North Kalgoorlie Primary School students acknowledge Reconciliation Week

North Kalgoorlie Primary School students embraced Reconciliation Week on Friday with a smoking ceremony and assembly to mark the beginning of the national event.

The school’s Aboriginal and Islander education officer Gavin Murray said the ceremony was organised in collaboration with student councillors who shared the meaning of Reconciliation Week.

“We started with the smoking ceremony, as the kids said to cleanse their spirits, their minds and their bodies ready for the start of Reconciliation Week (and) looking forward on making good connections and good choices in regards to reconciliation,” he said.

“I feel it’s important to not only just Indigenous (peoples), but all people in Australia so that we can go down a better path. Reconciliation means us coming together as a nation.”

Mr Murray also recited a poem he wrote as a tribute to his grandmother, Francis (Imeia) Murray, who was forcibly removed from her family to Mount Margaret mission during the late 1930s as part of the stolen generations.

“She was stolen away from just past (Cosmo Newberry Aboriginal Community) when she was little kid and taken to the Laverton jail,” he said.

“The first dress she was given was a sugar bag, they cut holes in it and put her on her.

“The poem was an ode to her really, just something to show her story and to make it relatable because it’s my grandmother and I’m going to talk to the kids and I say, ‘it could have been your grandmother’.”

Throughout the week, Mr Murray will teach students about Aboriginal culture, the meaning of acknowledgement of country and history in the Goldfields region.

National Reconciliation Week will run from May 27 until June 3.

These dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey — the successful 1967 referendum and the 1992 High Court Mabo decision.

Mr Murray said the 1967 referendum enabled his grandfather to get a job as a truck driver and earn a wage.

He said events such as the Mabo decision assisted people in Cosmo Newberry to gain native title rights.

“The Mabo decision is important because that has enabled people like my family up in (Cosmo Newberry), we’ve got exclusive native title rights, that’s only able because of things like Mabo, so it’s definitely really important to myself and all Aboriginal people,” Mr Murray said.