*** Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article mentions someone who has passed ***
National NAIDOC Week 2026 officially concluded yesterday but the collective accomplishments, voices and vision shared during the week, with its theme of ’50 Years of Deadly’, will continue to be seen and heard.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, communities and organisations working for health and wellbeing made wide-ranging contributions marking NAIDOC Week.
Professor Rhonda Wilson, Wiradjuri descendant and President of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, published a series of articles that highlighted the importance of Indigenous knowledges, clinical yarning, cultural safety and social and emotional wellbeing.
“NAIDOC’s 2026 theme reminds us that the strength of First Nations communities has been carried forward by generations who kept culture, language and story alive against the odds,” she wrote in an article published as part of a series.
“Clinical yarning is part of that continuity: it takes a practice as old as culture itself, sitting together, sharing story, and recognises it as legitimate, evidence-based therapeutic care.”
The series:
- Dying on Whose Terms? Why Cultural Safety Can’t Start at the Deathbed
- Clinical Yarning: Story as the Heart of Culturally Safe Mental Health Care
- Deadly by Design: First Nations Knowledges, Yarning and the Shape of Digital Health
- Designing Deadly Digital Health: Lessons from Indigenous Knowledge‑Sharing Interventions
- Social and emotional well-being, from one generation to the next – the song continues.
In the final article, Wilson writes: “Fifty years of NAIDOC is a celebration of survival, strength and momentum, more than 65,000 years of continuous culture meeting the future on our own terms.
“For those of us working in mental health, the invitation is simple and serious: learn the history, listen deeply, practise safely, and make room for First Nations knowledges to lead.”
Meanwhile, The Medical Journal of Australia published a special collection of articles that are Indigenous led and authored. Artist Harry Pitt created the cover artwork, a Torres Strait Islander perspective on health and wellbeing, which he says “explores the cultural aspects of health, including connection to Country, kinship, identity and intergenerational knowledge”.
Listen to a podcast with the four guest editors: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics Dr Stephen Harfield (Narungga and Ngarrindjeri), Professor Michelle Kennedy (Wiradjuri), Sophie Pitt (Meriam), and Associate Professor Paul Saunders (Biripi).
Writing at The Conversation, Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures at Macquarie University, paid tribute to the “spirit of resistance and collective action [that] continues to define NAIDOC”.
“While the week has evolved into a national celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and achievements, its foundations remain firmly rooted in the pursuit of justice, equality and self-determination,” she said.
For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, NAIDOC is affectionately known as “Blak Christmas”, and is a time when families and communities reconnect, often travelling long distances to be together, Carlson wrote.
Across the country there are marches, community days, award ceremonies, sporting carnivals, cultural performances, music, dancing and opportunities to celebrate culture, honour our Elders and share in the joy of community.
Over the past 50 years, the themes have focused on self-determination, land rights and treaty, while others challenged Australia to confront its history and recognise the ongoing impacts of colonisation. More recent themes have celebrated the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, Elders, languages and young people, while also emphasising truth-telling, caring for Country and Indigenous sovereignty.
“Perhaps the greatest achievement, though, is that NAIDOC has managed to hold onto its political beginnings while becoming one of Australia’s most widely recognised national events,” wrote Carlson.
The publisher Wiley curated a multidisciplinary research collection to showcase outstanding Indigenous research and First Nations authors, and also asked First Nations researchers about what the NAIDOC theme means to them.
Read interviews with:
- Kylie Stothers, a proud Jawoyn woman born and raised in Katherine, Northern Territory, who has worked as a social worker in the NT for over 25 years, and is currently the Deputy CEO at Indigenous Allied Health Australia (IAHA).
- Genus Passi, a Torres Strait Islander, living in Townsville, Queensland and is a descendant from the Eastern Torres Straits with direct family lineage to Lifou Island, New Caledonia and Western Papuan Province.
- Shandell Cummings, a Merningar (Menang) yorga (girl) from the South Coast of Western Australia.
- Kevin Smith, a proud Torres Strait Islander man with traditional connections to Ugar (Stephen Island) and Erub (Darnley Island). He is the President of the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT).
In a statement marking NAIDOC Week, NACCHO said the theme reflected the history of the Aboriginal Community Controlled sector, which now has 148 ACCHOs and more than 550 clinics, reaching over 410,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a year in cities, towns, and some of the most remote communities in the country.
“The ACCHO sector is now among the largest employers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. None of it was given. All of it was built,” NACCHO said.
“When the question is asked, what do our communities build when culture leads, we answer with the sector. The proof is not a matter of opinion. It is in the outcomes ACCHOs deliver every day, in the trust communities place in services they control, and in the model that the rest of the country now looks to.
“NAIDOC is a celebration, and it is also a statement: our people are not waiting to be led.”
Download In Our Own Right here.
Read the Lowitja Institute position paper.
Reports from marches and other events
Many thousands of people attended marches, flag-raisings and other events – across nations from north to south, east to west, and in the Centre.
Victoria
Below, watch highlights from the march in Naarm/Melbourne on 10 July, filmed by public health researcher and Croakey contributor Penelope Smith.
ACT
NSW
Queensland
See Sector Leader.
South Australia
Lutruwita
Northern Territory
In her speech to thousands of people attending the march in Garramilla/Darwin on Larrakia Country on 10 July, Minister Malarndirri McCarthy stressed the importance of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sector, organisations and activists continuing to “keep that pressure” on governments.
Highlighting the ongoing impact of incarceration, child removal and poverty, she said that “the only way a democracy works in this country is when people stand up and say what you need to say”.
“For an effective democracy to work; your views, your beliefs, should be heard.”
Western Australia
Watch: https://x.com/cbpatsisp/status/2073693368526209518
Read more here.
Other activities and acknowledgements
Still to come
The 2026 National NAIDOC Awards finalists are here, with winners to be announced at the National NAIDOC Awards ceremony in Mparntwe/Alice Springs on 15 August 2026.
Alongside this year’s finalists, the late Rhoda Roberts AO, a Widjabul Wieybal woman from the Bundjalung nation, has been named the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, honouring her extraordinary leadership and lasting impact on Australia’s arts and cultural landscape.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the cultural determinants of health
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