Hearings and sessions
Without all voices we cannot hear the full history of Queensland
About hearings and sessions
The Inquiry will hold truth‑telling sessions and hearings around the State to hear from all Queenslanders.
A truth‑telling session is a less formal way to share your experience with the Inquiry. A session could just be one of the Inquiry Members, you, a support person, and someone from the Inquiry’s legal team. A session could also be a meeting, a site visit, or a yarning circle.
A truth‑telling hearing is a more formal event held by the Inquiry. It will allow more members of the public to attend and may be available for people to watch online. Hearings are an opportunity for the Inquiry to hear evidence from participants and to ask questions. Hearings may also involve other parties who may be impacted by the Inquiry’s work.
The Path to Treaty Act 2023 requires the Inquiry to adopt a trauma-informed approach based on the principles of free, prior and informed consent. This means the Inquiry will assess if live streaming is appropriate on a case by case basis. The Inquiry may make recordings of hearings available on this website at a later date.
Truth‑telling sessions and hearings will generally be public, but they can be done in private too if you want to share something confidentially.
Participating in a truth‑telling session or hearing is voluntary (other than for some government representatives). We will soon publish information on this website about how to register your interest in participating in a truth‑telling session or hearing.
Details about upcoming truth‑telling sessions and hearings are published in Events.
You can review information for participants here.
Legal support
Free legal advice will be available for participants to share their experience and evidence safely. The Inquiry will publish more details about this service soon.
Support services
Truth-telling is a way to heal. But to do this, it needs to be safe and accessible.
The Inquiry will provide free and confidential social and emotional wellbeing and legal support to you before, during, and after you share your experience.
The Inquiry can arrange an interpreter if you want to share your experience in your own language. Interpreters can be provided for Aboriginal languages, Torres Strait Islander languages, Auslan, and international languages.
The Inquiry will publish more details about these services on its website soon.
Unfortunately, the Inquiry is not able to provide financial support to you to participate in the Inquiry.
Community engagement
The Inquiry will empower Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples to share their stories in a trauma-aware, healing informed and culturally safe way. One of the first priorities of the Inquiry will be to capture, preserve and share the experiences of Elders.
The community participation support team leads engagement with communities and supports Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
If you would like to contact one of the team, please email [email protected] and a team member will be in touch soon.
Activities will be shared here, as they become available.
You can also visit the events page to see our upcoming activities.