NAIDOC Week (6–13 July 2025) is our yearly chance to slow down, stand on Country, and remember why our work matters. This year’s theme The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy lands close to home for us at Queensland State Archives (QSA). Every day, the records in our care carry stories back to community, helping mob weave together the lines that colonisation tried to cut.
In the First Nations Strategy team at QSA we’ve been centring the question: “How can these records serve our people today?” The answers keep unfolding:
- We reconnect kin: Birth registers, dormitory rolls and removed-children files have reunited aunties, uncles and cousins who grew up on different missions.
- We revitalise language: Letter books, correspondence and other records have brought back traditional surnames and language names into families after generations of silence.
- We help strengthen identity: Photographs, letters and oral histories have become classroom resources, giving young ones living proof that their grandparents were leaders, artists, shearers, nurses and trailblazers long before the word “trailblazer” existed.
QSA’s First Nations Strategy Team is working towards stronger cultural governance. This is guided by the work of Butchulla scholar, and former QSA First Nations Archives advisor, Dr Rose Barrowcliffe, as well as the principles of the new Public Records Act and the Tandanya Declaration. Our work is also steered by QSA’s refreshed ‘Commitment to Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples’.
From these foundations we are developing protocols and partnerships that better reflect community authority over how records are described, accessed and shared.
Sam Joseph, Director of the First Nations Strategy (FNS) team at QSA reflected on the significance of this year’s NAIDOC theme and says “through the FNS team’s dedicated program of work and with the support of QSA leadership, we are building a legacy that not only honours the past but also embraces new ways of archival practice that centre and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and perspectives. This is a legacy we hope will inspire and empower those who will shape the future.”
Sam expressed how deeply this commitment resonates with the team, both professionally and personally, saying, “We understand that the work we do today has the potential to create lasting change for generations to come. That’s why it’s so important that the foundations we lay are grounded in cultural respect, strength, and empowerment.”
As mob, we already carry the strength and vision, these records are just the mirrors. When we see ourselves reflected, the next generation walks taller.
This NAIDOC Week, make space for reflection and discussion and use this week as a chance to talk with your team about the theme and what it means for your work.
Records Connect 
Leave a Reply