Yarrabah Shire is an Aboriginal community of about 4000 people, situated about seven kilometres from Cairns.

Year 10 student Lachlan Gell, with the assistance of Hobsons Bay Council, hosted the visitors, who shared their stories and traditions at a school assembly last Wednesday.

"The idea behind the assembly came to me after I attended the Alpine school last year," he

said.

"It's a state government program in student leadership.

"Part of the program is creating a student-learning project and we chose to do our project on raising awareness of indigenous issues."

Lachlan and fellow students Davida Graham, Sophie Lee-Jenkins and Lachlan Greed approached the council and met former mayor Peter Hemphill about inviting a delegation.

"Council informed us they had a sisterhood alliance with an indigenous council in Queensland," Lachlan Gell said.

Mayor Bill Tehan said the alliance encouraged both communities to learn from each other.

Lachlan said it took a series of emails and phone calls to organise a panel of indigenous council members to come to Williamstown.

"On Wednesday, the delegation were guests at our school assembly and talked about their experiences.

"We learned about their local community and discussed the differences between indigenous and non-indigenous people regarding health issues."

A main discussion point centred on life expectancy of indigenous versus non-indigenous people.

"In some cases, there's a life span difference of up to 20 years, which is a fairly sizeable gap," Lachlan said.

The delegation also spoke of their desire to "establish a treaty with Australia".

"From what they said, Australia is the only nation in the world that has no treaty between indigenous people and the settlers," Lachlan said.

"Despite all the talk from our political leaders, nothing has happened. What they wanted to impress upon us, was that the present situation is not that much better than it was 100 years ago.

"Health and education are still major problems for them."

The Yarrabah delegation also visited Laverton P-12 College and attended last weekend's Williamstown Festival.