Purai is an Awabakal word meaning “the world, earth”. The blue outline represents the flow of world tides and currents. Orange & red represents the desert lands. Green represents the rainforests.

Purai Global Indigenous History Centre is a research hub that embraces Indigenous knowledges, cultures, histories and contemporary experience on a worldwide scale. It supports truth telling and Indigenous-led and community-driven research that highlights issues within and across Indigenous communities and diaspora. We value Indigenous research methodologies, and non-traditional research outputs.

Drawing upon our extensive national and international connections, Purai harnesses collaborations that lead to high-quality original research projects and the development of productive new knowledge networks.

By integrating Indigenous and transnational/transcolonial global scholarship with approaches from a range of disciplines, Purai aims to generate new and ground-breaking interdisciplinary research methodologies for the study of global Indigenous knowledges, cultures, histories and contemporary experience.

NAIDOC 2025 The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy

When Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, was pouring a handful of red sand into Gurindji Elder, Vincent Lingiari’s hand, another key element in Australia’s reconciliation journey began – NAIDOC Week. For 50 years, NAIDOC has honoured and elevated Indigenous voices, culture, and resilience. In 2025 the NAIDOC theme celebrates not only the achievements of the past but the bright future ahead, empowered by the strength of Indigenous Australian young leaders, the vision of their communities, and the legacy of their ancestors.

In this spirit, students and staff from the University of Newcastle’s (UoN) Purai’s Global Indigenous History Centre and Newcastle High School’s Cooks Hill Campus celebrated 2025 NAIDOC Week together. The morning began with an assembly based on the 2025 theme. Poems were shared, songs sung and Purai Co-director, Professor Kate Senior, presented Deputy Campus Leader, Phelissitie Milgate, with a resource produced from the Truth Telling project which the centre undertook with the Department of Education about the history of Indigenous Australian Education in NSW.

Afterwards students were invited to workshops with UoN staff and students designed to support their study focus. These included weaving with Caelli Brooker, botanical ink stamps with Estelle Leishman, Indigenous language and history with Angelina Joshua and Professor Heather Sharp, music with Aiden Powell and Associate Professor Helen English.

Bayira: Catching songs, stories and dreams

Hosted by the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre, held at the Newcastle NSW Conservatorium of Music, this conference started with a Welcome to Country and opening address by Dr Ray Kelly, discussing the meaning of Bayira. The People's Chorus sang Freedom, Weevils in the Flour (Wendy Lowenstein)  and If I Were Free. Cooks Hill Youth Forum spoke about important Newcastle historical events, such as the first Aboriginal May Queen, the Possum Skin Cloak Project and personal identity. The drama group also sung performance pieces on The Voice Referendum.

Kerri Clarke, an Indigenous artist of Boon Wurrung descent who is known for her work with animal skins, and her son Mitch Mahoney talked about making possum skin cloaks, which involves cutting and sewing possum pelts together then etching designs into the skin with wood burning tools, sometimes adding colour with paint or beads. Kerri and Mitch also talked about their role in the Ngukurr to Newcastle project . Professor Kate Senior also talked about the Ngukurr to Newcastle project Dexter Daniels, and intercultural collaboration for Indigenous rights. “Bayira, meaning to stand up and to speak, was a people’s conference held to celebrate the history of Newcastle’s engagement with Indigenous rights,” Professor Senior said.

Later, in the evening a Paint and Yarn workshop was held by Mr Mahoney in the foyer where participants painted their own clapsticks. Carole Johnson, founder of NAISDA (National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Association) and Bangarra Dance Theatre, spoke about urban dance and activism. Then Dr Jean Harkins and Nicholas K Watson finished the evening with a conversation about Indigenous languages.

Looking Through Windows Programme

It started with a yarn that was transformed into a poem and grew into a video documentary, a community exhibition with a one-act play, opera piece and travelling exhibition.

Led by Dr Lorina Barker from the University of New England (UNE), Looking Through Windows: Tablelands, the coast to outback NSW is an oral history, artistic and multimedia project exploring the removal, dispossession and ‘protection’ of Aboriginal people in New South Wales and parts of Queensland and South Australia.

Part of the exhibition included a tin humpy recreated in the gallery's grounds.

But the exhibition wasn't the only event planned, a talk and tour for Young Adults in the Hunter area's refugee cohort and a weaving workshop at Wollotuka Institute were also part of Dr Barker's and Michael Brogan's (Taragara Aboriginal Corporation) busy schedule that week.