ABC celebrates NAIDOC week with First Nations content showcase
The ABC is celebrating NAIDOC week with a collection of special content across all platforms headlined by the primetime premiere of That Blackfella Show airing on Saturday 5 July at 7.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
NAIDOC Week 2024 will be held across the country from July 6-13, with the theme this year of The Next Generation: Strength, Vision and Legacy .
Led by ABC Indigenous, the ABC will showcase Indigenous storytelling across its screen, audio and digital platforms, including variety special That Blackfella Show hosted in front of a studio audience by Ernie Dingo, ABC News Breakfast 's Bridget Brennan, and Isaac Compton. Guests include Steph Tisdell, Dane Simpson, Kevin Kropinyeri, Jimmy Barnes, Abbie Chatfield, Outback Tom and Barkaa with musical performances by award-winning duo Electric Fields, Maningrida's all-female rock group The Ripple Effect Band, and ARIA-nominated singer-songwriter Miss Kaninna.
Head ABC Indigenous, Kelrick Martin said: 'National NAIDOC Week invites all Australians to come together, listen deeply, and celebrate the strength, resilience, and rich heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The ABC is proud to showcase powerful stories across all our platforms and create space for First Nations communities to be seen, heard, and respected.'
triple j will present Blakout Day on Sunday 6 July, featuring First Nations music throughout the day and interviews with artists including Jessica Mauboy and Barkaa. On Double J, Take 5 with Zan Rowe will feature a NAIDOC-themed episode with Outback Tom on Friday 11 July, while Weekend Mornings with Yumi Stynes will showcase all First Nations music from 8am on Sunday 6 July. Classic Albums revisits Coloured Stone's iconic debut Koonibba Rock on Monday 7 July, and Live at the Wireless will broadcast Emily Wurramara's 2025 WOMADelaide set on Tuesday 8 July. A new collaborative audio special from Double J and ABC Radio will also celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander songwriters.
ABC Country will present a special feature on Roger Knox, the Koori King of Country. In a unique partnership between Saturday Night Country and Radio National's Awaye! with Rudi Bremer, Knox reflects on his incredible life and the release of his new album Buluunarbi and The Old North Star . Saturday Night Country will also dedicate its 12 July episode to NAIDOC Week, hosted by Beccy Cole and featuring music from Kankawa Nagarra, Loren Ryan, Emma Donovan, Troy Cassar-Daley, Archie Roach, Kev Carmody and more. This is Indigenous Country will return with a refreshed playlist of outstanding First Nations country artists, available on ABC Country and via the ABC Listen app.
On Radio National, Big Ideas will present two powerful NAIDOC Week specials. On Monday 7 July, Post-Referendum Voices: Where Do We Go From Here? (recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival) will feature a conversation with Daniel Browning, Ben Abbatangelo, Thomas Mayo and Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts on the path forward following the Voice referendum. On Wednesday 9 July, Yuin woman and researcher Dr Jodi Edwards presents Unbroken Whispers: Finding Our Way Back to Sea Kin and Country , which follows whale migrations along the East Coast to revive cultural knowledge and songlines.
All week, ABC TV and ABC iview will feature NAIDOC-themed programming including the screening of the Namatjira Project documentary on Sunday 6 July, the film Spear , starring Aaron Pedersen on Sunday 13 July and a dedicated Gardening Australia episode. ABC News will cover the NAIDOC Awards, and the ABC News Indigenous Affairs team will feature a story on Mitch Tambo, aligning with the release of his new track Blackfella and a performance at UNSW during NAIDOC Week.
For younger audiences, Play School will share educational short-form content across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. Highlights include Charles Passi teaching the song Taba Naba (6 July), a Dreamtime story of the frilled-neck lizard told by Ranger Nabako (7 July), and a performance of the Noongar-language song Woordawoort about dragonflies, sung by Miah and Matt (10 July). ABC Kids Early Education has also curated a selection of viewing and listening resources for early years classrooms, community events and homes, helping educators introduce the significance of NAIDOC Week to young children. These include multimodal learning materials available via the ABC Kids Early Education website.
ABC Kids Listen will release a special NAIDOC edition of its popular News Time podcast on Friday 4 July, with all daily news bulletins from 7–11 July dedicated to First Nations stories and voices.
ABC Education has a curated resource hub featuring NAIDOC Week materials for schools including a special release of official 2025 education resources, developed in partnership with the National NAIDOC Committee and Culture is Life.
Media contact Nikki Tugwell, ABC Communications
tugwell.nikki@abc.net.au
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Andy And The Band: Rock Star Magic
Andy And The Band: Rock Star Magic ABC Kids Music & Movement Friendship Watch Duration: 24 minutes 14 seconds 24 m Article share options Share this on Facebook Twitter Send this by Email Copy link WhatsApp Messenger With less an hour to go, the band and students launch into action to put on the best show possible to save the school. Little do they know, some Rock Star Magic might help...
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Beloved Australian actor Claudia Karvan says there's a chilling authenticity to Like, Follow, Die
Like, Follow, Die is a psychological thriller that begins with a knock on the door. Probationary detective Kyle Nazarian wants to speak to Corinne Gray about her son Ben, a sweet-natured child who loved history and dreamed of swimming for Olympic Gold. Ben has done the unthinkable, and his mother pours herself into uncovering the sinister figures and shadowy online communities who prey on vulnerable young people like her son. It's fiction. But beloved Australian actor Claudia Karvan (Bump, Puberty Blues, Secret Life of Us), who stars as Corinne in the multi-cast narration of the audiobook, says there's a very real edge to this story. "I think there's real truth to it," Karvan told ABC News. "There's a very real tussle happening right now in front of us between the old world order and new progressive ways, and we're watching that happen right now. "So, it couldn't be more timely." Karvan, who has a 23-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son, says she agrees with What About Men author Caitlin Moran, who implores fellow feminists to ponder: Where are the boys, and are we making sure they're keeping up? "It's a conversation that my son and I have to have delicately," Karvan said. She says in Like, Follow, Die, Corinne unpacks the job she did as a parent. "[She's] trying to work out what cultural influences may have derailed her efforts [and] being very honest with her own deficiencies." Like, Follow, Die is written by the bestselling author of Dark Mode, Ashley Kalagian Blunt, who says there's been an overwhelming response to the audiobook since it was released last week. "I've had a bunch of readers get in touch with me to tell me how much they love the twists and just how the story really hits them, especially if they're parents," Kalagian Blunt told ABC News. "The main thing I want to do with Like, Follow, Die is show how in the men's rights activist space, there are groups that are specifically targeting teenage boys through places like YouTube and Instagram, TikTok, the places where teenage kids hang out. "It's not that they're just naturally drawn to that, maybe in some cases, but it's that there's actually people who are investing money and strategy in thinking about how do we draw these boys into our world view? Kalagian Blunt says she wants to contribute to an existing conversation around social media and teenagers, what they're exposed to, and how that's shaping their world view. "The reason I wanted to write from Ben's point of view, from the teenage boy's point of view through his journals, we only see him from age 12 to age 19, is because I wanted to show how he developed this world view, and how he was targeted by groups that very specifically were looking for vulnerable teenage boys. "And I think there is this societal conversation and dialogue right now around men's violence and toxic masculinity and modern feminism, and those are really important conversations and really important topics. Like, Follow, Die is on Audible and features an all-star cast including Claudia Karvan as Corinne Gray, Ryan Corr as Kyle Nazarian and Laurence Boxhall as Benjamin Gray.
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Rising festival 'sound experience' Saturate asks audiences to jump in a pool
It's not every performance that requires an audience member to strip down to their togs. So, from the outset, Saturate, an underwater musical "experience" on during this year's Rising festival, establishes that it's little bit different. Picture 60 or so people together in a public pool — the historic City Baths in the centre of Naarm/Melbourne — serenely sharing what is usually a very active space. "Your ears need to be underneath the water to hear the sound composition in its full frequency spectrum, which means that you need to be either diving under the water or floating on your back," the show's creator, sound artist Sara Retallick, says. Retallick, who has produced and performed different underwater listening experiences — including at Rising 2021, and Brunswick Music Festival — says her underwater composition presents a "really different way of listening". "We're geared towards imagining sound [under water] to be quite muffled, [for example] if you were to listen to a radio that was submerged in water or someone singing or talking under water. "But because I'm using underwater speakers that are designed for this process, the clarity of the sound is actually really quite incredible." She's deliberately used instrumentation that couldn't acoustically be performed under water — "air-reliant instruments" like flutes or voice, and electronics — which she presents under water with clarity. Some of the sound is also recordings of water. "It's designed to get people thinking about whether they're hearing the sound composition or hearing the water around them. [It's] sort of playing with reality versus recording. "So it's this very different encounter with sound." Retallick is keen to ease her audiences into the show, which "starts in a fairly gentle way". Front of mind is that she's asking her audiences — disrobed, submerged in water — "to be in quite a vulnerable position". "That's definitely something that has a been a theme through all of these underwater works that I've made, is that that care for the audience is really important and the whole journey becomes part of the work. "So, of course there's the sound work itself, which is the main thing, but then how people move through the venue and through the change rooms and all of that, I also consider a very big part of the work." To refine her compositions, she jumps in a pool herself, to test scaled-down versions of the sound. She's even found an "Airbnb for pools" so she can use a private pool for a few hours at a time to listen as her audiences would. "A lot of my compositional process uses sound and digital processing to create quite unique sounds and I've really thought about — listening under water myself and getting a sense of what sounds work quite well and what sounds don't work as well and what frequencies respond well under water." The process of making the work has presented plenty of things to think about that she wouldn't have had to consider if she'd presented her composition in a concert venue or other "normal music venue". "So there's all of these considerations that come into play." Saturate runs for 24 minutes and 37 seconds, which is a very purposeful duration: it's the same duration as the longest breath held under water. And, for Retallick, seeing bathers-wearing audience members experience it in a state of deep, focused listening is a joy. "[It's] incredible for me as a sound artist because that's what I was hoping to get out of this work; to present something that would encourage audiences to really tune in. "And I guess the gesture of inviting people to actually fully submerge their bodies in water in order to access the sound means that they're committing a lot to the work, to being able to experience that listening." Retallick has discovered, over years of practice, that something very particular occurs in audiences' bodies during her underwater shows. "I came across this realisation that we listen really differently under water. So, when we're submerged in water, in a pool or in the ocean, we listen through bone conduction hearing. [That] means that the sound vibrates through the skull and the bones in our skull, and the jawbone, rather than passing through the ear canal as it would if you're listening above water or through air. "So that gives the sound this very close quality. It almost sounds like it's inside your head and we sort of lose the directionality of the sound, so it's like the sound composition is coming from all directions at once." Saturate is on as part of Rising festival, running June 14-15.
