In honour of Reconciliation Week, West Coast Steiner School were delighted to host its second book launch for the Elder Cliff Humphries Reconciliation Book Project. Students from West Coast Steiner School joined with the Class 7 students of Perth Waldorf School to experience a traditional smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country led by the Elder’s grandson and great-grandson, a marvellous re-enactment of the book delivered entirely in Noongar by the Class 7s, a Q&A session with the student illustrators, a moving presentation by the Elder’s surviving daughters, and a beautiful rendering of traditional Steiner songs in Noongar performed by students from Classes 4 and 7. The event concluded with a delicious traditional bush tucker tea.

This event marked the culmination of a powerful reconciliation project undertaken by last year’s graduates in collaboration with the family of the late Noongar Elder, Cliff Humphries (1910–1998), one of the last fluent Noongar speakers. A senior Ballardong Elder who carried within him a vast repository of ancient Noongar knowledge, Elder Cliff recorded hundreds of Dreamtime stories and songs prior to his passing, entrusting his family with the responsibility of sharing these stories with the Noongar and wider communities in an effort to preserve the Noongar language and culture. For decades, his invaluable recordings remained in restricted-access archives at the Battye Library, with the exception of their use as critical evidence in the 2006 Bennell vs The State of WA High Court trial that secured Native Title for the Noongar nation.