In this paper, I further develop Rodolfo Kusch's concept of ‘negation’. I argue that it is an affirmative tool that enables us to sense and feel the other sides or domains of what we call reality and allows us to approach a plateau negated as a horizon of possibilities for conviviality and coexistence. Kusch's concept of negation brings forth an image of the emotions as being intimately interconnected to the values and ethos that form the basis of our behaviours. This paper also argues that Kush's concept of negation must be considered together with Kusch's development of ‘estar’ as a philosophical concept which underpins ‘América profunda’ ways of being in the world (or the multiverse). Finally, I propose that this ‘estar’ requires a ‘corazonar’ of our ways of bringing forth ourselves and our territories to life.

The Kimberley Language Resource Centre (KLRC) earned its status over three decades as the representative body for Kimberley languages. In 2004, the organisation started to respond to grassroots concerns about the lack of language speakers in the younger generations. Aboriginal people are also connecting loss of languages to loss of bio-cultural knowledge. In 2006, the KLRC began promoting language continuation strategies such as Teaching On Country. The organisation uses a series of diagrams to assist with this work and is developing an Aboriginal oral curriculum. Lack of support from within government and education circles for these strategies led the organisation to reflect on the difference between Aboriginal and Western knowledge systems. This paper questions Western approaches to education and argues that Aboriginal holistic knowledge must be supported within appropriate teaching and learning contexts to ensure the survival of languages and knowledge. It makes a case for evidence based, community engaged research examining language and knowledge continuation. It asks that Western education providers, who segregate language knowledge from experience and from country, examine and revise their practices. In conclusion, it calls for a realistic dialogue with government which honours the intentions of former Prime Minister Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations.

This paper explores the role of oral language and representations in negotiating mathematical understanding. The data were gathered from two Indigenous Australian classrooms in Northern Queensland. The first classroom, a Year 6/7 consisted of 15 students whose ages range from 10 years to 12 years with eight being Aboriginal, six from Torres Strait and one from Papua New Guinea. The second classroom, a Years 4/5/6 classroom consisted of 14 Year 3/4/5 students, with eight being Aboriginal and six of Torres Strait Island origin. Both teachers had been working in this context for up to five years and were perceived by both the school community and local educational consultants as exemplary teachers of Indigenous Australian students. Data were gathered from conversations with the two teachers, and from videos of their lessons especially designed to illuminate issues they negotiate on a day-to-day basis when teaching mathematics. The results indicate that explicit consideration needs to be given to the careful development of precise mathematical language and concrete mathematical materials, the use of questioning in establishing classroom discourse, and the recognition that many of these classrooms are bilingual.

‘Sounds, Words, Aboriginal Language and Yarning’ (SWAY) is a school-based oral language and early literacy programme based on Australian Aboriginal stories, knowledge and culture. It was developed by a multidisciplinary team in collaboration with Australian Aboriginal community members. SWAY aims to strengthen and support the communication skills of educators to facilitate language and literacy development of children in the early school years, particularly Australian Aboriginal children, within rural communities in New South Wales. Key features of SWAY include capacity building of educators and small group speech-language pathology intervention sessions, delivered remotely via telehealth. This study explored educator perceptions of SWAY training, mentoring and implementation, using a mixed methods approach. Findings revealed: use of culturally responsive strategies; positive educator perceptions of the SWAY programme, training and mentoring and positive changes to the confidence and behaviours of educators both supporting language and early literacy development, and embedding Australian Aboriginal perspectives in the classroom. Positive findings support and encourage the ongoing provision of SWAY. Findings also have implications for the future collaborative development and implementation of culturally responsive language and literacy programmes.

This paper draws on findings from a major research project conducted between 1998 and 2000 on meanings of reconciliation in the school education sector. Using data collected from surveys and drawing from the community context in which schools exist, it explores and analyses meanings of reconciliation within school communities when the discourse of what constitutes reconciliation was at its peak. Survey responses were used to map the level of support for reconciliation and to identify what barriers existed to the teaching of reconciliation in schools. Responses were categorised into various themes which defined the type of meaning respondents had accrued to reconciliation. The overwhelming impression from this research is that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people aspire to a level of harmonious co-existence; what is less clear is the direction on how this can be achieved. There is a great level of support for reconciliation within the education community with almost no responses being overtly negative. Many of the comments can be seen as reflecting “soft” reconciliation perspectives. A prevailing theme of this research is that the harder issues of reconciliation are being ignored in favour of symbolic representations. What perhaps best distinguished the survey comments from the responses from the general community was the greater desire amongst the education sector for equitybased solutions and the need to redress past injustices through social justice action. There was a greater understanding of the link between past dispossession and current disadvantage and this required action through specific programmes, and education was seen as a major part of this. Given the current sociopolitical context, anecdotal indications suggest that reconciliation may reflect wider community attitudes and may be “off the agenda” in schools, except within the narrow parameters of Department of Education requirements for activities or celebrations during NAIDOC or Reconciliation weeks.

This paper is a meditation on the idea of South-South dialogue, beginning with the South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies symposium held at the University of Queensland in 2015. I interrogate the concept of South-South dialogue, apposing it to the Cartesian ‘I think’, and then question the plausibility of the concept. On the basis of a Gadamerian conception of understanding, I suggest that what passes for South-South dialogue is in fact more likely to be North-South or even North-North dialogue. This is buttressed by an examination of Valentin Mudimbe's Parables and Fables. I go on to suggest, however, that by staying within the realm of the concept, in what could be called a Cartesian paradigm, Mudimbe misses the important role that South-South dialogue can play. Drawing on the work of Sara Motta, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and the concept of hunhu, I claim that the promise of South-South dialogue is the creation of spaces in which humanity is fostered.

As part of strategies to improve dog and community health in rural and remote Indigenous communities, this study investigated preferences and impacts of dog health education programs. Semistructured interviews with 63 residents from five communities explored learning preferences. Though each community differed, on average yarning was preferred by most (68.4%) respondents, followed by visual (65.0%) and practical learning (46.9%). Text-based and computer/screen-based learning were important to 16.2% and 14.6% of respondents respectively. With paper-based visual and text resources, respondents reported a preference for locally made (28/36 or 78%) over mainstream resources. Twenty eight residents involved in the creation of locally made resources reported satisfaction, knowledge exchange, and displayed enthusiasm for the process. Colour resources were more successful than black and white resources or word of mouth in terms of program advertising, alerting 67% (10/15) of respondents compared to 6% to 24% for programs using word of mouth. Dog health programs that incorporated education programs based on these identified preferences achieved significantly better results in terms of improvements in mange prevalence and average condition score, partly through increased community understanding and engagement with the program. Thus, culturally appropriate and locally relevant education programs can significantly improve the success of dog health programs.

Part of my role as a member of a teaching team in the bilingual program at Barunga School (formerly Bamyili) has been to teach English in the early childhood section. These children come from homes where Kriol is the main language. In some cases a traditional Aboriginal language is used at times, mainly by older people.

Children have a fair exposure to English via television and videos, and also from contact with people in Katherine. At this age, however, the children have limited competency in English.

In northern Australia Aboriginal ‘settlements’ or communities are, in the main, the product of a variety of west-centric priorities, the needs, for example of missionaries to keep prospective converts conveniently at hand to maintain the pressure of the Christian conversion process or for government agencies to distribute welfare from single accessible locations. The establishment of fixed communities usually brought considerable advantage and power to those mainstream organisations which established them. However, along with some obvious physical benefits for the local people, such as improved access to some of the accruals of west-centric technology and welfare, came a variety of hazards and obstacles to the maintenance of a lifestyle with which local people felt secure and confident.

Twenty high contact Queensland Aboriginal children of mean age six years were tested on two measures of capaciy to process information (cf. Case, et al., 1982 and Halford, 1984) and on two newly devised tasks to measure levels of thinking based on cultural knowledge. The results indicated that these children possess capacity to process information that is the same as Caucasian children of the same age. Because these children have underlying capacity to learn tasks to the same level as any other child the results have implications for schooling. It is intended that this initial trial testing will be followed up in a larger study.

Milimika commenced at Murrupurtiyanuwu when we realised that for a Tiwi person it is too difficult to stand alone in leadership. Thus as Principal-in-Training I came up with the idea of a Milimika group.

With permed hair, academic gowns and proud smiles of achievement, two more groups of Aboriginal women have walked the length of the red carpet on the stage of the Adelaide Festival Theatre during university graduation ceremonies. Amid hoots and cheers from University staff seated on the stage (also wearing gowns and smiles of pride) on the 29th May 1995, six more women from the far north west of South Australia, and one from Alice Springs, were awarded the Associate Diploma of Education. Six months later, on the 6th October 1995, two more women from the north west were presented with the Diploma of Teaching.

It is axiomatic that the development of any material such as this for inservice and induction of teachers draws on the work, ideas, and philosophies of many people over a considerable period of time. If it has any success in achieving desirable results it must be appreciated that the recent developers “stand on the shoulders of those who went before.” Paul Mort (1964, p.324) reinforces this by stating

Classroom talk often consists of teachers’ questions and commands and children’s responses or answers. While this may not be the best approach to learning it is nevertheless very common. In this paper, some of the talk that occurred in some Aboriginal classrooms (Graham, 1987) has been examined to see just what children were saying (and therefore thinking) and if teacher talk was focusing on the things children need to know if they are to learn mathematics more effectively in school. To begin with let us look at what some children are saying and therefore meaning as they respond to teachers’ questions.

The factors that influence the learning and processing of information in any "normal" teaching environment are many but in comparison to the environment where cultural variables are added the "normal" teaching environment appears to lack complexity. Added to cultural variables an environment where the language being used in learning experiences is, if not a totally different language to the first language learnt by the child, certainly a differing form of their first language; then you have a truly complex environment in which to guide the learning and processing of information. Such a description fits the Aboriginal Community schools in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York regions of Queensland. In particular, I intend to focus on Doomadgee State School, arguably the most isolated of community schools, where in my position as Curriculum Master I have seen the conflict of culture, language and curriculum first hand. It is the intention of this paper to examine how and why this conflict affects student performance and to focus on methods by which this conflict can be minimised.

In the following pages we present extracts from the report prepared for the Department of Adult Education, University of Sydney, by Dr A.J. More, Ph.D. The author is Associate Professor, and the Supervisor of the Native Indian Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is in Australia during 1977–78 on Sabbatical Leave.

2.2 … In early 1975, 23 Aborigines were appointed to teacher aide positions throughout the state and an 11 week training programme was an integral part of the employment of the new recruits.

In 1977, 60 Aborigines filled such positions in the state. Of these 34 were enrolled in the basic training programme and 36 in an inservice programme at the University.

A project is currently underway at http://arts.deakin.edu.au which is innovative on a number of fronts. It has multiple beginnings: in the proactive, as culture dissemination work of a number of Yanyuwa and Garrwa women, who proclaimed in the white man’s world that they were ‘bosses themselves’ (Gale 1983) and who in various ways have sought to bring their culture to the attention of the wider world. This has been accomplished through a prize-winning (Atom Australian Teachers of Media awards in 1991) film, Buwarrala Akarriya: Journey East (1989), of are-enacted ritual foot-walk in 1988 from Borroloola to Manankurra 90 kilometres away. They also made a another prize winning film called Ka-wayawayarna: The Aeroplane Dance (1993) which won the Royal Anthropological Society of London award for the best ethnographic film in 1995. Since 1997 senior Yanyuwa women have been involved on a regular basis in sharing their knowledge of Yanyuwa performance practice with tertiary students in a subject called Women’s Music and Dance in Indigenous Australia which is offered as a course in anthropology through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, they have also lectured in core anthropology subjects in the faculty of Social and Behavourial Sciences Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland. They have also engaged actively in work as language preservers and teachers at the Borroloola Community Education Centre (hereafter BCEC) and in the Tennant Creek Language Centre program called Papulu Apparr-Kari.

This paper examines the philosophy and practice of programs that aim to maintain, renew, or revive Aboriginal languages in Australia. I focus here on languages, mainly those of urban and rural rather than remote areas, for which there are few if any fluent speakers left. I will refer to them as dead or dying languages although I am aware that in the Aboriginal tradition people consider themselves to own languages that neither they themselves nor their dose kin speak, and that this ownership is very much a part of a living culture. I begin by reviewing some basic issues that arise in planning language programs for such languages. The final section considers some of the factors affecting the success of such programs.