We said No.

💔💔💔

I still can’t find words. Even if I could my words are irrelevant. My heart is broken for what the 14th of October could have meant for Australia.

For the prospect of healing a Yes vote would have represented. For what a Voice to Parliament could have achieved. For the trauma and despair the campaign inflicted, that the result compounds.

Daniel James, a Yorta Yorta man and an award-winning writer and broadcaster, wrote for The Saturday Paper ahead of the vote that ‘for many First Nations people, if the result is “Yes”, it will be heard as a whisper. If the result is “No”, it will be deafening.’ Speaking on the 7am podcast the day after the referendum he told host Ange McCormack that Saturday’s result feels like a screaming megaphone on loop.

Cartoon via Matt Golding for The Age

We only reached the point of being able to cast a vote in this referendum because of the TIRELESS work of First Nations leaders, advocates, activists and communities over decades. Bringing this referendum forward was so hard fought. The campaign was toxic beyond reasonable expectation. The blood, sweat and tears exacted on a 24/7 basis cannot be fathomed.

The hope it presented to heal was alive and real. First Nations leaders, along with their communities and families, deserved to have their hope and efforts rewarded - not extinguished - last weekend.

Yes was the absolute least First Nations people deserved. That we didn’t deliver is soul destroying.

If it feels this ghastly, more than 15,000 kilometres from home, inside the heart and soul of a non-Indigenous Australian woman who didn’t spend a day on the frontline of the campaign, nor a day personally experiencing the reality of systemic racism or discrimination, I cannot imagine the excruciating pain that First Nations people are feeling.

It is another trauma in a long line of traumas. It is up to all of us - regardless of how we voted - to reflect on the pain Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia are feeling. In a profoundly divisive campaign, that was characterised by misinformation and disinformation, one point was largely agreed on. The gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians exists. It’s inexcusable. A majority of Australians determined that the Voice will not be the vehicle to help close that gap but something has to.

There are a million things I don’t know that I wish I did: How to support people who aren’t just hurting in the face of this loss but are utterly exhausted, angry and dejected? What is the path to reconciliation and justice? Why did no prevail? How can misinformation and disinformation be countered? I know I’m not alone in mulling these questions.

There are a few things, however, I know for sure.

Facts matter.

Kindness matters.

Hope extinguished is brutal.

A majority of First Nations people who live in rural and remote communities voted yes to a voice to parliament.

I would like to acknowledge, pay my respects and offer solidarity to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who wanted Yes to prevail on Saturday. I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary work done by every single person who worked to bring us to this point and those who worked on the campaign. It is not work for the faint-hearted.