National NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia annually during the first week of July to "celebrate and recognise the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples". NAIDOC Week reminds all Australians of the importance of learning and understanding our First Nations cultures and histories. It also gives us opportunities to celebrate one of the oldest, continuous living cultures in the world.
This year, NAIDOC Week takes place from Sunday 3 to Sunday 10 July.
This year’s theme for NAIDOC week is Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up! to encourage Aboriginal and Torres strait Islanders to continue to Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up! for change.
Yarra Plenty Regional Library celebrates NAIDOC Week as an opportunity to acknowledge our First Peoples, and work with them and council partners to promote connection, communication and understanding throughout our community.
NAIDOC Week events
YPRL has planned several events around NAIDOC week this year and we are proud to remind you of our monthly First Nations Storytime sessions. On the first Friday of each month, Thomastown Library presents a First Nations Storytime. This is a circle of learning, reading and yarns, and we welcome all of our communities to join in. Our upcoming sessions will take place on 1 July and 5 August.
A special Kinder Dreaming storytelling and art session will be run at Thomastown Library on Thursday 7 July at 11.00 am.
Later that night, Thomastown Library welcomes you to a special Libraries After Dark session to yarn with other community members. Local indigenous teas will be provided.
Mill Park Library is also hosting a Libraries After Dark session showcasing NAIDOC Week in Virtual Reality. Explore a groundbreaking interactive VR experience that brings the mythology and cultural heritage of Mowarin’s people to life.
Lalor Library is hosting a Toy Library Puzzle Morning on Friday 8 July at 11.00 am to create some beautiful Indigenous jigsaw puzzles and colouring activities.
On Friday 8 July, join Wurundjeri Elder Uncle Ian Hunter at Lalor Library as he shares his knowledge of indigenous food found in the City of Whittlesea.
There will also be an Indigenous storytime and craft session taking place at Lalor Library on Saturday 9 July from 3.00 pm to 4.00 pm.
Eltham library will be launching their new Children’s Garden mural, by artist Simone Thomson, on Friday 22 July. There will also be an Indigenous-inspired morning tea and story reading.
From the Shelves
We've selected the following items from our collection that foster understanding and knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture.
Culture is life: a photographic exploration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in modern Australia by Wayne Quilliam, 2021
Culture is Life is a modern, photographic celebration of the diversity of Indigenous Australians. Pre-eminent Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has an archive of thousands of images and interviews with Indigenous people across the country. Through the images in this stunning collection, Wayne's work explores Indigenous thinking and identity and focuses on how the First peoples view their place within the contemporary culture of Australia.
What the colonists never knew: a history of Aboriginal Sydney by Dennis Foley and Peter Read, 2020
What the Colonists Never Knew paints a vivid picture of what it was like to grow up Aboriginal in Sydney, alongside the colonists, from 1788 to the present. It has two levels of the story; Peter Read's exploration of the history of Aboriginal Sydney and of the life of traditional owners before colonisation, and Dennis Foley's personal story of his own Gai-mariagal country. This book offers an honest account of the disappointment, pain and terror experienced by Sydney's First Peoples, and celebrates the survival of their spirit and their culture.
Aboriginal Australians: a history since 1788 by Richard Broome, 2019
Aboriginal Australians has long been regarded as the most authoritative account of black-white relations in Australia. This fifth edition continues the story. Richard Broome tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians. He tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation and traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of a settler society to a more central place in modern Australia.
The original Australians: the story of the Aboriginal people by Josephine Flood, 2019
The Original Australians tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime to the first contact between Europeans and Indigenous Australians, through to the Uluru Statement, it offers an insight into the life and experiences of the world's oldest surviving culture.
Making Australian history by Anna Clark, 2022
History isn't just about understanding what happened and why. It also reflects the persuasions, politics, and prejudices of its authors.
Australian history has been revised and reinterpreted by successive generations of historians, writers, governments, and public commentators, yet there has been no account of the ways it has changed, who makes history, and how. Making Australian History responds to this critical gap in Australian historical research.
Gudyarra: the first Wiradyuri war of resistance: the Bathurst war, 1822-1824 by Stephen Gapps, 2021
In Gudyarra, Stephen Gapps - award-winning author of The Sydney Wars - unearths what led to a furious and bloody war between Wiradyuri people and the colonists in the country around Bathurst. ‘Gudyarra’ provides an important new historical account of the co-ordinated resistance warfare by the Wiradyuri that occurred in a vast area across the central west of New South Wales.
Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, edited by Anita Heiss, 2018
What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences, and stories to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. This groundbreaking collection will enlighten, inspire, and educate about the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia today.
For our Younger Readers
Aboriginal culture by Mark Tirris, 2020
In this story, Mark explains the importance of his Aboriginal culture during his younger years, and now as an adult and a father. He talks about what it's like to be Aboriginal and the way in which his culture is taught and shared through the generations.
Somebody's land by Adam Goodes and Ellie Laing, 2021
Somebody's Land is an invitation to connect with First Nations culture, to acknowledge the hurt of the past, and to join together as one community with a precious shared history. The words and pictures, full of life, invite children and their families to imagine themselves into Australia's past - to feel the richness of our First Nations' history, to acknowledge that our country was never terra nullius, and to understand what 'welcome to our country' really means.