First Nations Happenings 

First Nations Happenings 

Nallei Jerring session 3 

On Wednesday 24th July, our Woodman's Hill First Nations mob attended their third Nallei Jerring Leadership program at Saxton House. The program for this session concentrated on Leadership and in particular what a good leader may look like, act like etc. We were fortunate enough to have a representative from SALT (Sport and Life Training) to come and complete a workshop with us around leadership qualities, how to build these qualities and how that can be transferred into life skills or sport for the future. We then had a yummy lunch of fruit platters and hot treats before having a quick Yarn about our next session, which is at Whitten Oval and sounds extremely exciting!

Yarning Circles & NAIDOC Week Celebrations

During our last Yarning Circle, we conducted a Smoking Acknowledgement, which was an extremely special time for myself and the First Nations mob to come together, collect leaves from around the school, light the fire and cleanse. Amazingly, we were also fortunate to have a beautiful family of Kookaburras land right behind where we lit the fire as well and I was mesmerised by back by these beauties that I did not even take any photos. I enjoy this weekly catch up with the First Nations students as it is an informal way of me checking in with them and they are really starting to form their own little culturally safe space now.

Our NAIDOC week also consisted of loads of home group activities including the beginning of our mob tree (stay tuned for this beauty!) and the students also put together a huge morning tea for all Woodman’s Hill staff and we were also fortunate enough to have parents/guests and guardians attend as well. My highlight was definitely one of our youngsters Joel having a go on his plastic pipe (Didge player in training) in the corner while we were enjoying a chat and some yummy food. 

The students did an amazing job putting this all together, right down to the table and room decorations and the atmosphere was truly amazing. Well done you mob!

Trish Fox- First Nations Leader (Proud Wotjobaluk women)