NAIDOC WEEK 2016
NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. The week is a great opportunity to participate in a range of activities and to support your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
NAIDOC originally stood for ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’. This committee was once responsible for organising national activities during NAIDOC Week and its acronym has since become the name of the week itself.
This week we commenced with our annual NAIDOC Assembly where we had a number of special items ranging from Didgeridoo playing, a ‘Welcome’ dance performed by students and hearing from our guest speaker Brendan Kennedy who spoke about Songlines and the connections to land in Aboriginal Culture. Tuesday, Willie Hannah from the DSE conducted a number of cultural sessions to classes in the Years 5 to 8 Learning Community as well as our Years 7/8 guests from St. Mary’s. We also had the Clontarf boys cook a sausage sizzle, along with Kangaroo tasters, for students and staff to sample. During the week Sharon Urquhart joined a number of art classes and shared her knowledge about aboriginal symbols and how stories were passed
The year 7/8 students have been working on a mural together this week. The mural has been made to put on display for NAIDOC Week. It was designed and created by the students, who have taken turns to work on it at various stages throughout the week. After listening to Brendan Kennedy speak at assembly and thinking about this year’s NAIDOC theme, they have designed it to depict the river and the heart as a symbol of the connection and the importance of the land as well as the songlines "The living narrative of our nation."
Check out the post match report from the CLONTARF Academy Partners Football Match & a gallery of photos from other events
The below photos are of the year 7/8 students talking to Mark and Christine Pedder who live and work in a large slum in Asia, Baseco in the Philippines.
The students were very fortunate to participate in a Skype interview with them after watching videos and researching this area through their blog.
The students were able to ask questions about their life and the life of people living there.
Thank you to Bobby who organised the interview with her Aunty after making the links to the students topics in Geography this term. They have been learning about overpopulation, megacities, poverty, slums and amongst other areas.
Mark and Christine’s blog can be found at
