NAIDOC WEEK

Posted by SBS Learn Team/National NAIDOC Committee/Deadly Story/NTIV | Jun 8, 2024

Get Ready for Celebrating NAIDOC Week 7-14 July 2024.

Keep The Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud for NAIDOC Week, will be celebrated in many schools around Australia in July following National Reconcilation Week.

SBS Learn has a range of resources available to educators to support the integrity of First Nations content with many resources authored by First Nations educators. This is the sixth publication of NAIDOC Week resources released by the SBS Learn Team to celebrate the strength and resilience of the oldest living culture in the world. Resources are available for all age groups ranging from early learners to Year 10.

The Author of this year’s Celebrate 2024 NAIDOC: Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud is Shelley Ware, Yankunytjatjara, Kokatha and Wirangu descendant. Shelley has been a classroom, specialist reading, and art teacher in primary schools for 25 years, based in Melbourne. She has her own education consultancy to help educate teachers and inspire them to confidently embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures into everyday curriculum. Shelley is an ambassador for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation’s Create Initiative program, mentoring children from remote communities to write and publish their own books and incorporate their local Indigenous language. She sits on the Victorian Institute of Sport board, and serves as the chairperson on Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) advisory committees for Banyule City Council and Carlton Football Club. Shelley loves to give back to the community through her passion for helping people — particularly children — to be the best they can. She is a regular presenter on Broad Radio and writes a regular opinion and AFL column for the Koori Mail.

Visit the SBS Learn Page to access great resources and prepare for NAIDOC Week – CLICK HERE

Songlines In The Classroom

Songlines are the Aboriginal walking routes that crossed the Country, linking important sites and locations. Before colonisation they were maintained by regular use, buring off and clearing. The term ‘Songline’ describes the features and directions of travel that were included in a song that had to be sung and memorised for the traveller to know the route to their destination. Certain Songlines were referred to as ‘Dreaming Pathways’ because of the tracks forged by Creator Spirits during the Dreaming. These special Songlines have specific ancestral stories attached to them. Consider a ‘Songline’ as a community’s cultural marker of passport where verses that relate to a particular region, can be sung in the local language so that the people living there know that travellers are passing through in a respectful manner.

You may also wish to check out the following resources as you prepare for NAIDOC week.

SBS Learn: Celebrate NAIDOC 2024: Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud.
Deadly Story: Songlines
Toward the Municipal Mapping of Traditional Aboriginal Land Use. Jim Poulter and Bill Nicholson, Melbourne, July 2018
Songlines in Warrandyte. Jim Poulter 7th February 2017
Yingabeal: The Wurundjeri Scarred Tree at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Film by Jo Clyne, HTAV 2016

NITV ‘Songlines on Screen’ multimedia features ‘They are many things: a road map, a bible, our history’.

Songlines on Screen is a special collaboration between Screen Australia and NITV that presents eight short films from the remote regions of Western, Northern and Central Australia. These films represent Aboriginal people’s ongoing connection to land and culture as told throughout time by the way of creation songs.

Connect with features:

Naji: A creation story from the Bugarregarre time, the Dreamtime, from the Goolarabooloo people of the West Kimberley Coast.
Footprints: It’s 2014 and a group of young men from a tribe on the verge of cultural extinction have just discovered that a law boss from a neighbouring tribe knows some of their cultural songs and dances.
Tjawa Tjawa: A group of women travel from Roebourne all the way to Kiwikurra in the Great Sandy Desert to the south of Balgo, in search of their husbands.
Goorrandalng: Brolga Dreaming: A song and a story about the Dreaming place at Keep River National Park in the Northern Territory, where women can go to become pregnant.
Wardbukkarra: A story from the Bininj people about the creation of the first people of Western Arnhem Land, and the battle between good and evil.
Wurray: Yolngu song men trace the epic Dreamtime story of their great nomadic warrior, Wurray, across the wilderness of North East Arnhem Land.
Bulunu Milkarri: An endangered songline from remote Arnhem Land that explores cycles of death, life, rain, tears and the replenishment and abundance of land, sea and spirit.
Damari and Guyala: A Story of Two Brothers: The story of how the brothers Damari and Guyula created the land of the Yidinji Mandingal bay  people.