Thanks to the efforts of a young boy and his sister, a plaque on a bicentennial memorial at Sydney’s Earlwood Oval has now been rededicated to include a tribute to the original Indigenous custodians of the land.
During the COVID-19 lockdown two years ago, an eight-year-old Lionel Kennedy and his four-year-old sister Ella were playing in the oval, when they saw that the plaque on a memorial.
The plaque said the memorial was dedicated to “original landowners, John Parkes of Halesowen who was the first European settler”.
However, as the children pointed out to the ABC: “That’s not right.”
“The first people here were the Bedigal people,” Lionel said, based on what he had been learning in school.
So, the two decided to write a letter to their local council informing them of the need for a correction, which was as cute as it was powerful.
“To Canterbury Bankstown City. We are writing because we nottest [noticed] something wrong,” the letter began.
“John Parkes did’ent [didn’t] find the Land. It was Aboriginal Land. Could you change the sine [sign] at Earlwood oval so it sase [says] the Bedigal pepele [people] please?”
The adorable letter was then passed on from the council to its First Peoples Advisory Committee, where it was read by Wiradjuri elder Jennifer Newman. It can be viewed here.
Newman hailed the letter from the youngsters as “the embodiment and the personification” of what the Uluru Statement of the Heart called for in terms of truth-telling.
“Ella and Lionel didn’t just ask for the plaque to recognise Aboriginal people, they asked for it to recognise Bedigal people … and that’s really significant,” Newman told the publication.
Now, after two years of deliberation — which in council time is basically lightspeed — the Kennedy children’s request has been enacted.
Though the council did decide to keep the original plaque as it was, it also decided to rectify history by adding another plaque to the memorial that was unveiled on March 20.
The original plaque has not been removed, so as not to “repeat an act of erasure”, said Newman.
“This monument is rededicated to honour Bedigal, enduring custodians of Country, and to the memory of John Parks of Halesowen, who took up a colonial land grant here in 1816,” the new plaque reads.
The now 10-year-old Lionel and six-year-old Ella are thrilled by the change.
“The Bedigal were the first here and it’s important to know about their culture,” said the young activist.
Turns out you are never too young to write a letter to your council and make the world a little nicer. Onya kids.
