This week we are celebrating NAIDOC.
The theme this year is ‘ Our Languages Matter’. Mrs Steyger our Indigenous teacher aide
and community liason person has prepared activities for all of our classes
aligned to the theme.
At the conclusion of the week we will
celebrate with a whole school assembly at 2.00pm. Please join us if you are available.
The 2017 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.
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.