Mrs Julie Best from Wauchope Public School writes:
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Aboriginal people have a unique relationship and, a continuing connection with the land. We acknowledge the Birpai Nation as the traditional custodians of this land where our school is built. We pay our respects to the Elders of the Birpai Nation of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
We extend that respect to all Aboriginal people and to the people of all nations here today.
Each year National Reconciliation Week celebrates and builds on the respectful relationships shared by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians.
The dates that determine the week are significant milestones in the reconciliation journey.
May 27 is the anniversary of Australia’s most successful referendum and a defining event in our nation’s history.
At the 1967 referendum over 90 per cent of Australians voted to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to recognise them in the national census.
June 3 commemorates the High Court of Australia’s Mabo decision in 1992, which legally recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a special relationship to the land—a relationship that existed prior to colonisation and still exists today.
This recognition paved the way for land rights or Native Title.
Reconciliation means ‘coming together’
This painting project to make our Circles of Reconciliation was inspired by the Busby Marou song ‘Paint This Land’ which is centred on the theme of people coming together to recognise a part of Australia’s history.
Painting our own small piece of this land seemed like a good way for the Wauchope Public School community to come together in a common project to recognise Reconciliation Week in our own backyard.
Like each of us, the small individual artworks that we created are beautiful, different and unique.
On their own they are special but in placing them together we have created something extraordinary.
The theme of Reconciliation Week in 2017 is ‘Take the next steps’.
In coming together today to place our pieces of this land together in circles we have created the Aboriginal symbol of a campfire.
This would make a perfect place for people of all nations to sit together, to have a talk, a chat, a discussion, a yarn up, or, just to sit quietly in the same place at the same time and admire what we created by putting all of our different paintings together.
Taking the next steps in reconciliation – together as one.
