CELEBRATING FIRST NATIONS CULTURE 

Acknowledging the Valuable Work of an AIEF Staff Member

As many of you are aware, our First Nations students have instituted an award to express their gratitude to those who have assisted, mentored, educated, coached, counselled, guided and cared for the many Indigenous students at the College.

The award was developed and created by First Nations senior students in 2014 and first presented during our Saints Welcome Gathering Dinner that year. This dinner evolved out of our SAICAN evenings at Saints. SAICAN is an acronym for St Augustine’s Indigenous Cultural Appreciation Night. Our first SAICAN was held on Tuesday November 17, 2009 in the McLaughlin Theatre.

Acknowledgement is extended to those few alumni who voiced the idea for the award and supported it: Haryne Uta, James Townson Uta, Brandon Ramsamy, Nick Sam, Aken Sam and Robbie Reckenberg who kindly allowed us to use his artwork for the award. Mr Nathan Kelly, our art teacher, and keen supporter of drawing out the artistic talent from students is still in contact with Robbie. He told me Robbie is amazed and pleased that we still have this award and that his linocut traditional artwork design remains on it.

This year we presented the award to Saints staff member Mr John Brimstone during our Saints Combined Welcome Gathering Dinner in August and to Ms Kiana Taylor, a member of our AIEF student support team in Sydney. AIEF has been a Saints First Nation scholarship partner for over 10 years. Ms Taylor, who received her award by post, worked with our college and always ensured that our scholarship students were well looked after.

On behalf of our First Nations students, I sincerely thank Mr Brimstone and Ms Taylor for the tremendous support they have given them.