Enduring Purpose:
Bridging Worlds, Building Futures.
Authentically engaging with Christian faith and First Nations heritage, we bridge ancient wisdom with contemporary learning, educating students to lead a resilient future.
Gawura School’s Enduring Purpose is to educate students to lead a purposeful, positive, and resilient future within an environment that explicitly teaches them about First Nation’s culture and enables sensitive and meaningful engagement with the Christian faith.
Uncle Ray Minniecon, one of the founders of Gawura School, is a First Nations Pastor with ancestral roots in the Kabi-Kabi and Gurang-Gurang tribes of Queensland. His leadership has been invaluable in helping Gawura School and St Andrew’s Cathedral School ‘bridge worlds’ and grapple with issues around the Christian faith and First Nations culture.
The link between Christianity and colonisation is complex, entangled and debated. With the exception of a few notable individuals, from 1788 onward, Christian teachings were often confused with European culture, leading to the destruction of First Nations belief systems and lifestyles, despite the fact that a fundamental tenant of the Christian faith is a belief that all people are created in the image of our Creator God.
Untangling faith and culture is, of course, an ongoing and critical endeavour, and one the Schools take seriously. This requires grace, wisdom and careful conversations in order to separate core theological beliefs from political ideologies or inherited societal norms.
It is a faith in Jesus Christ, His mission and His work that provides the motivation for reconciliation and restoration practices at Gawura School. We are ‘both / and’ schools. Truth telling and hope. Authentic recognition of the past and healing. Reflective faith and sacred space. Restoration is a costly business and Jesus Christ himself was prepared to pay the ultimate cost.
Vision:
Empowering confident, hope-filled champions of a just tomorrow.
Gawura School and St Andrew Cathedral School’s Restoration Action Plan (RAP) is built on the importance of truth telling and the desire to pursue healing and restoration for the injustices of the past and the present, as difficult and uncomfortable as this may be.
It requires a gracious space where difference is acknowledged, finding transformation and healing through everyday encounters in order to empower confident, hope-filled champions of a just tomorrow.