Community Colleges Australia (CCA) strongly supports National Reconciliation Week, a time of year that celebrates and builds on the respectful relationships shared by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians.
National Reconciliation Week bookends two significant milestones in Australia’s reconciliation journey.
May 27th marks the anniversary of Australia’s most successful referendum and a defining event in our nation’s history: in 1967 more than 90 per cent of Australians voted to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and recognise them in the national census.
June 3rd commemorates the 1992 High Court of Australia’s landmark Mabo decision, which legally recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a special relationship to the land, paving the way for land rights or Native Title.
The National Reconciliation Week website contains loads of valuable educational materials, including teaching and learning ideas, recommended reading and viewing, as well as downloadable posters.
This year’s events include a Vivid Sydney lighting of the Sydney Opera House and the “Sea of Hands” for reconciliation at Barangaroo.
You can view the 60 second National Reconciliation Week community service announcement on YouTube here.
Community Colleges Australia acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of our land – Australia. CCA acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land where our office is located in Sydney. We honour their elders, past, present and emerging.
