NAIDOC Week: Strength, Vision & Legacy

This week we celebrate NAIDOC Week which began on Monday with a smoking ceremony led by Uncle Ronald Schultz, welcoming mob and community.  Such is the importance of this day, I unusually wrote my speech before hand which my fellow Waysiders have encouraged me to share with you, the Inner Circle, in honour of our mob and community.

Content warning: the following mentions the names and stories of Aboriginal People who have passed. 

“Thank you for welcoming me into this sacred circle, for sharing the breath of Country with me through this ancient ceremony of smoke and story.

As we gather here on Country, I want to first acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land – the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation – and pay my respects to Elders past and those present with us.

This place we now call Kings Cross was known as Derawun to the Gadigal people, part of the broader Country they called Curageen and Yarrandabbi. The Gadigal territory stretched along the southern shores of Port Jackson from South Head to what we now know as Petersham. This was hunting ground, ceremonial space, and home for thousands upon thousands of years before European settlement – time so deep it defies our imagining, yet lives still in every grain of sandstone, every turn of the tide.

The Gadigal were one of about twenty-nine clan groups that made up the Eora Nation – the coastal peoples of Sydney. When the British first arrived and asked the Aboriginal people where they came from, they replied simply, powerfully: “Eora” – meaning “here” or “from this place”. In that single word lies a universe of belonging, of being rooted in Country in ways that go deeper than ownership, deeper than possession – into the realm of the sacred, the eternal. It also marked the first encounter between a people who spoke of custodianship with a people who believed in ownership, so many worlds apart.

This land has been shaped by remarkable souls – people like Bennelong, who became the first Aboriginal Australian to travel to Europe and return, carrying the weight of two worlds on his shoulders, serving as a bridge between peoples while never losing the essence of who he was as a Wangal man. Like Pemulwuy, the Bidjigal warrior whose name means “earth” – how fitting – who led a fearless resistance against colonisation for fourteen years, showing us, that strength sometimes means standing firm against impossible odds, that love of Country can fuel the most extraordinary courage.

Like Nanbaree, the Gadigal man who survived the smallpox epidemic as a child and became a skilled interpreter and sailor, embodying that peculiar Aboriginal genius for adaptation without assimilation, for finding ways to navigate new worlds whilst keeping the old world alive within. Like Barangaroo, the Cammeraygal woman who maintained traditional ways and cultural authority, teaching us that honouring the past is not nostalgia but necessity, not sentiment but survival.

These were your ancestors – diplomats, warriors, survivors, teachers – who faced the unimaginable and responded not with bitterness alone, but with a courage that carved meaning from catastrophe, who looked into the abyss of cultural destruction and somehow found ways to keep the flame burning.

This year’s NAIDOC theme, “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy,” calls us to a place of depth – not reflection, but transformation. As we mark fifty years of NAIDOC Week, we acknowledge both the long shadow of our shared history and the bright possibility of our shared future.

I stand before you carrying the weight of my own history, our own history. At Wayside, we’ve learnt that truth-telling is not the enemy of healing – it is its precondition. We acknowledge that our churches, including our own, have been part of systems that caused immeasurable harm to First Nations peoples. We carry that truth not as a burden that crushes, but as a responsibility that compels us forward into deeper relationship and greater understanding.

But history is not just what was done to you – it is what you have done despite it all. Your strength has been nothing short of miraculous. In the face of policies designed to erase you, you persisted. In the face of laws designed to silence you, your voices spoke truth. In the face of systems designed to break you, you not only survived – you flourished, you created, you led and you loved.

At Wayside, we’ve been honoured to work alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our community for sixty years, right here on Gadigal Country. When Ted Noffs first started Wayside in 1964, he was building on this land where Bennelong once lived, where Pemulwuy once fought, where countless generations of the Gadigal people called home. In learning to walk with you, you’ve taught us many lessons, one of which is that true service isn’t about helping ‘others’ – it’s about recognising that we’re all part of the same human family, sharing the same struggles, the same longings, the same unquenchable hunger for dignity, for justice, for love.

The next generation you’re nurturing – your young leaders, your storytellers, your cultural keepers – they carry something extraordinary. They carry your strength, yes, but they also carry something new: the possibility of a future where First Nations wisdom isn’t just preserved but celebrated, where your voices don’t just survive but lead, where your knowledge systems aren’t just tolerated but treasured as essential for the healing of this wounded world.

As we breathe in this sacred smoke together, we’re not just cleansing this space – we’re preparing our hearts for the conversations and connections that will shape tomorrow. We’re acknowledging that reconciliation isn’t a destination we arrive at – it’s a journey we walk together, step by step, breath by breath, generation by generation.

Your strength has sustained you through the longest night. Your vision has lit the way forward when the path seemed impossible to find. Your legacy is being written every day – in the lives you touch, the young people you mentor, the communities you heal, the Country you protect, the stories you tell, the songs you sing, the dances you dance.

Thank you for letting us walk alongside you in this sacred work. Thank you for your patience with our stumbling, your wisdom in our learning, your hope in our shared becoming. Together, we move forward – not just as allies, but as family, bound by love for this ancient land and all who call it home.

The smoke rises, carrying our hopes skyward. The circle continues, as it has for countless years, and in this moment, in this place, in this gathering of hearts, we are all Eora – we are all from this place, we are all here.”

Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle.