St Mark’s Anglican Community School
Walking Together, Naming Country
St Mark’s Anglican Community School embraces reconciliation by honouring Nyungar Culture.
In 2024, St Mark’s partnered with and were guided by Moodjar Consultancy through a three-part project to incorporate Nyungar language, understanding and culture into our School and its community.
This initiative began with in-depth research of local areas and Aboriginal history, including significant sites and traditional place names, diving into the Landgate database to provide a sense of the location of the St Mark’s campus in the context of a long history of the use of this and surrounding land by local Aboriginal people.
An on-country immersion tour by a group of students, led by Professor Len Collard, further connected the St Mark’s community to the Joondalup region’s Nyungar heritage.
The next step was a place naming workshop involving stakeholders in the St Mark’s community. The goal was to explore the Nyungar language and discern meaningful names for key spaces/places in the School - the Cafeteria, Quadrangle, Junior School green space, and our Junior and Senior Ovals. Moodjar’s process involved identifying the purpose and common use of each space/place, identifying key English words for each space, translating them into Nyungar, and then collaboratively developing accurate and appropriate names.
- Combining ‘food’ (mereny) and ‘place of’ (up), we named the cafeteria ‘Merenyup - The Place of Food’.
- Highlighting the Quadrangle as a meeting place for the School family, they chose the name ‘Marnjamoortup – The meeting place of family’.
- The Primary School Green Space is ‘Koolangka-nyinning – A children’s location’, emphasising a dedicated area for young students.
- ‘Ngardawaab – Play down low’ for the Primary Oval and ‘Yirawaab – Play up high’ for the Secondary Oval were the names chosen for our playing fields.
This initiative reflects St Mark’s desire to honour the School’s history and location and integrate the Nyungar language and culture into the daily life of our School community.
The final names were reviewed by Professor Len Collard for cultural accuracy and endorsed by the School Council before being unveiled.
We walk together, naming Country!
