My New Lifestyle

Extract

It is twenty-five years since I left school. At the moment I’m doing an eighteen month training program to be an Addiction Worker. As part of the evaluation of the training program I have been asked to write down my thoughts and feelings about my training.

Some people involved in the program have suggested to me that teachers might be interested in my early childhood experiences – growing up on a reserve and going to an all Aboriginal school.

As I look at it now, I think that education is so important to Aboriginal people. I have one son attending primary school and one has just left high school. I hope my story will help teachers understand why it is hard sometimes for Aboriginal parents to communicate with them.

I was born in Kempsey and raised on Bellbrook Reserve. I lived there with my family (eight sisters and three brothers) and most of my aunts and uncles also lived there at that time. I had a good, happy upbringing, my family were all very close. In my school days my teachers were kind but didn’t really teach me much. A lot of what I’m learning now I should have learnt then. The teachers in those days were getting paid for doing nothing. That makes me angry now – the teachers, especially on the reserve (unless the government had a policy not to teach us) didn’t think it was worth teaching Aboriginal kids.

The teacher on the reserve was also the manager, and his wife the matron. They didn’t want to let us learn anything – we had to do everything for them (washing, cleaning, carting wood) but they never wanted to show us how to do things for ourselves.