Callaghan College Waratah Campus

Collaborating to empower learners

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Celebrating NAIDOC Week 2020

Two photos. On the left four students from the Aboriginal Dance Group standing together. On the right, two students from the Didge Group  standing either side of their teacher and holiding their didgeridoos

On the 9th of November students and staff at Waratah celebrated our different, but no less special 2020 NAIDOC assembly. 

"Every year during NAIDOC week we pause to reflect, share and celebrate the richness of a culture that is thousands of years old. NAIDOC celebrations are traditionally held around Australia in July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This year NAIDOC week has been moved to November to allow the community an opportunity to come together.

This year's theme "Always was, always will be" acknowledges that this nation's story began at the dawn of time and didn't begin with documented European contact a few hundred years ago.

NAIDOC 2020 invites all Australians to embrace and acknowledge the true history of this country- a history which dates back thousands and thousands of generations.

The very first footprints on this continent were those belonging  to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples who have maintained ongoing spiritual and cultural connections to the land and sea

All Australians should celebrate that we have the world's oldest stories and that our First Peoples engraved the world's first maps, made the earliest paintings of ceremonies, invented unique technologies and built and engineered structures that predate well-known ancient sites such as the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were Australia's first explorers, our first navigators, first engineers, first farmers, first botanists, first scientists, first diplomats, astronomers and artists.

We are here today because the elders of the past cared for, nurtured and protected the land, skies and sea.

This is why we must continue to give voice to the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, acknowledging that their thousands of years of connection to land and sea gives us the opportunities of today, so we can move forward together for a shared future.

As you celebrate NAODIC week this week at school and in the wider community always remember that under the concrete, steel and asphalt, this land is, was and always will be traditional Aboriginal land."