Naidoc Week has begun and members of the local indigenous community gathered on Sunday to officially launch the week in Mount Isa with a ceremony on the Civic Centre lawn.
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Kalkadoon elder Jennifer Watts said Naidoc Week celebrated who they were as people.
“We were the first inhabitants of the country and we are still here,” Ms Watts said.
Ms Watts said NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee and began when Aboriginal groups sought to increase awareness of their plight and held a day of mourning on the 150th anniversary of Australia Day in 1938.
She said the day was moved to July in the 1960s to focus more on Indigneous culture and it became an organised Naidoc Week in the 1990s.
Ms Watts said this year’s Naidoc Week focus was “our language matters”
“We were never allowed to speak our languages so our language was forgotten,” she said.
“On Wednesday the Kalkadoon Aboriginal Corporation is launching a language education program with the schools.”
Torres Strait Island elder Dolly Hankin said the week was about sharing Indigenous culture with the wider community.
“We want to make the wider community aware of the first people of this country,” Ms Hankin said.
Ms Hankin said she was pleased to leave in Mount Isa.
“You see down the coast in Cairns and Townsville friction between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people but here we are all one big family,” she said.
While there was no actual flag raising ceremony on Sunday, Kamilaroi elder Peter Smith spoke about the symbolic importance of flag raising.
“The first flag raising ceremony in Australia would have been on the 26th of January 1788 and Aboriginal people did not participate in that ceremony,” Mr Smith said.
“The flag raising was a claim for King George III of England was now the owner of this land and by raising a flag this was British land.”
Mr Smith said the land wasn’t “terra nullius” and Aboriginal flag raising ceremonies were a symbolic reclaiming of their land.
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
