Celebrating NAIDOC Week 2017

NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. NAIDOC Week is held in the first full week of July (2-9 July 2017). Its origins can be traced to the emergence of Aboriginal groups in the 1920′s which sought to increase awareness in the wider community of the status and treatment of Indigenous Australians.

Sisters of Mercy Parramatta Congregation recognises the importance of NAIDOC Week in celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture, talent and resilience and the opportunity this week offers us all to build relationships.

According to the NAIDOC Committee, this year's theme - Our Languages Matter - aims 'to emphasise and celebrate the unique and essential role that Indigenous languages play in cultural identity, linking people to their land and water and in the transmission of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, spirituality and rites, through story and song'.

Ways to be involved in NAIDOC WEEK:

NAIDOC events are being held around Australia. A list of these can be found on the NAIDOC website here

Check out programs on offer in NAIDOC Week 2017: NITV / ABC guide



'Some 250 distinct Indigenous language groups covered the continent at first (significant) European contact in the late eighteenth century. Most of these languages would have had several dialects, so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds. Today only around 120 of those languages are still spoken and many are at risk of being lost as Elders pass on', the Committee tells us.