BRIDGET CAMA AND ALLIRA DAVIS

Kylie Kwong celebrates the individuals helping to grow a stronger community. This month, we meet the Uluru Youth Dialogue co-chairs and changemakers.

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It’s May 21 last year and Allira Davis is at a party in Brisbane, glued to her phone. Meanwhile in Sydney, her Uluru Youth Dialogue co-chair Bridget Cama is at home looking after her sick toddler, tied to the same text thread. This was the night the Australian Labor Party won the federal election. But for the texters in the group message, it was also the turning point when a referendum on the First Nations Voice to Parliament went from improbable, to possible, to actually happening, all at once.

“It was incredible,” says Cama, of the moment incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, in the first breath of his victory speech. “There was a lot of built-up emotion because we thought that commitment was coming four years prior.” Along with Cama and Davis, the text group included their mentors Professor Megan Davis and Pat Anderson AO, representatives from the Uluru Dialogue, team members, associates and allies. And it was firing with real-time reactions; “We did it.” “This is it” and, most telling, “Now the hard work begins.”