Where's the Pride in Having to Hide? - Part 4 — Dark Emu Exposed

Nov 12

Nov 12 Where's the Pride in Having to Hide? - Part 4

This is the concluding post on our genealogical research into the ancestry claims by the ALP Candidate for Richmond, proud Yorta Yorta woman, Lauren O’Dwyer.

The furore surrounding her ancestry claims was recently covered by The Age newspaper:

ALP Candidate for Richmond, Lauren O’Dywer claims that she is of Yorta Yorta Aboriginal descent from her great-grandfather.

We have summarised the alleged family tree for Lauren O’Dwyer to the level of her great-grandfathers, as shown in Figure 2 below. The full family tree details can be found in our previous Posts 1, 2 and 3.

These four great-grandfathers are:

1 - Thomas Francis O’Dwyer, born in 1903 in Malvern, Victoria (died 1979 in Coburg, Victoria)

2 - David Thomas O’Reilly, born in 1900 in Smeaton, Victoria (died 1980 West Coburg, Victoria)

3 - John Stanley Hay, born in 1915 in Kyneton, Victoria (died 14 June 1995 Moama, NSW)

4 - Graham Ernest Berry, born in 1914 in Swan Hill, Victoria (died in 1971 in QLD)

**Figure 3 - Lauren O’Dwyer’s alleged family tree up to the four great-grandfather level.** *Sources: publicly available records. Download file* *here*

For each of these four great-grandfathers, we were able to trace the original ancestry directly back to Europe or the British American Colonies.

We did not identify any Aboriginal ancestry at all, anywhere in the extended family tree.

The towns where Lauren O’Dwyer’s four great-grandfathers were born - Malvern, Smeaton, Kyneton and Swan Hill - are all outside Yorta Yorta country (Figure 4).

It seems confusing to us that Lauren O’Dwyer can claim that her great-grandfather was a Yorta Yorta man, but the records show that, which ever one he was, he wasn’t even born on Yorta Yorta country and within the local community, and all his ancestors were originally from Europe or British America.

**Figure 4 - Yorta Yorta Country - approximate boundaries. All four towns where Lauren O’Dwyer’s four great-grandfathers were born are *outside* Yorta Yorta country.** *Source:* *Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation*

All the genealogical work that we have done into the alleged family tree of Lauren O’Dwyer we have done in good faith based on the publicly available records, and on behalf of our Aboriginal informants.

Now maybe we are wrong - maybe there is some unknown or hidden information that would necessitate an amendment to this alleged Lauren O’Dwyer family tree. The only person who might have some additional family information is Lauren O’Dwyer herself but, as far as we can see, she is only relying on what The Age newspaper calls some “papers” issued by the Njernda Aboriginal Corporation. O’Dwyer has not publicly released these “papers” so the voters of Richmond are none the wiser as to whether these “papers” confirm with any certainty O’Dywer’s claimed ancestry.

Some of our readers might be wondering why all this matters.

Dan Andrews and the ALP are completely free to pre-select any candidate that they wish to stand in the forthcoming election. From what we can see, Lauren O’Dwyer looks like a hard working candidate, who is articulate and might be a good representative for the voters of Richmond.

However, her ancestral claims as the ALP candidate for Richmond go to the heart of the perceived integrity of the Andrew’s government and its claimed commitment to the Aboriginal people of Victoria.

The Premier has pushed hard to establish the Aboriginal Yoorrook Justice Commission as the first formal truth-telling process into past and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria as a result of colonisation. Yoorrook was set up by agreement between the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Victorian Government, but is independent of the Assembly and of Government.

Premier Andrews has endorsed the Truth-telling process which, ‘represented a commitment to truth and to change, in recognition that “without truth, without justice, there can be no Treaty. As a state, as a nation, we must do better. That means not only hearing Aboriginal voices — but actually listening to them. And taking meaningful action in order to achieve real and lasting change,” they said.’

There is an increasing number of Australians who are concerned about reports that ‘fake Aborigines’ - ‘box-tickers’ and ‘race-shifters’ - are attempting and often succeeding in infiltrating Aboriginal communities, the welfare system, the public service and academia in an effort to obtain benefits that are meant to be for the support and advancement of real Aboriginal Australians. Wiradjuri researcher Suzanne Ingram has written and spoken on this worrying trend.

Thus, because even members of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria have reportedly been calling for Lauren O’Dwyer to provide some real evidence that she is who she claims to be, a Yorta Yorta Aboriginal woman from Echuca, it is incumbent on the ALP to ask their candidate to provide this evidence.

Nothing short of the integrity and truth-telling credentials of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Victorian Government is at stake.

And our advice to the members of the First Peoples’ Assembly is that if they want to be taken seriously they need to say, ‘enough is enough - the days of the appropriation and manipulation of Aboriginal people is over.’