Breaking barriers two Aboriginal students at a time

By Kielce Gussie

For the last 50 years, the first full week of July each year has been dedicated to celebrating the voices, cultures, and traditions of First Nation communities around Australia, who have been part of the land’s history for tens of thousands of years. This week is known as National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC).

Each year, two First Nation students travel to Rome to study on the Francis Xavier Conaci Scholarship—in partnership with the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and the Australian Embassy to the Holy See—to represent their cultures on the world stage.

Hayden and Tanisha with Australian Ambassador to the Holy See Keith Pitt

This year, the recipients are Hayden Atkins, 24, and Tanisha Julie Sonter, 20—both from the Dharug Nation in New South Wales, Australia. This is the first time students from the same Aboriginal Nation have received the scholarship in the same year.

Two sides of one coin

“NAIDOC Week, in terms of today, is a celebration of Indigenous success and highlighting the growth of Indigenous culture in Australia over the last 50 odd years,” Hayden explained. For him, receiving this scholarship and being in Rome represents “what Indigenous success looks like today in Australian culture and history.”

The Dharug people are recognized as First Australians and the oldest continuous living culture in the world—boasting 60,000 years of history.

This tradition and history are what Hayden and Tanisha want to share with the world. “It is a very big deal to represent our culture overseas because it is not a culture that is really widely known or understood,” Tanisha explained. “It feels very revolutionary.”

Moreover, she stressed the impact she and Hayden can have on the generations that will come after them, noting that they can be examples of what young First Nation children can achieve and what is possible.

This is important for them to see, Tanisha stressed, because it breaks down barriers. “It is important to show that you can break boundaries, and expand into new areas, places, and still maintain your individual self and your culture within that.”

Understanding the significance of sharing the Dharug culture with people, not only outside of Sydney but around the world, is something Tanisha shares with Hayden.

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Both students have roots in the Dharug community in New South Wales

He noted that NAIDOC Week and the scholarship enable him and other First Nation peoples to highlight both their “English side, but also our Indigenous side and how they tie together and how that is represented in today’s world.”

Australia and Rome: Centuries-old relationship

While the Conaci scholarship has been awarded for the last five decades, Australian Aboriginal connections to the Eternal City date back much farther.

On an excursion organized by the Australian Embassy to the Holy See, Hayden and Tanisha discovered how the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls is the resting place of two Aboriginal seminarians, Dioram (or Dirimera) and Francis Xavier Conaci—the latter being the namesake of the scholarship that brought the two students to Rome.

The two young Aboriginal boys were brought to Italy in the mid-1800s by Bishop Rosendo Salvado of the New Norcia monastery in Western Australia. However, they both fell ill and died before completing their seminary studies.

A plaque in the Basilica speaks of the two boys, among others being buried beneath the floors.

Plaque in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls marking where the two Aboriginal seminarians are buried

Hayden acknowledged how hard it must have been for the two to have left everything and everyone they knew and come to Italy. “To be the first of anything, to leave your area, to leave your continent and chase something bigger than yourself, I think that’s pretty incredible and it’s inspiring,” he explained.

Half a century

Both Hayden and Tanisha stressed how grateful and meaningful it was to receive the scholarship, not only for themselves but for their entire Aboriginal community back in Australia.

Tanisha highlighted how important it is to have the scholarship linked to NAIDOC week. “We really are showing off how far we have come as Aboriginal people and the opportunities that we have now, and how much we have developed over time, and it’s a clear indication of where we’re heading as well,” she shared.

The two students visited the burial site of Dioram and Francis Xavier Conaci

The theme for this half-a-century milestone is Fifty Years of Deadly. It remembers the people who created this initiative and who established the space for the people of today, like Tanisha and Hayden, to express their culture and traditions in every corner of the world.