We welcome, support and join with many for this 2024 National Reconciliation Week. There are 5 dimensions to reconciliation: historical acceptance; race relations; equality and equity; institutional integrity and unity. First Nations people speaking for themselves about justice and healing.
As we mark this week, we, Marist180, likewise extend our wholehearted support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017). The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an invitation to all Australians from First Nations people to unite and to build a better, shared future. We accept this invitation and encourage all in this land to do so as an integral step towards Reconciliation.
The CEO of Reconciliation Australia, Karen Mundine, has reflected upon and introduced the 2024 National Reconciliation Week theme, ‘Now More Than Ever’.
‘This National Reconciliation Week, in light of the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum, we are urging people to take action, Now More Than Ever.
It’s a reminder to all of us that the fight for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, recognition and justice must continue and any advancement must be protected.
To not do so is to break with the legacy we have inherited from generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists, advocates and leaders, and the allies who supported them, who fought for every one of the rights we enjoy today.
Now more than ever, there is an opportunity to make a difference in this country, to challenge the status quo and not let another generation be lost to systems that were not built for First Nations people nor the diversity of Australia in the 21st century.
Now more than ever it is time to learn from the lessons of the past and accept that without the full engagement of First Nations peoples in the life of this country, Australia is forever diminished.
And now more than ever, it will take each of us who can see the benefits and opportunities of making space for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and our ways of being, knowing and doing, to advocate for and defend those rights against those who would limit or take them away.’
We stand in solidarity, alongside our First Nations peoples. Our future as a nation, we believe, must be based on justice and liberation, and that our First Nations peoples are entitled to the democratic right to have a voice in decisions that affect them.
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