Deputy Principal

Reconciliation Week

“Now more than ever” is the theme for this year’s Reconciliation Week. As we walk around our suburbs and indeed on the school grounds, it is important that we acknowledge the First Nations peoples of this land. Around the nation and in our classrooms this week, we will be having conversations about reconciliation and how we move forward as a nation to ensure that our First Nations people are heard, and their ancestry and future are respected. For over 65,000 years our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters have been having conversations about the way their land should be treated. In order to move forward together in reconciliation, we need to respect their opinions.

In 2007, the United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It established a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity, and wellbeing of the Indigenous peoples of the world. Respecting the rights of our First Nations peoples is not something that is new. Countries including Canada and the Unites States have treaties with their Indigenous peoples, and our neighbours in New Zealand signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

We still have a long way to go. It saddens me deeply that racism still exists in our country in 2024. It saddens me when we hear reports of racism in the media that supporters at our sporting fixtures yell out racial abuse against our First Nations people. It saddens me when only two months ago, the children of a former Indigenous AFL player were playing in their yard and a car drove past and racially abused them.

Together as a nation we can do better. To move forward in true reconciliation, we must walk with our First Nations people and listen and respect their ideas, not tell them how we see their future. The time to do this is “Now more than ever.”

Adrian Byrne

Deputy Principal