A project to identify all unmarked graves of Aboriginal infants, children and adults buried in the segregated section of the Moree cemetery has reached a new milestone.
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Started by Aboriginal researcher, Elder and OAM recipient Aunty Noeline Briggs-Smith more than 30 years ago, the project now has a new platform to gain interest and financial backing.
The campaign was posted on Pozible, a crowd funding website, and with only 16 days left until it closes the page has more than 100 supporters and raised almost $5000.
Aunty Noeline will use the funds to purchase and install 176 plaques to finish identifying those Aboriginal people buried in the segregated section between 1940 and 1968 without a headstone or grave marking.
Her drive for the project began in 1983. After raising her children away, Aunty Noeline returned to Moree to find but a bare paddock where her family and friends had once been buried.
More than 200 graves were unmarked which left her feeling indescribably upset and hurt.
“Every single Sunday when I was a kid we were made visit the cemetery. We would walk all the way from home along the river to the cemetery; it was a day to remember the dead,” she said.
But any markers that existed back then had since disappeared, until in 1995 when Rob Bartel from the Moree Lions Club helped Aunty Noeline place the first four markers to start this 33-year-long project.
Not long after an Aboriginal historical group was formed to “tap” into government funding, which saw the creation of a tranquility area to honour Aboriginal ex-servicemen buried in the section.
‘Saluting their Service’ and ‘Bringing their spirits Home’ were other funding initiatives that assisted in the project’s goal to mark more Aboriginal servicemen and women’s graves.
Aunty Noeline said a woman by the name of Alison Howlett generously paid for the last three plaques to have been placed at the cemetery, however 176 graves were still without identification.
“To think there were 215 when I first started and now there are 176… I wont stop until they are all identified and this Pozible campaign will help me reach that goal,” she said.
Among her tireless research and advocacy for the segregated section of Moree’s cemetery, Aunty Noeline is writing a book about the project called ‘From Spears to Guns’.
