This year, the special days and observances relating to Indigenous Australians are particularly important. Following the nastiness of much of the Referendum campaign and the distress its loss caused to so many Indigenous Australians, non-Indigenous Australians owe it to their First Nations brothers and sisters to reflect on the many reasons offered to explain why the Referendum was lost. We must also treasure and respect their history, their culture and their festivals. For that reason, the National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) Week is especially timely. It commemorates an initiative taken in hard times, an act of defiance and an invitation to be heard. The Week is a time to celebrate the fire that they lit, and to work with them to keep it burning.
NAIDOC Week was built on pride: the pride that led Indigenous people, who recognised that they were neither respected nor heard, to work for change. They saw how inappropriate it was to celebrate Australia Day on the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet. That date marked the beginning of their dispossession. They began to organise in order to find recognition and acceptance by other Australians of their right to participate fully in society, but faced opposition at every corner. They drew up a petition sent to King George V to ask for Aboriginal electorates, but the Government saw it as outside its constitutional powers to provide them. In 1938, the 150th anniversary of the landing, January 26 was made a national holiday. In response to this affront, the same year a Congress of Indigenous people met in Sydney. Its members marched on Australia Day but called it Mourning Day.
Australia Day is still celebrated on the anniversary of the beginning of Indigenous expropriation, but out of the struggle NAIDOC Week was born and continues. Its date was changed to expand the occasion beyond protest to include the celebration of the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander heritage. This generous decision to light a candle rather than curse the darkness provides an opportunity for all Australians to join in celebrating their culture, aspirations and hopes. And also to listen to their voice and support those who fight for their rights.
The theme of NAIDOC Week, to Keep the Fire Burning, is appropriate at many levels. It echoes the importance that lighting and controlling fire had in Indigenous cultures. Fire lay at the heart of the meals, the feasts, the care for the land, and the community life of Indigenous Australians. To keep it burning was a communal task of mutual service and of service to the land. It was the difference between a thriving and energetic community and one that had lost hope and was dying out. This year the theme of NAIDOC Week marks the determination to honour the fire in the heart that led to the birth of the Week, and to ensure that the fire continues to burn.
For non-Indigenous Australians NAIDOC Week is an occasion to honour the culture of our First Peoples and the tenacity with which they have insisted that their culture and their rights be respected. It is also a time for sober reflection on where our nation is going and on what we want it to be. It is about reaching out to form the respectful and decent relationships that engender shared pride within diverse communities. It is a time for engaging with one another, for recognising and celebrating the many and often painful ways in which pride is being built in Indigenous communities, and for pressing for respect in all the personal and institutional relationships that link non-Indigenous to Indigenous Australians.
The theme of NAIDOC Week reminds all of us Australians of the urgent need to shape a world that offers us enduring shelter, renewal and sustenance, built on the harmony between people and land. The First Peoples developed a mastery of the technology of fire in a way that both renewed the bush and helped sustain both animal and human life. The settler culture developed far more sophisticated technologies as part of a wealthier society. Prosperity, however, has incurred the heavy cost of damaging the natural world and of threatening the lives and welfare of our descendants. The NAIDOC week call to keep the fire burning is also a call to respect the ancient wisdom that respected the environment and the delicate relationships on which human flourishing depends. It invites us all to enter a culture of participation and leave behind one of exploitation.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: A woman takes part in the annual NAIDOC march in Melbourne, Australia. The march marks the start of NAIDOC Week, which runs in the first full week of July each year. NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)