Daynawa Nurruwutthun is 20 years old and a teacher at Yirrkala Community School. She belongs to the Munyuku clan and is of the Yirritja Moiety and Narritjan sub-section.

She attended school at Yirrkala and started teaching in 1975. During 1976 and 1977 she completed the 1st Year of the On-site Teacher Training Program at Yirrkala.

After attending the Bilingual Conference in Darwin in 1976 and talking with other Aboriginal teachers she returned to Yirrkala determined to begin an Aboriginal Studies Program for the Infant School.

After discussions with other Aboriginal teachers, four areas of study were developed. These have now been extended to the six following areas: bush food and sea food; natural science; Homeland Centres; old ways; bush medicine; culture, i.e. social organisation and behaviour.

I was a teacher at the Small settlement school in 1977. It was not a good year for the school by any reckoning and I thought I would leave it at that when I left in December of that year – the day after school finished. Put it down to experience, let all the sordid little details dissolve in time. But they didn’t and I never got Small settlement out of my mind. In 1978, I visited the school anew and this paper is a result of my observations and interviews.

It was written with teachers in mind, particularly young teachers going into Aboriginal schools for the first time. However, it may have more general interest: many features of the school’s history are characteristic of the history of Northern Territory administration. A cursory acquaintance with some of the things that have gone on before may help to provide a basis for the courage and awareness needed for working effectively in an oppressive environment. A historical perspective may assist teachers and others in approaching their clients with the humility appropriate for making their work interesting and their influences positive.

Aboriginal communities all over Australia from time to time have to deal with their young people sniffing petrol. It seems to be a ‘craze’, like playing knucklebones or yo-yos. Suddenly everyone is doing it, and all the parents get worried. Then, sometimes, it suddenly stops happening – the kids get more interested in going out bush with the older people, or perhaps someone gets sick, or they might burn themselves with the petrol, and this frightens the others.

When kids sniff petrol they see ‘pictures’, feel dizzy and funny in the head, a little bit drunk, and they like to have those feelings. Young people (and older people) everywhere sometimes take drugs or drink alcohol to help them feel ‘high’. They do this sometimes when they feel depressed or angry, and it seems to help those feelings. Kids use petrol because it is available everywhere and is easy to get. But there is a big problem with petrol which makes it different from other things. It has LEAD in it, to make car engines run better – and lead is very harmful to people, especially children.

In an earlier article (The Aborignal Child at School, Vol.7, No.3, 1979) I explored the idea that we, as teachers, may transmit our attitudes and expectations to our pupils through our accommodating and non-accommodating moves towards them. I suggested that we might observe such moves if we monitored our language behaviour against our intentions, as these are modified by our beliefs and attitudes, and by the on-going interaction. I proposed a model to help us explore the motives underlying our own accommodating and non-accommodating behaviours; to help us explore how these motives affect the kinds and extent of shifts we make; and to help us explore the effects of these shifts on the whole class or on groups of individuals within the class. I indicated that the aim of such exploration would be to sensitize us to the extent to which our language behaviour signals, both overtly and covertly, our own attitudes and expectations to our pupils.

I would now like to look more closely at some of the items in the tentative list of ‘measures’ of accommodation that I detailed in that earlier article. In particular, I would like to look at questions in the classroom; at how teachers organize talk and use talk for organizing; and at joking in the classroom.

One way of trying to understand why children sniff petrol is to look at the ‘good’ things (from their point of view) they experience. Ask the question, “What problems are solved by this sniffing?”

Reading through the reports from different communities in Australia, and also in other countries, and talking to people in Aboriginal communities in South Australia, I noted some problems. There might be hunger. Some people think that sniffing petrol makes children forget about being hungry, and they notice that children who sniff a lot are very thin. There might be loneliness and feeling left out of things. When children sniff, they usually do it together in a group, and have fun together. They get ‘strong’ enough to take no notice of what their relatives and white people say. They get ‘strong’ enough to do things they would not normally do – like breaking into houses or the store, or ‘testing’ themselves against teachers or other people in authority. There might be boredom. When children sniff, they have exciting or frightening pictures in their minds, and they feel as if they can ‘travel around’in their head and visit other places. There might be worry. Children worry about family things (such as whether they have someone to care for them and make sure they have enough food and blankets), or about growing up and the future (what will happen to them if their relatives die; what will they do when they finish school?)

By sniffing petrol and feeling ‘high’ some of these problems are alleviated; there is excitement and stimulation; hunger is forgotten; the fun of being ‘different’ and having a group of friends who do the same thing makes up for being left out and being hit by older people. They can travel around in their heads and see lots of new things.

The Aboriginal people in Robinvale do not want separate schools, classes and housing. Some of the more dependent ones need extra help, but the capable ones are proud of succeeding on their own merits as people.

However, the children do have problems at school. For this reason the Save the Children Fund has set up a kindergarten for three-year-old children. All the Aboriginal children attend four days a week; even itinerant families and visitors bring their three-year-olds along. They may stay with the children, leave them, come back early, join in the program, or just watch, any day and every day. Two Aboriginal aides take a major part in running the program, with a kindergartner.

Non-Aboriginal children are welcome. They attend one or two days a week, and their families are also welcome. Visiting parents are introduced to one another, and encouraged to act as guests to whom all the children play host.

As the Aboriginal children attend more often, they get to know the program routines, the songs, stories, puzzles, games and equipment better. They are the confident ones, the helpers, the messengers.

Q. Why do you want a school?

A. It is very important for our children to learn.

Q. What sort of teacher do you want?

A. First of all, Aboriginal teachers to start.

Q. How many teachers do you want?

A. One for a start.

Q. What do you want them to teach?

A. Counting, mathematics, reading, writing in English, Aboriginal culture.

Q. Do you want a school building?

A. We are thinking about an open-air one, a hut with bark and bush materials. Later on we may build a better school.

Another question concerned the degree of assistance required from Europeans.

A. Everything concerning schools will be run only by the local people, but we will appreciate the ideas and help of Europeans when we ask them. All responsibility will be with parents.

This conversation is extracted from a report by Maria Brandl, written in 1974. She was talking to a group of people who had started an Outstation in the Yirrkala area.

The Aboriginal Studies course outlined here was conceived by Jennie Fraser, a member of the Woy Woy Aboriginal community. In 1979 Jennie, who lives in Woy Woy with her family, approached the principal of Woy Woy High School with a proposal to introduce Aboriginal Studies within the school. The principal, in consultation with the Social Science and History masters, agreed to the idea and responded by allocating for Jennie Fraser’s proposed course, a segment of the Years 9 and 10 Social Science program.

This showed considerable flexibility on the part of the school and left Jennie Fraser with a commitment to develop and participate in the teaching of an Aboriginal Studies course in 1980. She realized the constraints on the program, her own lack of teaching experience worried her and the curriculum aspects of developing a unit were of concern to her. However, she had expertise in Aboriginal Studies, and with the assistance of the school, was able to meet appropriate resource personnel. She contacted the Curriculum Consultant (Aboriginal Studies) and several visits and planning workshops were arranged for consultation which was beneficial to all parties concerned. During this process she met with the N.S.W. State Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and a workshop was organised to consider curriculum rationale at which she was able to discuss approaches to designing a unit. Alan Fidock, from the Curriculum Development Centre, attended this workshop.

In January this year, the Bishop convened a meeting in Townsville of people who are involved in the education of Aboriginal and Islander children. The purpose of the meeting was to form a Committee to review and co-ordinate Diocesan policy in regards to the education of Aboriginal students.

At its second meeting, the Review and Co-ordinating Committee considered a proposal by the Aboriginal Advisor, Catholic Education Office. The essence of that proposal was that there ought to be an Aboriginal and Islander Group to advise on matters relating to Aboriginal and Islander education. Subsequently the Committee approved of the proposal and a submission was made to the Diocesan Education Council requesting that an Advisory Group be established.

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.

Education can be defined as all the ways in which one person deliberately tries to influence the behaviour of another person. Behaviour may include knowledge, skills, habits, values and attitudes (Butts, n.d.). I believe education should serve either or both of two purposes -

1. the acquisition of knowledge, skills, habits, values and attitudes which can be used to assist his community/society to attain a better standard of living, that is, economic development and/or quality of life, and/or

2. to enable a person to be a better and more useful citizen in his/her society.

People under pressure often turn to drugs to help them cope with their difficulties. This seems to happen in nearly every culture in the world. Alcohol is the major drug used in Australia – by all the racial groups. Aboriginal children under pressure often turn to petrol sniffing. The habit seems to have been introduced to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory during World War II. What to do about it is a worrying problem because it often seems that the harder we try, the worse it gets.

This profile of Mr Via Chapman is adapted from the December 1979 edition of “Aboriginal Quarterly” with permission of the Editor and of Mr Chapman.

In submitting his story to “Aboriginal Quarterly” in response to that journal’s request to hear from some of the 15 fully qualified Aboriginal teachers in NSW, Mr Chapman observed:

A variety of statements made by Aboriginal people and groups about what they see as the aims of education is presented. There are diverse emphases but a common thread relates to the education of children in both cultures and a wish to see the children grow in competence in Western skills and knowledge but also retain their own culture and its associated knowledge, skills and values.

The following sets of statements, made by people from various locations throughout Australia, exhibit concern for the achievement of the basic skills, for education that will permit job access (including emphasis by some on education to tertiary level), for the development of skills to live in the modern industrialized world and/or to contribute to their own communities, and concerns expressed by many that children learn about their own culture, some seeing this as part of the school program and others believing it should be taught by the Aboriginal people themselves.

One of the criticisms voiced against Aboriginal Residential Colleges such as Yirara is that we “take the students away from their culture”. I don’t necessarily agree with this comment for a number of reasons.

Aspects of life at Yirara suggest to me that male and female students who attend could in fact be exposed to more traditional Aboriginal culture than they would normally experience at home. This, of course, applies to some communities more than to others.

Yirara College is in its second year of conducting an Aboriginal Studies course for its students. During this course students have the opportunity of

a) Learning to read and write their own language.

b) Learning traditional and contemporary Aboriginal skills.

c) Learning about other non-Centralian Aboriginal groups and native peoples from other cultures.