SJC Indigenous Yarns

Jingi Walla - Hello SJC community

In Week 2, we were lucky enough to celebrate SJC NAIDOC week as a school community and had a whole range of interactive activities on offer for staff and students over the week.  This year's NAIDOC theme ‘for our elders’ meant we had to make it a special week, and we think it was the biggest NAIDOC week SJC has experienced.  Starting off the week with a new opportunity with a few of our Indigenous students taking stroll across the road to Little Grommets Childcare facility in which the students got the chance to interact with some of the toddlers from the childcare and run some activities such as dot painting and also dreamtime stories, this was a great way to start the week and cannot thank the Little Grommets' staff enough for giving us this opportunity and look forward to working with them again in the near future.

On Tuesday we hosted an assembly where ‘Our Elders’ were able to be a part of the celebration along with our Bishop Gregory.  They had a yarn onstage with Tom Busbridge and Alysha Whitehouse and answered questions about their life and offered some advice for the future to our students.  We also heard real life experiences around growing up as a Indigenous kid and how much society and life has changed over the years.  We enjoyed the Goodjingburra Aboriginal dance group along with Year 7 student Dakina who performed wonderful local cultural dances.  The assembly was a success receiving a lot of positive feedback from both students, teachers, parents and special guests that were in attendance.

Students and staff Learnt a new Bundjalung word/phrase each day, Listened to Indigenous artists themed bells, Viewed a Library display of some of the students' elders/family.  We also had two fantastic workshops which involved learning the Didgeridoo with Mr Glenn Barry providing some great instruction and performance for the gents and a weaving workshops for the girls.

Also a highlight of the week as always was our annual All Stars Touch match, which was played on the wednesday with the Indigenous team winning 4-2 in a great match with Lily Blundell and Levi Baker being named the best and fairest during the match and it was awesome to see the whole school down on the oval supporting both teams.

Thank you to all students and staff and the local community who participated and supported our SJC NAIDOC week for 2023.  We hope you enjoyed all the activities and learnt a little bit more about our local Indigenous culture and history.  Also a big shout out to everyone who helped out during the week your help did not go unnoticed and we truly appreciate all the hard work that was put in behind the scenes for another successful NAIDOC.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate our six Year 12 Indigenous students on their up and coming graduation and wish them good luck for their HSC and all the best for the future, they have represented our College, their families and their local Indigenous community well over during their time at St Joeys, Bugalwan Alysha, Bianca, Beau, Eva, Olivia and Tiabella.

Bugalwan (good blessings)

Mr Jack Field
Indigenous Education Worker