Merimbula Public School celebrated NAIDOC Week 2017 day with a range of activities surrounding the theme ‘Our Languages Matter’.

Our assembly this year was opened with a Welcome to Country by local Elder Mr Graham Moore.

As part of our activities, we ran a student art competition with input from Graham Moore, where students submitted illustrations for twenty common words in Dhurga and Thaua language. A vote was held and the students who submitted the best illustrations of each word were chosen to have their artwork made into signs to be posted around the school. The winners of each of the twenty words were presented with the signs to be posted in the playground by Mr Moore at our assembly.

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Each year our students narrate a Dreaming story to showcase as an iMovie at our assembly. This year we showed the local story of Bangu The Flying Fox, a story from the Yuin people of Wallaga Lake.

We talked about languages and showed some video surrounding the importance of language in Aboriginal culture. Our choir performed “Black Fella, White Fella” by the Warumpi Band.