Respected Elder Uncle Terry Stedman has been an active First Nations community member for most of his adult life.
His current roles include Chair of the Queensland Law Society First Nations Consulting Committee, Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation for Elders in Logan City, and member of the Logan Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Decision Making Body.
NAIDOC Week marks an important milestone in 2025 – 50 years of honouring Indigenous voices, culture, and resilience. The 2025 theme, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy, celebrates past achievements and the future ahead, empowered by young leaders. Proctor asked Uncle Terry about this year’s milestone.
This year is the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC marking decades of elevating Indigenous voices. What achievements are you most proud of?
Just the fact that, in the current political climate, we are able to celebrate our culture, being the world’s longest continuous culture for more that 60,000 years. So much has been lost since 1788. As a culture we were in a decline due to disease, starvation, culling and other unpleasant effects of European settlement.
Over the more recent 50 years a shift in the mindset of this society saw many things develop which continue to provide a benefit to us. Those things include the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, the health services, the Murri Court and NAIDOC, to name a few.
In the past 25 years we have seen many from our community own businesses, learn trades, (and) graduate university across a range of disciplines; this added to our Voice and gave us more community recognition and social momentum.
Being able to celebrate our culture without fear and be proud of who we are does help us have an identity on the social landscape and affirms our belonging.
What we do, we do as a collective. We ride on the shoulders of many before us and through their lifting us up we get to see over the horizon to hope.
This year’s theme is The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy – why should the next generations get involved in committees and public advocacy?
We ride on the shoulders of those who have traversed the same ground that we do. Their accomplishments laid the foundation for those things that we enjoy.
Our future is in the hands of an ever-increasing number of information-hungry jarjums. They seek to increase their knowledge at rates never seen before. The past 50 years has shown that dreams do come true. Oddly young ones that are born today will work in industries that do not yet exist.
NAIDOC Week is celebrated from 6-13 July.
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