Victoria’s settler colonisation has been a violent and traumatic ongoing series of events on both Aboriginal people and our landscapes.

Despite attempts to kill us off, assimilate us, we are still here. This truth is a thorn in the colonial side. As our physical human form persists, our land and our claim to it too remains. Despite land theft, pollution, “development” and unsustainable white farming practices, sacred places still exist.

The 800-year-old Djap Wurrung trees slated to be bulldozed and have bitumen poured over them to extend the Western Freeway near Ararat, Victoria, are one such site. The proposed changes will apparently save drivers two minutes. What is two minutes to 800 years?

The official line given by the Major Roads Project Authority is safety. This framing can be understood as a way to undermine land defenders and position us as against the interests of the rest of the population. What left unsaid is do these trees not matter? Does Djap Wurrung culture and connection to country not matter? Is there no alternative?

The fight to save the trees began last year when construction was scheduled to begin. This construction would destroy dozens of old and culturally significant trees. There has been legal to’ing and fro’ing between the land defenders and the government. The fight gained momentum again in mid-March when bulldozers armed with a small army of police came to destroy the trees. A call was sounded by the embassy established near the trees for more bodies to protect the trees. The call out was met by up to 100 black land defenders and our non-Aboriginal accomplices.

The police were ejected from the site at the end of 18 March. At the moment there is an undertaking requiring the government to stop its work until 22 April.

It is important to situate myself when I write about these trees. My existence would perhaps not be possible without them. I am a Djap Wurrung person through my grandmother Sandra Onus (you can call her Aunty). These trees are Djap Wurrung people’s inheritance. These trees are my inheritance, our inheritance. Their survival and our fight to keep them alive and safe are a cultural obligation and an assertion of our sovereignty. This sovereignty is a threat to the state. These words are my attempt to keep them alive. These words are too an assertion of sovereignty.

No settler in Australia can look at any place in this country and know they have a blood connection spanning more than a few generations. There is probably a word for it in my language that I haven’t learned yet but the closest I can come to describing it in English is an immense and utterly overwhelming sense of connection.

The limitations and lack of sophistication in the English language, and that there is no word for this feeling, means the Anglo settler doesn’t get to experience this and can not possibly know this feeling. This was long traded by their ancestors. They can’t understand what it means to be able to connect the blood coursing through your body to ancestors blood soaked in ancient soil and ancient trees. To sit in a tree that saw your people birthed, your people massacred, and now your people’s resistance is a feeling that the English language will never be able to capture.

This connection may be fuzzy, heartwarming and poetic but this connection is a threat. It is a feeling that reinforces our rights to this land. This connection must therefore, by the logic of the settler state, be destroyed. That a small army of police was set upon land defenders represents how little regard the state has for black people. The attempt to wipe out our sacred places must also be seen as an attempt to wipe out our claim to them. This serves to further dispossess, wipe the slate clean, and allow the state to continue its operations unhindered by Aboriginal sovereignty.

The inability to see these sites as worthy of being protected or that they are significant is fundamentally racist. It is white selectivity that deems sacred trees unworthy of protection. This white selectivity spans across all elements of our life – what is taught in schools, who is worthy of justice – but plays out particularly in the public imagination surrounding what sites are important and for what reason.

Living places are demonstrably more important for us, yet by virtue of their importance being designated by black people they are not worthy of this state’s protection.