NAIDOC Week celebrates the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. The week is observed not just by Indigenous Australian communities but also by government agencies, schools, local councils, and workplaces. How are you honouring the oldest continuous living culture in the world, with roots stretching back at least 65,000 to 75,000 years?
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“Paralpi”
by Zaachariaha Fielding
Zaachariaha is a proud Yankunytjatjara man from the APY Lands in South Australia and is widely recognised as one of the country’s leading contemporary First Nations artists and musicians. Paralpi reflects movement, energy and continuity, carrying the stories of Ancestors forward while celebrating the creativity and cultural power of the next generation.
Garma 2024
50 Years of Deadly
For five decades, NAIDOC Week has celebrated the voices of our communities — steady, unapologetic, and proud. Each year, its themes have called for truth, celebrated culture, honoured resistance, and reminded the nation of who we are.
Fifty Years of Deadly marks a milestone. It’s a tribute to the people who built this movement. the Elders who stood firm, the organisers who made space, the artists who turned resistance into expression, and the communities who keep showing up, year after year.
NAIDOC has always been more than a week — it’s a platform, a protest, a celebration, and a statement of survival.
This moment is about looking back at the stories, the marches, the languages, the art, the leadership. At the strength it took to get here. It’s about recognising how far we’ve come, not by chance, but because generations of people refused to be silenced.
It’s also about the here and now, who we are today. Grounded in culture. Strong in our identity. Leading change across every field, from health and education to media, business, and the arts. We’re telling our own stories, in our own way, on our own terms.
And it’s about the future. The next 50 years. The young ones growing up proud. The return of language. The return to Country. The fight for justice continuing with new tools, new voices, and the same fire.
Fifty Years of Deadly is a marker, not just of time passed, but of the momentum still building. It’s proof of what our people build when culture leads and community comes first. NAIDOC belongs to mob. It always has.
Garma 2024
We honour what came before by continuing the work.
This is our story. This is our celebration. This is our future.
Still deadly. Always. (from www.bawbawshire.vic.gov.au)
Ferndale
This NAIDOC Week I am in Ferndale in West Gippsland in the Baw Baw Shire. The history is in this land.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I am on this week, the peoples of the Gunaikurnai Nation and the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations peoples that reside or have lived here.
Ferndale
Seeds
Sovereignty never ceded
Is an interesting frame of words
See the thing is that
Sovereignty
Is much like a seed
Falling into the soil
Encoded with millions of years of memory
Where it grows to give without request to receive
But rather it gives unconditionally
See for Sovereignty is a waterway,
Like Kaiela, Dungala
In flood
Giving, greeting and nourishing
Sovereignty is
The Yenbena, Ancestors voices
That come
The more room there is for them..
When we take away the clutter
When we mean Sovereignty never ceded
Not so much in words
But in actions
The mulana of Sovereignty
Will see us
It will feel us
It will reveal to us
Although it may give freely
Unconditionally
For us to receive
It takes being able to receive
To feel
As we breathe
Breathe
Breathe deep
Filling our lungs
Like the soil
With water upon seeds
And it is there that sovereignty is never ceded
An ongoing cycle
An ongoing loop
Of love
Where openness
To receiving
What it is that is taught to us everyday
Shall be.
Written in the stars
The land
The water
Which Biami has never left
Mulana – spirit
Of original source
Never left
Never ceded
Guiding the path
To ongoing survivance
For that is its
Gift in the silence
In the
Vibrance
That it is
For its destiny is always every now
Cycling through
Dearly
As we be but recipients
Of its Yinya
Its light
Forever revealing
Sovereignty never ceded
Before colonial upheaval
Before intergenerational turmoil
Before white australia assimilation policies
Before
Before manipulation of our liberation and token inclusion
Before anything fabricated
To try and take us
Away from our true paths
As seeds
Of Sovereignty
Never ceded
Baw Baw Shire Council - Statement of Reconciliation
This statement was originally adopted on 28 June 2000 and reaffirmed by Cr Murry Cook, Mayor of Baw Baw Shire Council and Cheryl Drayton, Kurnai Community Elder on 1 June 2013.
Baw Baw Shire Council recognises the history of this land and its Aboriginal people, who were the first inhabitants of this land.
We acknowledge and respect the culture and rights of our indigenous community and recognise that in the colonisation of Australia, the Aboriginal people were dispossessed and subjected to discriminatory government policies that led to many injustices.
We acknowledge our need to promote a better understanding of Aboriginal culture and heritage.
We commit ourselves to work for the elimination of every form of racism and discrimination.
We acknowledge the right of indigenous Australians to live according to their own customs.
We value the rich diversity of cultures of all residents of the Shire.
We commit the council to go forward to the future with Aboriginal community in a spirit of mutual respect and reconciliation.
Baw Baw Shire Council sincerely regrets the pain, grief and suffering experienced by Aboriginal people as a result of past actions, government laws and policies and attitudes, and undertake a commitment to ensure that these injustices will never happen again. We hope, now, for a future where all residents will enjoy equality, accept responsibilities and achieve their full potential.
Witiyana Marika-Garma 2024
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