As Victoria prepares to pass into law the state’s historic treaty with its First Peoples on Thursday, the government’s only Indigenous MP, Sheena Watt, says it is a case of profound public policy colliding with the deeply personal.

During an emotional treaty debate – which has tried but struggled to remain above partisan rancour – Watt was close to tears as she recounted the moment she met her maternal grandmother for the first time and remade a family connection severed by the state’s past practice of removing Indigenous children from their parents.

She described their meeting in the Goulburn Valley town of Mooroopna last year as “an embrace that crossed the generations and, truthfully, our imagination”.

“I went there filled with questions and I left feeling full of love,” she told thi

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