Elaine and Violet Sheridan, from the Onerwal Land Council, spoke to senior Mt Carmel School pupils about the importance of reconciliation, the need to remember the past and their desires for all to move forward together into the future.

May 27 to June 3 is National Reconciliation Week. May 27 is the anniversary of the date of the 1967 Referendum which successfully removed from the Constitution clauses that discriminated against Indigenous Australians.

June 3 is the anniversary of the High Court’s decision in the Eddie Mabo land rights case handed down in 1992.

The theme of National Reconciliation Week for 2009 is ‘see the person, not the stereotype’.