Event Invitation - NRW Book Launch at WCSS

Book Launch Invitation

Kaya WCSS Community!                   

We are delighted to invite our school community to share in the fruits of a powerful reconciliation project that our graduates undertook last year together with the family of the late Noongar Elder, Cliff Humphries (1910-1998), one of the last fluent Noongar speakers in the world.

 A senior Ballardong Elder who held within him a library of ancient Noongar knowledge, the Elder recorded hundreds of Dreamtime stories and songs prior to his passing, and tasked his family with sharing these with the Noongar and wider community in an effort to preserve Noongar language and culture.

 For decades, his priceless recordings sat in a restricted access archive in the Battye Library, except when they were shown to the High Court as a critical piece of evidence in the 2006 Bennell vs The State of WA trial securing Native Title for the Noongar nation.

 Surviving family members have now begun the publishing process, working with school children on Noongar boodja to get their ancestral knowledge returned to the community through the Elder Cliff Humphries Reconciliation Project.

 Our upper primary students once again joined the Project, collaborating with the Elder’s family to illustrate one of the Elder’s favourite Dreamtime stories. With the support of our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) group, we have been able to publish 1000 copies of the book. Part of a series of teaching resources for Noongar Language, Song and Culture, the books’ unique QR codes link to previously unheard archival materials, allowing readers to "meet" the late Elder and learn from him exactly how the Noongar words are traditionally spoken.

This National Reconciliation Week, we are excited to share with you the Elder’s knowledge, and the students’ magnificent artworks, celebrating Noongar cultural life on beautiful pre-colonial boodja. This event will include an opportunity to see an authentic Noongar Welcome to Country, learn about the Elder from his surviving daughters, learn an ancient middar, watch the students perform the story, sing in language and share their experience of the project, and enjoy a bush tucker tea and yarn with the Elder’s family.

Please find below your invitation for the Book Launch. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, 3rd June for this special event.