This year’s NAIDOC theme is Because of Her, We Can, and presenters at NAIDOC Day celebrations at The Sir Henry Parkes Memorial Public School on Wednesday, July 4 shared heartfelt words about the women in their lives.
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Students from Deepwater, Mingoola and Jennings Public Schools along with those from the Tenterfield Child Care Centre and Tenterfield Preschool joined the TSHPMPS students for a morning of entertainment, followed by a rotation through various indigenous-themed arts and crafts activities.
MC Amanda Rowe credited the school’s Aboriginal Education Committee for long hours, hard work and effort put into creating a wonderful day full of exciting activities centred around this year’s theme.
“This year we celebrate all the invaluable contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have made and continue to make, to our school, our community, our families, our history and our nation,” she said.
“Every person here today has a significant female who has made their lives just that little bit better, made them that little bit stronger, that female leader who has inspired them to achieve their best, that caring female who had offered support in times of need.
“To the women of our lives, we say thank you. To the women of our lives, because of you, we can.”
The school received state funding through MP Thomas George’s office to bring the Tamworth-based Gomeroi Dance Company to Tenterfield.
The Gomeroi dancers had the children (and adults) enthralled with their stories told in dance, with the animals they mimicked, and explaining how a dance where weapons were presented contains a not-so-veiled warning.
Fortunately they also performed the dance of the black cockatoo who can talk to the rain clouds, making them come or go away.
“Hopefully we can pay respect to this bird and ask him to bring us some,” Tom Flanders said.
This year’s NAIDOC theme was also close to the heart of the dancers.
“Through our learning, growing up at home and through our cultural beliefs, we learned that our women are always more important than the men, such beautiful people that care for us and look after us,” Mr Flanders told the children.
"There’s one thing that unites us all and that’s our belly button, and that connects us to our mother, which connects us to her mother, and to her mother and so forth.
“So it’s such as important thing this year, and such an important thing to be dancing at.”
The audience was also treated to a story read by author Ruth Rutherford, new to Tenterfield but inspired to write books from her observations living in remote Western Australia.