The following article discusses how the Aboriginal Studies program at Alice Springs High School could be expanded and enriched by –

Engaged as we are in the essential task of assisting Aboriginal children to decode and encode a language which presents many problems to them, it behoves us to strive for the one aspect that many teachers – particularly those new to the field of Aboriginal education, and those charged with the teaching of reading to our school beginners – appear to miss. The reference, of course, is to relevancy.

How many of us, in retrospect, have been guilty of peddling irrelevant or “foreign” reading materials during our careers? Are we still guilty? Do your children readily relate to the books you present for their use? If not, then the following thoughts and suggestions may have some value in your situation, be it one where a tribal language is still the main means of communication, one where a bi-lingual program is in force, or where English (or a non-standard form of it) is the main communication medium.

Australian society offers its major rewards to people who live in cities. Whether in employment, entertainment, housing, or welfare facilities, urban centres can generally offer more and better. This is a gross generalization, of course, but it must be seen as a major factor underlying rural-urban migration in Australia today. This is true whether migrants are Aboriginals or Europeans – despite the fact that Aboriginals generally end up in just those urban areas where the limits of the generalization can be most clearly seen.

In addressing this question, I will briefly outline the existing types of language maintenance program models, and what schools can do about Aboriginal language maintenance in the Aboriginal community school context. I have suggested a number of guiding principles for Aboriginal schools which are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to establish a basis for dialogue and discussion from which language maintenance programs could be developed.

1988, the year of the Bicentenary, was considered by some as the start of a new era for Aborigines. However, despite excellent media exposure on Aboriginal issues, the bicentennial year concluded with just memories of various celebrations.

We enter the 1990s at a time of increasing change throughout the world. I believe that it is necessary for everyone involved in Aboriginal education to focus on some important issues that encompass this delicate area.

There is no more promising way of increasing the closeness of subcultural groups to their own roots and culture “than by cherishing and nourishing the speech of the home and the neighbourhood and by helping it to find the kind of expression in story, poem, play, which can communicate the spirit of the subculture to a multicultural audience.”

Cinema is an art form widely recognised as an agent to change the social condition and alter traditional norms. Movies can be used to educate and transform society's collective conscience. Indigenous Australian artists utilise the power of artistic expression as a tool to initiate change in the attitudes and perceptions of the broader Australian society. Australia's story has predominately been told from the coloniser's viewpoint. This narrative is being rewritten through Indigenous artists utilising the power of cinema to create compelling stories with Indigenous control. This medium has come into prominence for Indigenous Australians to express our culture, ontology and politics. Movies such as Samson and Delilah, Bran Nue Dae, The Sapphires and Rabbit-Proof Fence for example, have highlighted the injustices of past policies, adding new dimensions to the Australian narrative. These three films are just a few of the Indigenous Australian produced films being used in the Australian National Curriculum.

Through this medium, Australian Indigenous voices are rewriting the Australian narrative from the Indigenous perspective, deconstructing the predominant stereotypical perceptions of Indigenous culture and reframing the Australian story. Films are essential educational tools to cross the cultural space that often separates Indigenous learners from their non-Indigenous counterparts.

This paper will explore the role of universities as one of the most important gatekeepers that facilitate the appropriation of Indigenous medical knowledge (IMK) from Indigenous communities to transnational pharmaceutical corporations. The first section will deconstruct the “denial of dependency” upon IMK. Using case studies, the critique will demonstrate a complex mystification of Indigenous knowledge and labour, and a de-identification of Indigenous people and nature as the source of the medicines appropriated. The last section will analyse the law and policy context of the past 20 years that is responsible for creating a process of academic capitalism that has strengthened this phenomenon.

I have a particular interest in the topic of hearing impairment within this human development unit of study and specifically I have a concern for the hearing loss of the Aboriginal child at school. The content of this assignment firstly will address the major characteristics associated with hearing impairment and then the condition specific to the Aboriginal community. The second part of this essay will explore the implications in relation to the child, the classroom, the teacher and the community setting.

Background Discussion

It is an irrefutable fact that most Aboriginal children are under-achieving scholastically. It is also fairly obvious that a contributing factor in this under achievement is poor literacy skills which can hold children back in most areas of school performance.

Many different reading schemes and approaches have been tried, including Bridging and Headstart programs, which have met with very little success in the long term. As a result it is all too easy for educators to fall back on the deficiency model and blame the child and the home. This is neither profitable nor an adequate explanation for the under-achievement of Aboriginal students.

Sir Herman Black, Lady Black, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

When I was first asked would I come along this afternoon to say a few words, my reply was, “I will think about it”. The response was, “How long do you need to think?”

Well, here I am.

It gives me great pleasure to be here this afternoon, to take part in this occasion. An occasion that has been taking place about this time every year, since 1975.

1975 will always be a year to remember, for it was the year that the first group of Aboriginal teacher assistants graduated from the training program and were presented with their certificates by Sir Herman Black.

Since then I have watched many Aboriginal people go through the same well-earned procedure. I guess it was the same with most of the groups, not knowing anybody, but by the end of the year it was like one big family.

First, I would like to congratulate the people who have successfully completed another year of the Aboriginal Teacher Assistants Training Program. I am sure this will be another year, 1978, that will go down in history, where yet another group of Aboriginal people have progressed within themselves from doing such a program, and I wish them the best of luck for what they may do in the future. I hope there will be many more continuous ATA programs to follow.

Myths express what is significant during man’s experience, and so communicate at a deeper level than other stories. They should never be treated as pre-scientific attempts to explain how things began. The creation of myths met a much more profound and basic need.

In presenting myths to children, there are many methods that can be used. Rather than just presenting one or two myths and leaving it at that, significance is gained by presenting children with a collection of myths on one topic, for example, creation or fire, from a variety of places around the world. Children will find the values of literary objectives that the myths have in common. With guidance from the teacher, they will see that the myths are true to man’s experience.

Programs should allow for as much involvement of the pupils as possible during their study of myths. Integration with as many subject disciplines as possible, particularly the expressive arts, should come naturally. This gives the pupils a chance to convey thoughts of what the myth tells them or their group. The working out of a ritual dance, the making of music to accompany it, the writing of poetry, and the numerous art activities can be effective ways of saying what cannot be expressed through ordinary language. It is man’s imagination that has to be stirred and not his rationality. The celebration and the performance of these student fashioned rituals are the culmination of this study and can impregnate a very deep unconscious movement in the performers and witnesses.

I had been telling a group of Aboriginal mothers about some of the things that we had learned about how their children talk. The discussion had become quite animated as they recognised elements of their own speech in the examples I was giving. It was obvious that they were pleased that I regarded their way of talking as worthy of study and as something to be valued.

Teenagers in the Western world are increasingly vocal in their demands for “relevance” in their school experience. Young Aboriginal men in their teens (although perhaps not fully conscious of what they are doing, or able to verbalize their feelings) are also “demanding” relevance in their school experience by several kinds of passive resistance. Two examples of this resistance are, that attendance at some Northern Territory schools is extremely low, and that young men trained in various trade courses are generally working in other trades. The educational system, of course, is not solely responsible for this situation, but we should respond to this new “post colonial” mood in Aboriginal communities. Examples of the “post colonial” era are: that Aboriginals know they are free to resist white pressures to work or attend school, or in fact to do anything “white”; that local Aboriginal councils are assuming much more responsibility for local management; that local Aboriginals cherish their new found power to say which white people can or cannot live in their community, and so on. Our prediction is that if schools don’t move with the times we will find that schools in Aboriginal communities will soon begin to appear to Aboriginals as the last “white strongholds” in these communities; that is “white” in terms of initiatives, in terms of ultimate authority, in terms of environmental setting, materials used, times at which things are done and content of what is taught.

For the white teacher to say, “But I’m open to Aboriginals taking more initiative”, is hardly practical because the Aboriginal teenager has not learned to be sufficiently aggressive or expressive to take initiatives in the face of the technologically dominant white teacher; therefore the first initiative-to-allow-initiative must be taken by the white teacher.