Always Was, Always Will Be
All around Australia we would traditionally be celebrating NAIDOC week in the month of July. In my State of Western Australia, one of the few places in the world where we currently enjoy no community spread of the coronavirus and a great many freedoms compared to those interstate or overseas, we are still celebrating this important week in July. However, the rest of the country will be celebrating it this year in November.
NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to come together to celebrate the rich history, diverse cultures, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the oldest continuing cultures on the planet.
The theme for NAIDOC Week 2020 is Always Was, Always Will Be. It acknowledges this nation’s story began at the dawn of time and didn’t begin with documented European contact.
NAIDOC 2020 invites all Australians to embrace and acknowledge the true history of this country – a history that dates back thousands of generations.
The very first footprints on this continent were those belonging to First Nations peoples and they have maintained ongoing spiritual and cultural connections to the land and sea.
All Australians are invited to acknowledge and celebrate that we have the world’s oldest oral stories and that our First Peoples engraved the world’s first maps, made the earliest paintings of ceremonies, invented unique technologies and built and engineered structures that predate well-known ancient sites such as the Egyptian pyramids or UK’s Stonehenge.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were Australia’s first explorers, our first navigators, first engineers, first farmers, first botanists, first scientists, first diplomats, astronomers, and artists.
It’s about seeing, hearing, and learning the 65,000+ year history of this country – a country that was crisscrossed by generations of brilliant Nations.
An essential part of NAIDOC Week and the commitment to reconciliation is truth-telling. The telling of the stories once forgotten and unheard. The stories of pre-settlement, European invasion, the frontier wars, the stolen generation, and inter-generational trauma. The stories of discrimination, racism, genocide, disempowerment, and grief. The stories of survival, resilience, pride, strength, forgiveness, change, and the need for self-determination.
When we tell and hear these stories we humanise all that has gone before, the richness, tragedies, and injustices of the past. When we truly embrace these stories we can learn, grow and commit to a better, more inclusive and enlightened future where Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people can live as equals, in harmony, and with a collective pride that this nation of ours has its roots in the oldest continuing civilisation on this planet, something we can and should all be proud of and celebrate always, not just during NAIDOC Week.
2020 National NAIDOC Poster - Shape of Land artwork, by Noongar and Saibai Islander man Tyrown Waigana.
Tyrown’s passion for art and design began at an early age and his goal is to make a living of being an artist and take on exciting new creative projects.
Shape of Land description: The Rainbow Serpent came out of the Dreamtime to create this land. It is represented by the snake and it forms the shape of Australia, which symbolises how it created our lands. The colour from the Rainbow Serpent is reflected on the figure to display our connection to the Rainbow Serpent, thus our connection to country. The overlapping colours on the outside are the Dreamtime. The figure inside the shape of Australia is a representation of Indigenous Australians showing that this country - since the dawn of time - Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.
