Here we go again. It’s NAIDOC Week – the annual event which grew from the first observances of the National Day of Mourning event to a week-long recognition of the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Across the country, schools run themed assemblies, while education content providers fall over themselves to push NAIDOC-branded classroom resources. Public transport operators, local councils, community groups, and corporate organisations all join in, blanketing the week with promotional collateral – each seemingly competing to outdo the others in symbolic virtue.
Annual slogans are framed around sovereignty and land rights and political reform and activism. This year’s slogan to assist in the social engineering crusade is:
‘The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy.’
There are wristbands, posters that promote treaty and sovereignty, and worksheet activities that walk children through concepts such as ‘invasion’ and ‘decolonisation’, promoting a grievance-based narrative that casts Aboriginal Australians as perpetual victims and others as oppressors – fostering division and resentment, not understanding.
And this saturation is not limited to NAIDOC Week alone. In addition to NAIDOC week, there is National Reconciliation Week and Sorry Day, as well as a range of other individual days scheduled in the calendar.
In educational settings, promotion of these named days comes in addition to a cross-curriculum priority in the National Curriculum, mandating that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture be embedded into every subject, at every year level, at every opportunity.
It introduces young children to complex and age-inappropriate topics, such as invasion, genocide, and colonisation, without sufficient context. These messages can be confusing or distressing, especially for younger students who are still learning the difference between fact and assertion, history and activism.
The tone of these ‘celebrations’ is not one of a balanced understanding of history or of reconciliation, as is often claimed. The undertone messaging promulgates an uncritical, divisive, activist agenda of victimhood, grievance and reparation, wrapped up in slogans and pretty wrist bands for children as young as five.
By contrast, Australia Day is presented in a negative light, not as a cause for celebration of national unity or democratic achievement. Instead, Australia Day is presented as a day of invasion, mourning and dispossession, of guilt and grievance. Schools are told it is a ‘day of mourning’, and students are more likely to be given a lesson in anti-colonisation than anything about the achievements of a free and prosperous nation. Colouring-in sheets of the Australian flag, wristbands saying ‘Proud to be Australian’, or songs about unity or democracy are conspicuously absent.
This radically tilted focus reflects the broader ambition of activism, identity politics, and grievance narratives, pursued at the expense of national unity, and a balanced and historically accurate education. This imbalance tells us something important about the state of civic education in Australia and reveals how deeply identity politics and ideological agendas have penetrated our classrooms.
Of course, understanding Indigenous history and culture is important, but the preponderance of activist materials, combined with the absence of accurate, balanced national civics instruction, has produced an entire generation of students more familiar with the Uluru Statement than with the Australian Constitution; more likely to associate the flag with ‘invasion’ than with unity; and far more exposed to grievance than to gratitude.
If schools are willing to wrap themselves in wristbands for NAIDOC, then they should be just as ready to embrace Australia Day, ANZAC Day, and Constitution Day with equal vigour. Constitution Day falls on July 9 – ironically, during NAIDOC week – and commemorates the day in 1900 when Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, the law that created the Australian nation and its system of government. I doubt a student has ever heard of it. If we are truly serious about reconciliation and national unity, we must start by treating all parts of our story with honesty – and all parts of our population with equal respect.
It’s time we called out the distortion of civic education, and replaced empty symbolism with genuine national understanding. It’s time the annual ritual of systematically distorted virtue signalling was called to account and its real agenda transparently considered.
As NAIDOC Week is marked in classrooms across the country, one wonders how many schools are engaging students in a critical analysis of the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report – released just days ago – which makes sweeping legal, political, cultural, economic, and land rights claims, many of which the Victorian government has said it will seriously consider.
How many students are being asked to thoughtfully examine the consequences of these proposals and invited to deliberate on what it would mean if their Aboriginal classmates were granted ownership or control over vast areas of Victorian land, waters, and natural resources? And to consider the implications of differential tax regimes, parallel legal systems, or state-sanctioned governance structures based on race or ancestry?
Or are classrooms, once again, being saturated with wristbands, colouring sheets and platitudes – while the more serious civic and constitutional questions are left unasked?
Colleen Harkin is the Director of the Institute of Public Affairs’ Schools Program
