NAIDOC Week

NAIDOC Week celebrations will be conducted across Australia during the school holidays to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life.

Holy Cross College will have a number of different activities to celebrate NAIDOC Week running at the beginning of Winter Term. Dom Rosendo Salvado, one of our College Patrons had a deep love for his Indigenous brothers and sisters. Salvado lived a life devoted to building relationships with the custodians of this great land of the Holy Spirit. 

In Autumn term we celebrated the National Sorry Day, and during the Sorry Day liturgy each member of the community completed a dot painting on stones as a symbol of moving forward with our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Now, with NAIDOC week approaching these stones have been transformed into a cross in the form of a Mandala. A mandala symbolises that life is everlasting.

The mandala cross has been created with the arrangement of the stones from the Sorry Day liturgy into 4 sections representing the compassion of each of the houses across the College towards our brothers and sisters. These stones have been placed on an earth base that was a sifting together of different sands collected from around the state celebrating the Aboriginal peoples connection to the land including locations such as, Swan River, Norseman, Toodyay, Nullarbor, and Kalgoorlie. There is also salt from Lake Tyrell in Victoria that represents the purification received through reconciliation. 

Thanks to the members of the community that worked together in producing this deeply symbolic cross to encourage us all to live life to the full.