In the past year, Scott Morrison has been thanking ex-servicemen and women at formal events and ceremonies at the same time as the “acknowledgment of country”, in which Indigenous elders are recognised.

I am a Wiradyuri man and I spent six years in the army.

If the prime minister wants to recognise the work of soldiers, that’s fine, but you can’t put it together with an acknowledgement of country. An acknowledgment of country is done by someone who is not traditionally from a place. It’s about acknowledging the people of the land but also acknowledging the land.

That’s what acknowledgement of country is about, but I think politicians still just don’t get it.

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The way we see it, by acknowledging veterans, they’re only acknowledging their own. I was in the transport corps for six years, driving trucks and other vehicles. A lot of our people have been through the army training camp here in Bathurst.

But they don’t acknowledge Aboriginal soldiers from the first and second world wars, the Korean war or the early part of the Vietnam war.

Before 1967, many Aboriginal men enrolled in the army. Many of them, like my great uncle, were told not to say they were Aboriginal.

They enlisted in the two world wars, fighting for a country that didn’t acknowledge them in their own land. They weren’t conscripted, because they weren’t counted as Australian citizens until the 1967 referendum. They enlisted voluntarily.

Aboriginal soldiers fought for Australia as far back as the Boer war. At the end of that conflict, Aboriginal soldiers were left behind in South Africa because of the White Australia policy. Is Morrison going to acknowledge them? They fought in the war but then they were told by their commanders they couldn’t come home.

But for us Wiradyuri people, the biggest war started on 14 August 1824, when Governor Brisbane declared martial law in Bathurst. For us it was a homeland war. Our head warrior was a guy called Windradyne, and he led an army of 500 to 600 warriors who were fighting to defend their people. It wasn’t just the British army they were fighting, they were fighting a civilian militia and convicts.

It was spears against guns. The British completely wiped out family groups. Warriors like Wyndradyne were defending our people against terrorist acts.

Politicians don’t acknowledge that what happened in Australia was a war. But the Sydney Gazette at the time reported: “While there is peace and tranquillity in the Wellington Valley, there is a war of extermination going on in the Bathurst Plains.” So it was described as a war in 1824.

Because of the bad history that happened with the early settlers of this area, there’s a lot more that needs to happen before we can move on as a people.

Politicians talk about reconciliation but that is the wrong word. That word means you had a relationship in the first place and an agreement that was broken. There’s never been that in this country. As far as we’re concerned, in 1815 when Macquarie came here and raised the flag in Bathurst, he never spoke to the Wiradyuri people or made any agreement with the Wiradyuri people. We have never ceded our sovereignty.

For us to heal, there needs to be truth telling. We have to face up to the truth and talk about the truth. It is only then that we can build a bridge that we can cross together.

Aboriginal people carry scars, and white people carry scars too. The only way we’re going to heal those scars is to talk it out.

What Morrison has to do is acknowledge that Aboriginal people on this continent are the most successful civilisation in the world: a civilisation that lasted 60,000 years.

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He has to acknowledge that colonisation is the biggest thing that has caused problems for Aboriginal people and this country today. Things will never go right for us until we address those issues and politicians sit down and listen to Aboriginal people.

An acknowledgment of country is about recognising the people who look after the country.

As a cultural immersion trainer at Charles Sturt University, I teach the Wiradyuri concept of Yindyamarra. It’s a way of life for us that we follow. It means to have respect, to do slowly, to be polite, to be honourable and to be gentle. Everything we do comes back to Yindyamarra.

Aboriginal people have still got the knowledge about our country and politicians need to listen to us.

Soldiers protect us from invaders but they don’t protect the land. Protecting the land is all of our responsibility.

The only person you can put above the land is the creator. As a Christian, Morrison should know that.