The decisions we make today have the potential to ripple through generations. Sean Gordon knows that better than most.
The Hunter First Nations advocate who has dedicated his working life to carving out the long path to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians was born into the foster system on the former Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission and said his time growing up among young indigenous kids living with the effects of the NSW government's Aboriginal Protection Act instilled in him a need to look out for his community.
Mr Gordon has spent his adult life involved in a litany of Indigenous advocacy programs and, in 2017, was a delegate to the First Nations Constitutional Convention that ultimately produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart - the precursor to the referendum to alter the constitution and enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to be held later this year.
"But when we go back and look at history, the history of how and why I landed on that mission, in foster homes, is that my people - the Wangkumara people - were forcibly removed in 1938 from Tibooburra; 117 Wangkumara people forced on the back of cattle trucks to the Brewarrina Mission," he said.
"My great-great grandfather, my great-great grandmother, and all of their children were on the back of those trucks and it led to the next two generations being impacted where my parents were just not capable of raising kids.
"When I advocate for Indigenous people to have a greater say in the law and policies that impact us, I look back on that experience of legislation that was developed by the NSW government in 1909 - a single decision to forcibly take 117 Wangkumara people from their country and displace them - and how it had an impact on me, a child born in 1970.
"When we think about laws and policies, we shouldn't just be thinking in the short term, but what is the long term impact and will it be positive or negative; it's understanding my history and how our governments have made decisions in the past that have impacted particularly on Indigenous people."
Mr Gordon has been named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) as part of the King's Birthday honours.
Among his many achievements, though - including years of working through the conservative wings of government to advocate for reconciliation - he said educating the next generation of Indigenous Australians was among his proudest achievements.
"One of the things I'm most proud of is the establishment of Darkinjung Barker [just outside Wyong on the site of the original Yarramalong Public School]," he said.
"Education, I think, is critical to ensure that our people and especially our kids have a greater chance of succeeding. But it also needs to be an education that recognises traditional culture and practices."
Mr Gordon said an education system that recognised and respected Indigenous culture, but also its contribution to the nation's culture as a whole, helped Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians find shared experience.
"I've been very heavily involved in the Voice referendum," he said. "But it is good to have the many years of hard work that have sat outside the current referendum space acknowledged."
