Who celebrates NAIDOC Week?

NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across this country each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people past and present. It is a significant time for us and our communities, but it should be an important time for all Australians to participate in this week long celebration.

It doesn’t really take a lot of effort to find a NAIDOC event. I did a quick google search of ‘NAIDOC events in Sydney’. This is what I found

• The Art Gallery of New South Wales is running a free drop-in art making class and Aboriginal performances in song, story and dance during the school holidays to celebrate NAIDOC Week.
• On Saturday there is the Woolloomooloo NAIDOC Family Day
• Hereby Make Protest exhibition is on at Carriageworks 
• Yawkyawk and Lilies, a textile display of Arnhem Land screen printed designs at Kings Cross Library
• On Sunday in Glebe a NAIDOC Family Day and Historic Ride
• The Stiff Gins concert @ Waterloo library. 
• On Thursday Surry Hills library was hosting the launch of Through our Eyes: History of Black Dance photographic display. 
• NAIDOC Inner City Family and Sports Day hosted by the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence 

How is it not possible to know that NAIDOC is on and how to attend an event?

One Aunty today commented on how many people asked her why are there so many people at a City of Sydney event, why are there so many kids around? What is happening?

How can they still be asking this question after decades
of NAIDOCs?

I did a quick flick through a bunch of magazines at Woollies the other day, and there was not one mention of NAIDOC nor of Black History Month.

For all the work we do in our schools and communities, for all the explaining and describing, for all the answering of their questions, Australia is still not listening.

It was great to hear the ABC doing so much work during NAIDOC week. If it weren’t for the ABC, and NITV and NIRS, as well as First Nations Telegraph and the Koori Mail, we would be mistaken for thinking we were unimportant to this country, that we were still just a footnote.

Survival Day at Yabun 2014

Today, the 26th of January is Survival Day. In some communities it's known as Invasion Day, while to the rest of the nation it is Australia Day. In Sydney, as a community, we have for many years recognised the 26th of January as Survival Day and each year there is a concert and festival called Yabun. Today, we headed off to the Festival and here are some of my images.

Heading to Yabun at Victoria Park

Great to see National Congress out and about. 

The Main stage at Yabun 

Plenty of space for a great concert

Walking around the stalls…. 

… lots of bargains ….

… some wallet tempters … 

… how do I resist … 

… a familiar face in the crowd … 

Heading home… our flags flying on the bridge. 

Guess who will be steppin' out in their very deadly shoes ...

Improving Indigenous Education - renewal, retention, reconciliation

Last Friday I attended the IEU's Indigenous Education Conference at the Mecure Hotel in Sydney. It was a great day, lots of networking and interesting conversations and developments, particularly around the new Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. It's going to be a huge area for a lot of people.

I presented a workshop "You've got to have the conversation" with Emma Peel from the CEO and Leesa Watego from The Critical Classroom and Iscariot Media.

My artwork also featured on the cover of the booklet.

Congratulations to the organisers of the conference and I hope that we have another one next year.

Exploring the Garden metaphor

Spent the day teaching Aboriginal history to 4th year pre-service teachers.

Enjoyed Leesa's metaphor activity garden = teaching to get the students to reflect on their teaching philosophy.

I valued the opportunity to create my garden.

New art work

This is my most recent work created for a colleague who left the CEO late last year. I've been working with leaves for the past few years. The birds however are a new addition I might do more of. 

Here I Go Again

This is Notre Dame in Sydney. I'm studying again. Must be a sucka for punishment, but there you go. I'm doing a Masters of Philosophy by Research. Am half-way/three-quarters through the first semester and I've been studying qualitative and quantitative research methods. Very hard slog. But almost there. Trying to get through it so I can explore what I really want.

Have to laugh when I logged into uni for the first time. I had so many emails about university social events - harmony day, play, uni games, youth week, trivia & pizza night, Hoyts movie night. Oh to be  
Oh to be a full-time student in my twenties again....

Creating my portfolio

I've spent a lot of the past two decades in my work creating artwork for schools, staff, and organisations. My artwork is even held in the Vatican.

Sadly (maybe stupidly), I've never given much of a thought to documenting my work. So I'm going to start re-tracing my artwork and creating a folio.

My good sista Leesa Watego found an online image of one of the very first works I did for an organisation. It was for the Manly Warringah Reconciliation Group.