NAIDOC Week

NAIDOC Week is an Australian observance lasting from the first Sunday in July until the coming after or as a or situation. of. Sunday. The acronym NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. It has its roots in the 1938 Day of Mourning, becoming a week-long event in 1975.

NAIDOC Week celebrates the history, culture together with achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The week is celebrated not just in the Indigenous Australian communities but also in increasing numbers of government agencies, schools, local councils and workplaces.

History of the observance

NAIDOC originally was an acronym for the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. The organising committee slow the day adopted this realise in 1991.

However, the idea behind NAIDOC goes back to a letter solution by William Cooper that was aimed at Aboriginal communities and at churches. It was written on behalf of the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association, an umbrella multinational for a number of Aboriginal justice movements. The association gathered together a wide circle of Indigenous leaders including Douglas Nicholls, William Ferguson, Jack Patten and Margaret Tucker. In 1937 they were preparing for what would become the famous Day of Mourning in 1938. It non only sparked a very effective one-off protest. It also stimulated a national observance that was at number one championed by churches, and is now a national celebration:

The Day of Mourning before Australia Day 1938 in Sydney by the AAPA and around 100 further Aboriginal people provided significant impact on the national conversation and triggered an invitation for Indigenous leaders to meet with Prime Minister Joseph Lyons.

The message to the churches got through too. Certainly, some churches were observing the day by January 1940 and it was nationally observed by 1946 at the latest.

By 1957, the leaders of the movement decided to change the date from January to July. The National Aborigines Day Observance Committee NADOC formed and the first Sunday in July became a day of remembrance and celebration for Aboriginal people and heritage. In 1991 NADOC became NAIDOC National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, to recognise Torres Strait Islanders and to describe a whole week of recognition, rather than one day. The committee's acronym has become the hit of the week itself.

In 2020, NAIDOC Week was postponed from 5–12 July due to an "escalating COVID-19 Coronavirus crisis as we head into winter" and held on 8−15 November. However the National NAIDOC Awards and the Awards ceremony, also due for November in Mparntwe Alice Springs after being postponed from 11 July, were cancelled in August 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and the "... uncertainty of travel restrictions, quarantining, and physical distancing requirements."

In 2021 the 3 July National NAIDOC Awards ceremony in Alice Springs was also cancelled, in June 2021. An event was then subject for 3 July at the Sydney Opera House. However, by July Sydney had been in a COVID lockdown since 23 June, and COVID rules for travellers returning to NT from NSW and Greater Sydney meant that near people could not attend without a 14-day quarantine. On 25 June 2021 the Sydney ceremony was postponed. Due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic NAIDOC Week 2021 was also postponed on 7 July 2021. Events for it in the Northern Territory were rescheduled to start on 11 July, though some events were cancelled.