). Didn’t happen. Royal Commissions have come and gone – Deaths in Custody (1991) and Little Children Are Sacred (2007) – but still nothing changed. The Northern Territory set up a Treaty Commission (2019) but the work fizzled out. South Australia announced treaty negotiations (2016), then a new government canned them. Now they are back on. A change of government in Victoria could derail the work happening here too.

As Davis said in her 2021 Mabo Oration: “Treaties that are not premised on the country’s federal structure are not binding treaties.”

Pandered to, placated, patted on the back, fobbed off with “Acknowledgments of Country and an endless parade of posters and water bottles and wristbands” or Reconciliation Action Plans (yesterday’s news), Davis damns the ritualistic ways that federal, state and territory governments have signalled “connection and deep engagement” with First Nations communities while continuing to ignore what these communities are actually saying.

Attending a NAIDOC morning tea might make non-Aboriginal people living in Australia feel good, but it does nothing to reduce the numbers of First Nations children who are removed from their homes or the number of First Nations people who are in prison. (I mention child protection because Davis uses it as a case study to justify the need for a Voice to Parliament, and here in Victoria the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s first inquiries have been on child protection and the criminal justice system.)

I understand some of the struggles here because I’ve seen similar ones at home. No matter what some people like to say, Aotearoa New Zealand is not a bicultural paradise where the immense harm of colonisation is being undone, one treaty settlement at a time. If that were so, why are so many of us here?

One in five Māori, about 170,000 people, live in Australia. In total, just under 560,000 New Zealand–born people live here, making us the fourth-largest immigrant community, behind people born in the United Kingdom, India and China.

Some of us refer to Australia as Te Ao Moemoea, which could mean the land of dreams or the land of the Dreaming, and even though we arrived as uninvited guests, this country has welcomed us. Australia has certainly been good to me. I have received an excellent tertiary education here, raised three kids with a top bloke (Italian-Anglo Australian), written four books, had good jobs and made good friends, but I also know my place.

Yes, I am an indigenous person in New Zealand, but, as Lisa Bellear reminded me all those years ago, here I am a migrant, a guest, a surface person wrapped in the blanket of my ancestry, a thin covering compared with the luxurious cloak First Nations people wear, the one created by 60,000 years of occupation, custodianship and care.

I am in awe of Professor Megan Davis, Aunty Pat Anderson AO and their many colleagues for the innovative and dogged work they did leading up to Uluṟu and what they’ve done since then. I am inspired by the fire and dignity of Professor Eleanor Bourke and the other Yoorook commissioners as they hold the state of Victoria to account in a series of extraordinary hearings (you can watch them online) and by the passion of many Elders who have chosen to give evidence so far.

Thank you for sharing your Country with me and my family. Thank you for your power, humility, generosity and intellectual, artistic, creative and legal excellence. I will vote Yes and I hope every other eligible Māori and Pākehā person living on your land does too.

Rachel Buchanan (Taranaki, Te Ātiawa) lives on Bunurong land. Her latest book, Te Motunui Epa, was co-winner of the 2023 Ernest Scott Prize for History. Rachel was a finalist in the Māori Literature Trust’s inaugural Keri Hulme Award.