NAIDOC Week - 50 Years of Deadly, and why this moment matters more than ever
NAIDOC Week is officially here! From today until 12 July, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are celebrating the theme, 50 Years of Deadly, a reminder of the strength in our survival, the brilliance of our cultures, and the fierce love we have for our peoples and our Countries. Fifty years of celebrating who we are by gathering, telling our stories, and saying loudly and clearly: we are still here, we always have been, and we always will.
While this time marks the celebration of our collective persistence, I want to be real with you about why this NAIDOC feels different. Why it feels heavier, and more urgent.
Right now, we're witnessing an alarming swing in popular values—attacks on truth-telling, on the rights of First Nations communities, and on the very idea that Blackfullas deserve a seat at the table. There are people and politicians who would rather we go back to being invisible, who want to shut down conversations about what really happened on this continent and what's still happening. They want to divide us, to make us afraid of each other, to convince you that First Nations people caring for Country and caring for each other is somehow a threat, instead of an opportunity.
That's exactly why NAIDOC matters so much right now. Because celebration isn’t just resistance to negativity, it's the persistence of culture, the continuing of the oldest living cultures in the world and an opportunity for mainstream society to celebrate with us.
And here's where I need to say something to the environmental movement, to all of us who love these lands and waters and are fighting to protect them.
You cannot care for Country without caring for us. We are a part of this place, and this place is us, through the cultures that we raise our young people in. Our Ancestors didn't just live on this land, they lived with land, in sacred relationship to the fluctuating balance of all things belonging here. For generations our peoples looked after Country, studied and read it, managed it with a sophistication that has not been surpassed, keeping species strong, caring for water and soil, cultivating the balance of seasons with knowledge systems built and refined over tens of thousands of years. While that knowledge has been suppressed and interrupted by colonisation, it never went away. It's still here, in our Elders, in our communities, in our ways of being and in our Countries.
Centering Indigenous knowledges in our movement is incredibly important and it means more than learning from books or workshops. Indigenous knowledges are embodied through generations of culture, community, and lived experience. In practice, this means creating funded leadership roles with real authority, investing in Aboriginal organisations and people, building long-term relationships, and making space for Aboriginal communities to help lead the movement. When Country is healthy, we all benefit.
So, this NAIDOC, I invite you to celebrate with us. Come to an event, listen to our Elders, buy from our artists, learn the history of the land you're on. And remember, it doesn't have to be NAIDOC week to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures.
We're inviting you to sit alongside us. To listen. To learn. And to walk together toward a shared future, a good future. Because in the words of my Aunty, Dr/Aunt Lilla Watson, "We must ensure our future stretches as far ahead of us, as our past does behind us".
Teila Watson
Protect Country Strategist
Banner: National NAIDOC logo (CC BY-NC-N4 4.0)
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