There was standing room only when Yuin Elder Uncle Gerry Moore held a talk with the Berry and District Historical Society at the Uniting Church Hall on the weekend.

Uncle Gerry sees it as a form of “truth telling” and spoke about the history of Indigenous people on the South Coast.

“The idea was to talk about how we came to live in the Shoalhaven Heads area, as well as Nowra, and how the early settlement and colonisation of our part of the country impacted Aboriginal people,” Uncle Gerry said.

Extensively published academic research highlights the impact of early European settlers on Aboriginal people with the clearing of their traditional lands ultimately leading to them being dispossessed.

“We lived in harmony on the land, and how eventually we had to coexist with early settlers and the impact that had on our people as far as clearing the land and pushing Aboriginal people off their traditional lands onto reserves or missions,” he said

“We wouldn’t be settled in the beautiful areas that we are if it weren’t for our warriors Broughton and Broger who assisted Dr Charles Throsby and later, Alexander Berry,” Uncle Gerry said.

Due to the constructs of colonisation, the sharing and the passing on of knowledge was lost until recently.

“We had the richest of cultures and ceremonies here on the coast before colonisation,” Uncle Gerry said.

“There’s a lot that our non-Aboriginal brothers and sisters don’t know about the way we lived and the different mobs, languages, customs, ceremonies and all these sorts of things that happened in our backyard,” he said.

However, it was not just a deficit perspective that Uncle Gerry shared, with much of the talk highlighting the strengths reforming within Aboriginal culture today.

“And things are slowly changing now with Aboriginal studies being taught in some schools, Aboriginal languages Dhurga and Dharawal language being taught in some schools,” he said.

Dhurga language is spoken by the Yuin people and Dharawal language by the Tharawal people. The Shoalhaven region borders Tharawal and Yuin countries.

 “It is actually rekindling the strength of our own Aboriginal kids in the school about their culture and wanting to identify strongly.

Within Australia today, there are more than 250 Indigenous languages, with 800 different dialects.

Uncle Gerry is a prominent figure within the Shoalhaven region and has been recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia for his Indigenous advocacy.