Thread by @CentreMehi

As this is @naidocweek, it should be a time for healing. For first nations finding more about your own family and traditional ties to country is one of the best ways you can do this. Follow this thread to see my journey. #NAIDOC2021 (1/21).

Finding those ties is the best way to keep our culture alive, because even if you have three white grandparents, you still have one who is black. This is something that cannot be broken because those blood lines go back to the Dreaming.

I want to share with you some stories which I hope will inspire you to go on the same journey. These are stories of resilience, survival and ultimately triumph. A good place to start is, where were your grand-parents born? What were their names and clan-groups?

For me, my four grandparents were from four different clan-groups, three Gomeroi and one Ainawan from the mountains. Clan-groups, or tribes if you like, are the basis of traditional connection to country. All had their own dialect, their own country, their own totemic centre.

Every part of country was owned by someone and it was the responsibility of each clan to look after that country and its resources. My clan ties are:

Gubbe (Boomi clan)
Wright (Wirrawei clan)
Cutmore (Wolaroi or Terrie Hie Hie clan)
Widders (Ainawan)

All have their own stories of survival, but i want to tell you about the Cutmore family and how we held on through colonisation and genocide.

The first man with a European name was my great, great grandfather, Peter Cutmore. He was born a Wolaroi traditional man around 1826.

He went by his traditional name for a large part of his life. It was a word which sounded something like Peter and so that is how it was recorded by white writers. He never adopted the surname Cutmore until his second marriage, where that name came from, we still don’t know.

He was first mentioned in the ‘Town and Country Journal’ in 1874, when a reporter made the journey to Wolaroi. Peter told him his story, one filled with tragedy. In writing about the Waterlooo Creek Massacre the reporter said ...

“... the slaughter of a large number of blacks by Major Nunn & his party ... There is now living but one blackfellow who escaped that dreadful slaughter. He is called Peter, I had a conversation with him at Terrie Hie Hie.”

My ancestor of course wasn’t the only survivor of the many massacres and acts of brutality against my mob, but he is the only one identified in the writings of the time at having been at the lagoon, now called ‘Jews Lagoon’ where the massacre occurred on Australia Day, 1838.

Peter was about 12 years old at the time and it is recounted in my family’s oral history that after the massacre, Peter along with other mob, went back to bury the bodies in secret. The location of the burial site remains a family secret to this day.

The hills of Terrie Hie Hie are the totemic centre for our clan and many of our mob stayed there following the colonial onslaught, but Peter remained and worked for the white people to stay alive at ‘Tycannah’ where he raised his first family.

However the hatred to my mob wasn’t finished and Peter had to endure a second tragedy with the murder of his young family, his wife and children, some time in the 1870s. The killing of my mob didn’t stop for about 50 years, but my ancestor was a survivor and he never gave up.

It was hard for him to find another wife in our country, most had been taken or murdered. So when in his 40s, he journeyed up to Ngarabal country, near Glenn Innes, for an arranged marriage. He walked up there on foot and met and married my great great grandmother, Katie Harrison

The difference in their age was 20 years, but they remained together till they passed and stayed at Tycannah for many years.

But dramas in Peter’s life were not over, as he found out some time later that the Government was now intent on talking all half-caste children into ‘care’. At the time many of his grandchildren were at the mission at Terrie Hie Hie.

He was tipped off that the Aboriginal Protection Board were going there. So he made a plan and went in a sulky and took his grandchildren away to a place now known as ‘Top Camp’ near Moree where he and Katie and extended family set up camp.

The children were never taken away and eventually Top Camp became a focus for other families who joined them, a centre for the survivors. In his time there Peter travelled widely throughout Gomeroi having many camps and became well known for his journeys.

His family multiplied and spread into different towns such as Delungra and Narrabri. Today we are many all having descended from this brave man.

Peter eventually passed around the turn of the century an old man and survived by Katie for another 20 years. Some photos have survived and I hope his story and the images will inspire you to keep up the fight for our people as they have inspired my family.

I know what he would say today, just like my mother had said, be strong and know who you are. As time has passed, it has now come full circle. Because it is time now to claim back our country, to take back what was taken from us. This should be your mission too, whoever your mob.