FOR years, Priscilla Collins' grandmother needed a permit to enter Alice Springs, her home town. As a half-white, half-Aboriginal girl, she was removed from her mother and sent to be a domestic cleaner in Adelaide.
"Like many Aboriginal people, my family history reflects important parts of our nation's story," Ms Collins says.
Although white-skinned, she identifies as Eastern Arrente and didn't know what racism was until she went to school.
"The only family I know is my black family; they're the ones who raised me - I was raised being spoken to in (their) language, growing up out bush and in town camps," Ms Collins says.
"When I was young no one questioned my Aboriginality, they all knew who my family was. I didn't realise there was a difference between black and white until I got to high school, and I had to listen to people call my nanna a boong, call my cousins coons, and they'd look at me and say, 'but you're one of us, you're white'."
She had trouble accepting that, not knowing her white family.
"I thought, all these coons you're rubbishing, I grew up the exact same way they did. The only difference was the colour of my skin."
CEO of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA), Ms Collins is an advocate for holding a referendum to recognise all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia's Constitution.
"Over the generations our people have known heartache, suffering and exclusion, and it doesn't have to be that way," she says.
"The legacy of that lives on in the memories of older people who have never been formally recognised for what they are: the custodians. They deserve to be recognised."
There are more mentions of lighthouses than the first people in Australia's constitution, Chief Minister of the NT Adam Giles told a community forum in Darwin on Tuesday night.
"Ours is one of the longest unbroken threads of culture on the planet, a story of extraordinary survival... and yet not a single word records it, honours it or acknowledges it in Australia's founding document," he said.
"What message does that absence send about the value of Aboriginal culture, people and knowledge to Australia?"
Since 2007, both the coalition and Labor have supported holding a referendum to alter the Constitution to recognise indigenous peoples.
In 2010 Julia Gillard struck a deal to form government with Independent MP Rob Oakeshott and the Greens that included a commitment to hold a referendum by the 2013 election.
But public awareness of the issue has been minimal, and it has been pushed back for two years to maximise its chances of getting through, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott Abbott committed to release a draft constitutional amendment within 12 months.
People's movement Recognise set off from Darwin on Wednesday on a three-month awareness-raising journey across the NT and through the Kimberley to Perth.
They've already travelled 4711 km across Australia, walking from Melbourne to Adelaide, driving to Uluru, and then cycling from Alice Springs to Katherine and driving north to Nhulunbuy.
The ABC's Vote Compass, which surveyed one million people, found that seven out of ten respondents, including a majority of coalition voters, believe that the constitution should be changed to acknowledge the First Australians.
"I'm a pretty conservative person - I don't think you'll ever change the constitution lightly, and nor should you," Mr Giles said.
"But there's a pretty compelling case to be made to fix a glaring omission from history and heal the hole in the heart of Australia, and until we do this as a nation, we'll remain at an impasse."
He said constitutional recognition will also go a long way towards closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
"When people know they're respected, valued and truly included in the life of the nation after long periods of exclusion, it can only help to better their mental and physical condition," he said.
Just eight of 44 referenda held in Australia have been successful, and although supporters of the movement are keen for a change, they don't want to rush it through before the country is ready.
Kim Hill, former head of the Northern Land Council, says constitutional recognition has an economic upside, with communities leveraging their culture to connect with other Australians and make money to support themselves.
Everybody wants to have an Aboriginal person experience, and why can't they do that?" he says.
"But we need to be recognised. We don't just want to be on the front desk, or your monkeys in the windows."
In order to succeed, a referendum needs both a national majority of voters in the states and territories, and a majority of voters in at least four of six states.
But it will be difficult to get a majority vote in places such as the NT and Queensland, where Recognise spokeswoman Tanya Hosch says people are comfortable with the status quo.
She says if this opportunity is squandered it will fall to the next generation to repair the damage done.
"It's a bloody beautiful thing to have the first Australians in this country, and even if it's just on a piece of paper, I do believe it will make a difference to the psyche of a lot of people," she says.
The Journey will arrive in Perth on December 1.
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