January 26 Survival Day Dawn Ceremony to be livestreamed

Ballarat’s award-winning Survival Day Dawn Ceremony will be livestreamed from Lake Wendouree on 26 January 2021 with the aim of creating an educational documentary.

The Koorie Engagement Action Group (KEAG) will livestream the 2021 event from 5.30am at View Point, opening the event to a virtual worldwide audience.

Due to COVID restrictions on public gatherings, the 2021 Survival Day Dawn Ceremony is a virtual event but KEAG is pleased to be able to take the ceremony into people’s homes so that more community members can witness and feel part of the service.

The dawn service commemorates Sovereign First Peoples who fought in the frontier wars and those who died in widespread massacres across Australia during colonisation, which began on 26 January 1788.

KEAG says the January 26 Survival Day Dawn Ceremony is aimed at bringing community together to start the day off on a meaningful, healing and respectful journey (just as ANZAC Day Dawn Service is important to all Australians) to acknowledge people who fought for a better life for us today.

Last year’s inaugural ceremony was awarded the Highly Commended Award in Reconciliation Victoria’s HART Awards (Helping Achieve Reconciliation Together) and is a finalist in the upcoming 2021 LGPro Awards for Excellence in the Indigenous Community Partnerships Category.

KEAG Co-Chair, Jon Kanoa is pleased and grateful for the continued support of the Ballarat City Council, Ballarat businesses such as Health Mind and Soul and Federation University, who have signed on as a major supporter.

“It is critically important that we incorporate diversity and inclusion into every aspect of university life and our continuing support of the Survival Day Dawn Ceremony is another marker of our respect and our solidarity with KEAG, the City of Ballarat and other supporters of this event,” Professor Duncan Bentley, Vice Chancellor and President of Federation University said.

Mayor Cr Daniel Moloney described the Dawn Survival Day ceremony as an incredibly special ceremony, acknowledging for many it was a day of mixed emotions, and for Aboriginal Australians, a day of profound hurt.

“January 26 is a time to pause and reflect on what it means to live in this great land. It’s a time to remember our history, the good and the bad,” he said.

Ballarat City Council will hold its Citizenship Ceremony on January 26 this year and in 2022 will introduce a new intercultural community event to promote understanding, respect and reconciliation.

The Ballarat community is invited to watch the 2021 Survival Day Dawn Ceremony in solidarity and to upload images of themselves watching the livestream to the KEAG Facebook page.

The livestream can be viewed via the following link: https://bit.ly/2VZXBsA