Mitchelton Library
History · Justice · Strength
Truth-Telling is a monthly community gathering at which First Nations Elders, Historians, and Authors meet non-Indigenous Australians to voice their Stories, their Histories, and their living Culture, in their own words, on their Country.
Each session welcomes a guest speaker to share their story: their history, their culture, their lived experience, and the long work of resilience, memory and belonging. We listen together, and afterwards we share refreshments and conversation.
The truth holds injustice and grief, and it holds achievement, artistry, humour, and strength. Queensland’s own truth-telling body put the principle plainly before Parliament dismantled it: it’s not all bad, and the good needs telling too. We tell both.
The gatherings are held at Mitchelton Library: free and open to everyone. Truth-telling is the beginning of walking together with respect. All are welcome: to come, listen, learn, and then to act for structural and constitutional change.
The Uluru Statement ends with First Nations Peoples inviting the Australian people to walk with them in a movement for a better future.
Beyond the impact of a Truth-Telling session, you may wish to use the books, films, podcasts, and archives gathered here to equip yourself for the journey ahead.
Books, Films and Podcasts by First Nations Authors
Brett Leavy descends from the Kooma people, whose Country runs from St George in the east to Cunnamulla in the west, north to Mitchell, and south to the New South Wales border, with the town of Bollon at its centre. Born in Sydney, he holds his Country in south-west Queensland, where the Federal Court recognised Kooma native title in 2014. His mother had to leave school in grade four to work on a cattle property, and she raised her children to prize the education she was denied.
In 1987 he won the national Under-20 200-metre title and played in the Junior Wallabies side that beat New Zealand. He then taught high-school history and geography at Boonah before Indigenous media claimed him: first the Townsville Indigenous Media Association, then the National Indigenous Radio Service, where as General Manager he oversaw a network that grew past 120 community stations, and where he was among those who pressed for the national Indigenous television service that became NITV.
In 1998 he founded CyberDreaming. Working with the Wakka Wakka and Kabi Kabi artist Vincent Serico, his team built Serico’s World, one of Australia’s first 3D game-engine simulations of Aboriginal Country, with Serico’s own paintings as doorways into his oral history. That work grew into Bilbie XR Labs and Virtual Songlines, a growing set of navigable 3D reconstructions of Australian places before colonisation, which he calls an Indijiverse and describes as a virtual time machine for walking in the footsteps of the ancestors. Visitors have walked through it at the Australian National Maritime Museum, ACMI in Melbourne, Yagan Square in Perth, Brisbane’s Cross River Rail Experience Centre, and the Daejeon Museum of Art in South Korea.
At dawn on 26 January 2024 his portraits of Nanbarry, Barangaroo, Pemulwuy, and Patyegarang, titled Trailblazers and made with the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, lit the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Griffith University honoured him with a 2023 Alumni Award, and in April 2025 he addressed a plenary session of the International Federation of Surveyors’ Working Week in Brisbane on the Virtual Songlines Digital Twin.
On Sunday 4 October 2026, Brett Leavy speaks about Virtual Songlines: rebuilding Country before colonisation in digital form, what such a record can hold, and who holds it. We invite you to join us to hear and question this Kooma storyteller and technologist.
Where to begin, after a session ends.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart spares its readers nothing. It sets out incarceration without parallel anywhere on earth, children taken from their families at unprecedented rates, and a torment of powerlessness that it names as structural rather than personal.
Then, having established all of that, it declines to accuse. It invites. Its final words ask the Australian people to walk together in a movement for a better future.
Accepting that Invitation asks something of whoever accepts it. Coming to a session on the first Sunday of the month is where most people start. A speaker makes an impact that stays with you, and the questions or issues they raised return to you. Reading, watching, listening, and researching is how non-Indigenous Australians develop answers for themselves.
First Nations authors, directors, and voices come first on the resource pages we offer here.
Start anywhere you wish. One book or one documentary, as the Charter says, is a real beginning.
Elders and Cultural Custodians, historians, authors, community leaders, and activists have led these sessions since March 2024.
Flyers, full descriptions, and the testimony several speakers gave to Queensland’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry.
To RSVP, ask a question, or find out about upcoming sessions, please send a message.
We welcome hearing from you.