This NAIDOC Week, we mark 50 Years of Deadly — a milestone that honours five decades of celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, leadership, cultures and communities.
For 50 years, NAIDOC Week has provided a powerful platform for truth, celebration, resistance and pride. NAIDOC has always been more than a week. It is a platform, a celebration and a statement of survival.
This moment is about looking back at the stories, the marches, the languages, the art and the leadership. It is about recognising the strength it took to get here, and acknowledging that progress did not happen by chance. It happened because generations of people refused to be silenced.
At the Churchill Trust, we recognise the importance of learning globally to inspire locally, and we are proud to support Fellows whose projects contribute to truth-telling, cultural safety, justice and community-led change.
This NAIDOC Week, we highlight three powerful Churchill Fellowships.
Supporting Indigenous reporter’ wellbeing
Rachael Hocking CF, 2024 and Cait McMahon CF, 2024 undertook a joint Churchill Fellowship to investigate mental health and wellbeing support appropriate for Australian Indigenous reporters.
Their project, Changing Seasons: Australian Indigenous reporters’ wellbeing and mental health, explored culturally grounded strategies to strengthen the wellbeing of Indigenous journalists. Through their Fellowship, they met with Indigenous journalists, Elders, media leaders, educators, mental health professionals and allies across the USA, Canada, Norway and Scotland.
Their work highlights that Indigenous journalists’ wellbeing cannot be separated from culture, community, language and the structures of the newsrooms in which they work. It also points to the need for Indigenous leadership, trauma-informed journalism practice, culturally safe peer support, and stronger recognition of the emotional and cultural load carried by First Nations storytellers.
Reflecting on the Fellowship, Cait McMahon CF, 2024 said: “In this age of heightened racism, we need strong Indigenous voices telling strong and deadly Indigenous stories — and us white fellas need to shut up, listen and learn. Our joint-Fellowship taught me that supporting wellbeing for First Nations reporters is not to change those journalists, but to change the colonial structures that continue to cause injustice and harm to their wellbeing. Changing those structures, and mindsets, will allow Indigenous storytellers to flourish. And all of Australia needs this — in our effort to understand who we are as a nation. Shut up and listen, and stop thinking the white fella voice is the most important in the room.”
Truth-telling and the media
Lorena Allam CF, 2023 received the Barbara Dunstan Churchill Fellowship to investigate the relationship between Indigenous truth-telling initiatives and the media.
Her Fellowship explored the role media can play in truth-telling, civic education and public understanding of how history continues to affect First Nations communities in Australia. Travelling to the UK, Ireland, Norway and Sweden, Lorena examined how different societies are grappling with the unfinished business of colonisation, conflict, reparations and historical accountability.
Her report highlights the media’s dual role: as a tool that has historically supported colonisation and harmful narratives, but also as a powerful platform for truth, education and change. It calls for deeper historical understanding in newsrooms, better support for First Nations journalists, and stronger frameworks for truth-telling in Australia.
Culture, healing and justice
Wenzel Carter CF, 2024 received the Sir William Kilpatrick Churchill Fellowship to learn how to decrease the incarceration rate of Indigenous men and women prisoners in Victoria.
Wenzel is a Ngarrindjeri man and a Respected Elder and Cultural Mentor with the Victorian Department of Justice. His Fellowship focuses on connecting Aboriginal men with culture and community through healing programs, rehabilitation, accommodation and employment pathways that can support life after prison. His project was inspired in part by trauma and healing programs in Hawaii that achieved a significant reduction in incarceration rates.
Together, these Fellowships speak to the heart of this year’s NAIDOC theme. They are about truth-telling, cultural strength, community care, justice and the future. They remind us that the work continues — in newsrooms, in justice systems, in communities, and through the leadership of people determined to create change.
Fifty Years of Deadly is a marker not just of time passed, but of momentum still building. It is proof of what communities build when culture leads and community comes first.
We honour what came before by continuing the work.