Merri-bek, a Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung word for ‘rocky country’, is the name of what was once Moreland City Council. The change shows respect to Wurundjeri people, culture and Country, while discarding a name associated with racism, slavery and dispossession.
The name ‘Moreland’ was given to a sweeping area of land, by the land speculator who’d acquired it from the Crown, without the consent of local Aboriginal people in 1839. The settler, Farquar McCrae, named the land ‘Moreland’ after a Jamaican slave plantation his family had owned.
Victorian council amalgamations in 1994 created a single new council where there had previously been three. The name Moreland was officially chosen for the new council as it was already familiar to residents, having been used locally for Moreland Station and Moreland Road for over 150 years.
But the State Government’s name selection process had overlooked the racist connotations of this name. It took a coordinated effort from a diverse coalition to bring the true history of the name to the Council’s attention.
More than a name
The name-change process began in 2021 when Elders from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and some members of the wider community asked the Moreland City Council to meet.
The community group came well prepared, having completed wide research and with a clear proposal for the rename.
At the meeting, Elders pointed out that a council with policies of diversity, inclusion and anti-racism, and which claims to support asylum seekers and reconciliation, should not have a name associated with dispossession and slavery.
They highlighted the Council’s commitment from the previous year to ‘seek to include Woi-wurrung names in the process of naming and renaming spaces, places, roads and parks’ in the City of Moreland.
The group also presented a signed letter from both Traditional Owners of the area and high-profile non-Indigenous members of the community.
The letter asked the Council to respectfully partner with community to take ‘this opportunity to complement the current spirit of truth-telling and reconciliation, embracing this change as a timely platform for awareness-raising, acknowledgement and healing.’
A website was ready to go live following the meeting, linking the public to truth-telling information and a petition.
Rod Duncan, who helped organise the initial meeting, outlines why this supported the name change process.
‘So we’re able to give people, firstly, the members of the public, the capacity to feel they were part of it by popping their name on the change.org petition, and then give the supportive councillors the gravitas to be able to use that in their case,’ says Rod.
It also helped to create a sense of urgency for the Council to act on the information they had been given as the group told the Council that the site would go live the next day and that they planned also to go to the media.
We’re able to give people the capacity to feel they were part of it... and then the supportive councillors the gravitas to be able to use that in their case.
Acting together
When the Council heard that their name was causing harm and contradicted its values, they took action in genuine partnership. After initial discussions, the Council and Elders set up weekly catchups to co-design the name change process.
This period of regular and intentional dialogue built a new level of understanding between the Council and Wurundjeri peoples. It grew trust and established ongoing relationships that have lasted well beyond the project at hand.
A community consultation process to rename the municipality ensued – not to ask whether to change the name, but to what name. This departure from protocol was designed to protect and respect the local Aboriginal community.
As the Council CEO, Cathy Henderson observed, such a consultation, ‘would be tantamount to having a community consultation process on whether it’s okay to have a racist name’.
This decision was met with some opposition – a petition signed by 1,400 people demanded the process be revisited – but the Council stood by their decision, determined not to let renaming the Council cause harm to the Aboriginal community in a process that should be healing.
The Council stood for partnership with Traditional Owners and stood behind its policies of social inclusion and anti-racism.
The 10-month consultation process began with traditional customs and lore melding with the standard City Council process. Rod recalls how a Wurundjeri Elder came to his home to take paperbark from a tree for the inscription of the names.
‘So Uncle Andrew came down, chopped it off the thing, and then took it home and got the burner… and burnt the alternative names into it,’ Rod says.
‘He pushed for this quite strongly. He said… this historical document, I want it framed in the proper way, as a protected permanent thing on public display.’
The paperbark was presented during the smoking ceremony which initiated the consultation process.
As promised, the Council supported the delivery of an education and truth-telling program of events, forums and information. This helped to raise the community’s awareness of local Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung history, its ongoing impact, and why renaming the local city council was an important step towards reconciliation and healing.
It’s everyone’s business
Outreach to migrant communities was also part of the Council’s engagement strategy. These groups quickly developed an understanding and affinity with the Wurundjeri community based on what they were learning about their common experience of dispossession.
Although this heavily involved Elders who shared stories and guided conversations, it was recognised that it was important this didn’t burden or re-traumatise people in the process.
True partnership meant non-Indigenous people doing their share of the work. Permission was granted for them to actively share what they had learned about the local history from the Aboriginal people of that place, to help raise understanding and awareness in the non-Indigenous population.
Record numbers of Moreland residents participated and engaged with Woi-wurrung language, with a majority (59%) supporting the name Merri-bek.
Cathy observes, ‘local councils are closest to the community, but also have really strong responsibilities for land, so the relationship to Country and the custodianship and ownership of Country by Traditional Owners deeply relates to the work of local councils. So there’s some powerful work to be done’.
This account of truth-telling in action is based on a case study from the Recognising community truth-telling: An exploration of local truth-telling in Australia report. The collaborative study between Reconciliation Australia and Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation documents 25 community truth-telling projects. Read the full report.
