Groups gathered across Bendigo and Castlemaine on Thursday to talk about the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians and prepare for Reconciliation Week, which starts today.

People and organisations across the region are planning events to celebrate how far Australia has come, and think about the journey still to be walked.

National Reconciliation Week is taking place as hearings continue at Victoria's Yoorrook Justice Commission.

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The truth telling commission has already heard from Aunty Fay Carter about institutionalised racism and the continued impact of dispossession.

The Dja Dja Wurring and Yorta Yorta Elder told the commission history needed to be told right from the beginning.

"It can be a real healing process, for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, when you face up to history and acknowledge it."

Aunty Fay shared her and her people's experiences in the hope they will never happen to anyone ever again (some have been reproduced with her permission on page three of today's paper).

Her witness statement was among the first published by Yoorrook.

More Indigenous Victorians expect to give testimony as the commission's hearings gather momentum.

Many hope the comprehensive record of Truth will shape upcoming Treaty negotiations with the state government for the better.

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Taungurung man Marcus Stewart co-chairs the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria, the independent body laying the groundwork for negotiations.

He recently told Yoorrook the treaty process should enshrine structural reforms that could work where smaller changes had failed.

"First Peoples in Victoria live in the shadow of colonisation," Marcus said.

"It follows them wherever they go within Australian society, tarnishing all interactions they may have with the systems and instrumentalities of the state."

The Treaty process was likely to be just the start of effective reforms and needed a comprehensive record of Truth from Yoorrook, Marcus said.

It would "help the Victorian community to appreciate that if we keep doing the same things, we'll keep getting the same result," he said.

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