When Aunty Fay Carter reflects on the possibility of treaty, she sees a historic chance to educate Victorians on her community's battles.
"Our whole history needs to be taught in schools, so that young people can appreciate what our history's all about, what has happened to our people," the Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta elder said.
"The pain and suffering that happened to our old people, that we are now trying to rectify these days."
Now in her late 80s, Aunty Fay has lived through several of those chapters.
She can still recall the day Queen Elizabeth II, the figurehead of a system that had dispossessed Aboriginal people, was shielded from seeing the reality of life for the Indigenous community living on The Flats near Shepparton in 1954.
Aunty Fay said she wanted to see treaty guarantee the full story of the state's history was known across the community, including health and education workers.
"So that they can then have a really good understanding of how to deal with our people," she said.
"There's so much lacking in education."
Treaty negotiation rules now in focus
It's now something she could see happen in her lifetime, as Victoria takes a momentous step forward in its journey towards state-based treaties.
On Thursday the state government and the First Peoples' Assembly will formally agree on a treaty negotiation framework — essentially, the ground rules for negotiations.
The framework confirms that it will be the Aboriginal Victorians on the next First Peoples' Assembly — which must be elected before November next year — who will sit at the table with government to negotiate a blanket treaty.
In addition to the blanket treaty, the framework confirms that delegations can be formed by Indigenous communities to negotiate specific treaties for different areas.
And it lays out how those groups can access a self-determination fund, to ensure they're on an equal footing when negotiating with government.
The government has revealed it will make an initial investment of $65 million in the self-determination fund, which will be managed and administered by the First Peoples' Assembly.
Negotiations will be overseen by an Indigenous-led treaty umpire, known as the Treaty Authority.
The authority will have the important task of ensuring the negotiations are playing out in a way that upholds the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It will also work to help bring local groups together as treaty delegations — a complex task in Victoria, where some communities have been deeply fractured by colonisation.
The framework is one of the final major pieces of work tasked to the first incarnation of the First Peoples' Assembly, and brings Aboriginal communities closer to the business end of deciding what should go into a treaty with government.
'We're going to stand strong and stand together'
At a recent Treaty Day Out event on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Bendigo, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Victorians came together to reflect on the possibilities of treaty.
Assembly co-chair Aunty Geraldine Atkinson told the community not to ask someone else what treaty was about — treaty is what you make it, she said.
Based on the community conversations held over the past few years, a statewide treaty is likely to cover issues across every facet of life, including cultural heritage, language preservation, law and order, the environment and education.
Assembly member Trent Nelson, a Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta man, said members felt the weight of responsibility to get the treaty process right.
"This will be something in history that we look back on … all we know is that we're going to stand strong and stand together," he said.
"And walk together as well, it's really important with the non-Aboriginal community as well as our community.
"The biggest job for us is not to leave anyone behind."
Mr Nelson said looking to overseas examples was crucial to ensure genuine self-determination for Aboriginal people was realised.
"We take the good parts and the good knowledge that has come from those people, those First Nations people that are going through those processes now that are probably further down the track than what we are," he said.
'We need to be empowered'
Assembly member and Gunditjmara and Buandig elder Uncle Michael "Mookeye" Bell said treaty was a chance to address the harmful legacies of colonisation by putting the power back in Aboriginal hands.
"We've got to care for our community … and we need to be empowered to do that," he said.
Non-Indigenous Victorian Hew Colebatch is passionate about seeing treaty realised.
But he said what went into it wasn't a question for him.
"That's up to the First Nations assembly, Indigenous communities, corporations within the state of Victoria," he said.
An Anglo-Chinese Australian born in Papua New Guinea, Mr Colebatch said he joined the army when he was 17.
"And as I got older and got a little bit of nous and started to learn more and more about what was actually happening and had happened in this country, I thought 'holy crap, the way we've treated the Indigenous people is just so abhorrent for so long'," he said.
"We seem to just take two steps forward, one step back … or one step forward two steps back a lot of the time as well.
"Supporting the treaty process, I'm 100 per cent on board, because I think we can do better … we can, we must."
