Carl Brown

As I walk through this beautiful country of mine, I stop, look and listen and remember As the spirits from my ancestors surround me That make me stand tall and proud of who I am As I am a Ngunnawal warrior of today And no man-made laws Will take that away from me.

Carl Brown grew up in Yass, NSW, and is a member of the Wallabalooa clan within the Ngunnawal people. Having worked in construction through his life in Canberra, including the building of parliament house, he continues to be tied to his country through his work. Carl regularly goes out on surveys with archaeologists to assess the cultural heritage of sites before development can take place.

“When I think about country I think about my parents - it’s about the Elders that have passed on before me – how they lived and how different things are today.

“I’m sure my mother never saw a mobile phone in her life.”

When it comes to passing on knowledge to his two sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren, Carl speaks of pride.

“I’d like my children to be proud of who they are – I am proud to be here because of my people. I’m always out bush and now my son is a ranger – I volunteer to go out with him in Namadgi National Park all the time.”

Glenda (Merritt) Hyde

Looking after the land and natural resources into the future is something Ngunawal woman Glenda Hyde is closely involved in. As the Aboriginal Liaison Officer for Bulk Water Alliance working on securing the region’s water supply into the future, Glenda’s job is just one expression of her connection to country.

“Nobody can take our connection to the land of our ancestors away from us. We are responsible for taking care of our land now and into the future. We need to protect and respect our cultural sites, and recognise the importance of all these special places.

“We have a spiritual connection to the land where our ancestors presence is still here around us, their burial sites, songs, dance, stories, language, their dreamtime and all the natural resources they survived off. They cared for this land and now it is our turn.”

Born in Yass, Glenda is the voice for her family and particularly her father, Bruce Merrit. With a daughter and grandson that will inherit Ngunnawal culture, Glenda wants to make Ngunawal culture a strong presence in the Canberra region and community.

“I want to pass on knowledge for our younger generation and for their children. I want Government Departments and other agencies to work with us and build positive relationships when it comes to cultural and land matters on our country.

“My country makes me feel proud, it's a special bond. It's home where you feel safe and where you want to share that feeling with others.

“The spiritual connection makes you feel warm when you welcome others to your land. It's about relationships, responsibility, respecting and educating each other about our special land.”

To me a great leader or elder is true leadership and giving people a chance and a fair go it is about giving respect and they shall receive respect in return, respecting peoples differences, respecting cultural differences, respecting family friends work colleagues and respecting everyone, your character and integrity, feeling safe, honesty and being trusted. This certainly needs to be practiced before it can be preached. True leaders or Elders value their people and others and in doing so they create loyalty.

I would want my family to continue for as long as we are on this earth as proud Ngunawal People for generations to come, teaching their culture and connections to this land!!

Violet (Merritt) Sheridan

Violet Sheridan is a Ngunnawal Elder who grew up in her mother’s country, Yass, NSW. Today, she laughs when she tells you she lives in a Canberra suburb called Ngunnawal.

“I didn’t choose it because of the name – but you know, country is so close to my heart that it seems right to live in a suburb called Ngunnawal.”

With three sons, a daughter and 15 grandchildren, Violet passes on the knowledge she gained from her uncle Bruce Merritt about her mother’s Ngunnawal birth line.

“I treasure the knowledge my Uncle has given me and although I have lived in Kamilaroi country for a while, I yearned to come home.

“Canberra is a multicultural community – no-one judges people by their colour or their race, as a Ngunnawal woman I respect the right for everyone to live and love this part of the country.

“It is important that we all work together in order to preserve and protect the heritage of the Ngunnawal culture.”

Loretta (Bell) Halloran

Ngunnawal Elder Loretta Halloran grew up on the Yass mission surrounded by her 11 sisters, three brothers, cousins, mum and dad, uncles and aunties and grandparents.

It was a close family, making it all the more terrifying for Loretta when she and her sister were stolen from Yass park, taken to the police station and locked in a cell for a week.

“We were picked up by the welfare and taken to Sydney to live for almost seven years in a girl’s home. To me it seemed like forever.

“Mum and Dad only found us because a farmer who my dad worked for in Yass helped my father to find us.

“I was strong like my father, but I still cried for home and being stolen left me emotional for the rest of my life.”

One of the oldest members of the United Ngunnawal Elders Council, Loretta has strong memories of the lessons and skills taught to her and her children by her father.

“My father taught my children about hunting and gathering - fishing, crayfish, catching rabbits, finding water, the different plants, how to read the moon and the stars.

“At dusk, he could catch a fish with his hands in the water under the bank. My mum knew how to get the colours out of the roots of plants to die the corn bags for our clothes. We would get the ochre, the colours off the creeks to paint with and my grandfather would speak some of the language that I loved.

“I still speak what I know today to my children.”

If there’s one message Loretta wants to leave to her family it is to keep connected to the land and follow culture.

“We should never forget who we are or where we came from. To be a good Elder you have to love everyone and forgive and keep your family close and to help all our people”.

Agnes (Bulger) Shea OAM

One of eight siblings, Ngunnawal Elder Agnes Shea was born at Oakhill, North Yass before being raised at Hollywood Reserve.

“It was a different life to now, we had much more closeness and togetherness and we lived with our uncles and aunties, grandparents and friends and we cared and shared with each other.

“We felt protected because our Elders were there with us.”

When her father died when she was just eight-years-old, Agnes and her seven siblings were raised by their mother. She remembers her mum was lucky enough to get recognised and respected by the community and was given permission to do domestic work for non-Indigenous families by the authorities.

“Caring and sharing is the essence of Aboriginal culture. We can walk free and talk free now but we couldn’t do that before. We didn’t know any different back then, we only knew the mission life. If you didn’t do what you were told you could be sent away.”

Agnes is a foundation member of the United Ngunnawal Elders Council because she wanted to help young people and to bring respect between the many cultures of people in the Canberra region.

“You have to respect your Elders and we have to give respect back to our youth. We want to bring back that respect through our work.”

Fred Monaghan

When an “old Aboriginal lady” crossed the street in Yass to tap Fred Monaghan on the shoulder he didn’t know he was to end up an Elder for his community. Born in Griffith, NSW, he later married a Yass woman and moved to the town in the 1970s.

“I was approached by one of the Elders in the community and she wanted to know who my Mum and Dad were and she told me ‘you’re my people, you’re Ngunnawal’”

That woman was an Old Lady by the name of Jean Brown (nee Bell) and although Fred knew he had a connection to the area, in the early part of his life he didn’t really have much information.

After moving to the ACT from Yass with his wife, Fred was again approached by another Elder by the name of Noelene Rudder (nee Carroll) she told him about their family connections.

“I then made contact with my Aunty Josie Ingham in Cowra and she told me to do some research and look for the family name ‘Lane’. She shared with me her knowledge and the stories that she had.

“A lot of the Elders wanted to get together and push for Ngunnawal people to get involved in identifying and getting recognition for our identity in the history of this region.

“Being Ngunnawal for me is all about the Elders. In my work with young people in this area I have to maintain my Ngunnawal identity, to be able to assist government people to make changes to acknowledge Ngunnawal people.

“I think the Elders have achieved protocols about Welcome to Country with the ACT Government and I’m really happy that the government has recently announced it is allocating funds to a geneology for Ngunnawal peoples.”

Jannette Phillips

A Ngunnawal woman through both her parents, Jannette Phillips grew up on the Brungle Aboriginal Reserve between Tumut and Gundagai – some 45 kms south-west of Canberra.

After living on the NSW Central Coast and Darwin for many years, Jannette returned to Ngunnawal country in 1996 and feels safe and at peace in her country.

“It’s a sense of belonging. I am at peace in my heart here. It’s the family, kinship and my mum and dad’s stories that keep me connected to country.”

With a background in early childhood and domestic violence work, Jannette is a committed teacher, community worker and has a passion for education and reading. The forced suppression of traditional Aboriginal languages to the point where generations could no longer speak fluently is something that she resents.

“We were forbidden to speak our language – our grandparents were beaten if they spoke in language. They used to go off in the bush to speak it. We didn’t lose our language – we didn’t leave it in the bush – we were robbed of it.”

With six sons, a daughter and three grandchildren, Jannette wants to instil pride in her family.

“There are so many opportunities in Canberra for education and jobs for our children.

“I tell my kids to be proud of who they are and do the best with what you’ve got. Don’t abuse what options you are given because the world is getting to be a hard place to live and chances don’t always come again.

“Don’t think you’ve got a long time because you haven’t.”

Although you may face big challenges and injustice in your life, Jannette believes that by looking to help others you see your own story in a greater perspective that makes your own problems seem somehow less threatening.

“I have seen people from Timor in Darwin who have survived just by the skin of their teeth; people from Somalia or Rwanda who have only just made it. Yes, it’s been hard at times but then you meet someone else and your story seems so pitiful in comparison.

“I tell my kids that if I pass away tomorrow, while they will cry and miss me, I want them to focus on the joy that I have survived no matter what happened.”

Josephine Ingram

Born in Orange, NSW, Josephine Ingram moved to Cowra with her mother and older sister where they camped under the railway bridge before they moved to Urambi Mission when she was five. At the Mission School she remembers having a lot of friends, though she wasn’t taught a lot about the land back then.

“When I was young I didn’t learn very much about the land and I didn’t know what tribe I was in until my mother said ‘you are from the brown snake – you are Ngunnawal’.

“As I got older I realised what she was telling me.”

At the mission, Josephine got involved in campaigning for better conditions and for Aboriginal rights.

Josephine’s great grandfather was Andy Lane, who represented his tribe when Europeans came to the Canberra area. “I understand he was a good man and wanted to get his people a proper place to live so he helped them.”

As an Elder herself now, Josephine dedicates all of her time to her family – and you will often find her on the road in between being at home in Cowra with her grandkids and her nieces, nephews and other family in Wagga, Narrandera, Griffith, Canberra, Sydney and beyond.

“We look after each other.

“My niece said to me one day, ‘you know, you were always there when I needed you Aunt,’ and she didn’t want me to go home after a visit.

“I’m only four foot nothing but that makes me feel 10 ft tall, you know?

“We’ve got nothing but what we have got we can share. My family is the most important thing in my life.”

Roslyn Brown

One of the founding members of the United Ngunnawal Elders Council, Ros Brown grew up in the Tumut Plains and Gundagai region with her family. When she was 12 years old, she was taken by authorities to a children’s home in Sydney - an event that cemented her commitment in later years to keeping Ngunnawal culture strong.

“I was taken by welfare because I was fair-skinned. I spent two years in the home then they sent me back to my mother in Tumut.”

It’s no coincidence that family and culture is something that gives Ros security and brings her ‘home’.

“My grandfather used to take us fishing and he taught us that he was the tree trunk and we were the branches.

“He told us that the trees were alive with spirits and how they were important for the land and for the people living on it. I guess that made me a bit of a greenie from early on.”

When there was discussion over the spelling of the word Ngunnawal, Ros lobbied the ACT Government and brought the Elders of all the family groups together to discuss and finalise the matter. In 2003, she and two other Ngunnawal Elders (Fred Monaghan and Agnes Shea) worked together to bring over 40 Elders together in one location and then set up the United Ngunnawal Elders Council to advise the ACT Government.

Ros was also instrumental in establishing Ngunnawal healing camps to bring reconciliation within the Ngunnawal community and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Farm. She was Chair of the ACT COAG process in 2003 – 2005 and won a Centenary medal from the Prime Minister and Attorney General in 2000 for her community work

“It’s important to keep the community together. It’s easy to get down or be negative, the hard part is being positive but that’s the vision that you’ve got to have.

“To be a good leader you have to be a servant of your people, and that’s what Elders are.”

Laura (Briar-Brown) Bell

Ngunnawal Elder Laura Briar has three Ngunnawal family connections – Brown, Bell and Briar – though she represents the Briar family on the United Ngunnawal Elders Council.

Laura’s mother, Ivy Lillian Bell, was the daughter of Tom Brown and Delicia Briar. While Laura spent a lot of time with her Dad John James (Ferdy) Bell, a Ngunnawal farmer who had land in Yass and Tumut, she would love to know more about the Briar’s side of the family in the Braidwood area, about 100 km from Canberra.

“I want find the old people from Braidwood, where my Mum grew up, who might have known her,” Laura says.

“I’d like to know what she did in her life. It’s important to know that history – not just for my family, but for all Ngunnawal peoples.”

Laura is researching and writing a book on her history so that her children can grow up proud of who they are and know where they are connected. She feels it’s important to show the Briar family’s continuing connection to Ngunnawal land.

“To know who you are gives you peace and love in your heart.”

Laura still has strong and fond memories of the time spent with her Dad, who taught her to swing fishing lines out into the river.

“We didn’t have rods back then but it makes me happy to think of those times. I wish I had those days back, to be honest.

“When he was taking us for a long drive, my father used to pull over to the side of the road and set up a camp oven. He’d make damper and put it in the oven and cover it with coals and we’d have the most beautiful warm damper and treacle.

“I am so proud of him. Some say his nickname was ‘Ferdy’ after Ferdinand the Bull because he was so strong.”

That strength passed to Laura too, who survived five aneurisms before coming back and committing to the role of an Elder in the community.

“It made me strong. I think if I can come through what I have, then I can do anything.

“I really wanted to be part of the Elders to help all Ngunnawal people.”