Firstly let me introduce myself to you. My name is Irene Calgaret. I am an Aboriginal of the Nyungar people from Bunbury, Western Australia. I attend Edith Cowan University, Bunbury as a first-year student, studying English as my major.

I am the mother of three lovely daughters and the grand-mother of four wonderful grand-sons. I have been a nurse for 25 years, employed at local Government and private hospitals, and at various other small, country town hospitals in our very large state of Western Australia.

I think those of us who are interested in what is written in Aboriginal languages need to be much more open than we have been in the past to shifts of emphasis in the development of written Aboriginal literatures. Looking at the way the Northern Territory bilingual program developed is one way in to thinking about this issue.

In many areas of government policy there is a big gap between theory and practice, that is, there is a difference between what ought to occur and what actually eventuates. This is unfortunately true for education as well. That education actually alienates the young from the old and from their traditional life-style may in some way be substantiated. In theory this should not happen. Before any discussion on the pros and cons of such a state of affairs, however, there is a need to define what education is, to define some of the approaches officially accepted in Aboriginal education and to differentiate between the needs of some of the more recognizable Aboriginal groups and their life-styles.