NAIDOC Week
NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each year and give all Australians the opportunity to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the oldest continuing cultures on the planet.
This year’s theme is ‘Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud’, and celebrates the unyielding spirit of our communities and invites all to stand in solidarity, amplifying the voices that have long been silenced. Read more about NAIDOC and this year’s theme on the NAIDOC Week website.
Read more about how we’re celebrating the First Nations Community here.
Past Events
Lynne Kelly & Margo Neale: Songlines
Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, Songlines: The Power and Promise offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges robust for over 60,000 years. Lynne and Margo share understandings of how these vast stores of information were encoded through song, story, art, dance and ceremony, rather than simply recorded in writing.
Songlines: The Power and Promise is the first of six books in Thames & Hudson Australia’s First Knowledge series, all edited by Margo Neale.
Alison Page & Paul Memmott – Design: Building a Country
Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. It is visible in the aerodynamic boomerang, the ingenious design of fish traps and the precise layouts of community settlements that strengthen social cohesion. Authors Alison Page and Paul Memmott show how these design principles of sophisticated function, sustainability and storytelling, refined over many millennia, are now being applied to contemporary practices.
The First Knowledges series offers an introduction to Indigenous knowledges with each book a collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers, edited by Margo Neale (National Museum of Australia).
Educating and Empowering
Macedon Ranges Shire Council created a very special online Storytime in celebration of NAIDOC Week. Families are warmly invited to join Aunty Brenda Fahey, of Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, and Aunty Cindy Bux, of Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta for some fabulous stories and craft activities showcasing Indigenous culture.
Celebrating culture – How the turtle got his shell
This video also includes a craft activity.
The meaning of Smoking Ceremonies
Learn about the meaning of smoking ceremonies from Jaara Elder Uncle Rick Nelson of Dja Dja Wurrung in a great video filmed at Hanging Rock by a creative team of Work For Victoria staff members. We thank local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents of Macedon Ranges for their contribution to the diverse culture of our community. View the video here.