(This is the first of two articles, based on a paper delivered at the 1982 conference of the Applied Linguistic Association of Australia, entitled: “Language maintenance among Torres Strait Islanders living on the Australian mainland.” It deals with the language backgrounds of most Torres Strait Islander children attending mainstream Queensland schools. The second part, which will appear in the next issue, discusses some of the language difficulties experienced in the classroom by many of these children).

A common misapprehension still prevalent in Australia is that traditional Aboriginal society had no organized educational system. This misapprehension seems based on the ethnocentric concept of British nationalism reinforced by the belief that Christianity was sacrosanct and provided an unassailable moral code. When coupled with the profit motive of capitalism, this belief justified the wholesale destruction of Aboriginal society (Rowley 1970, Reynolds 1981). Prior to European contact most of the instruction of children was carried out by women, and both sexes gained a detailed knowledge of their physical environment. Women were also responsible for the complete spiritual instruction of girls and of boys up to the age of puberty. A boy’s uncle assumed a mentor role during his adolescence (Cowlishaw, 1981). These educational methods were successful in that children were prepared for the particular way of life of their tribe, and there were very few ‘drop outs’, or failures in this system (Hart, 1969).

The tragic deaths of the British explorers, Burke and Wills, demonstrated the worthlessness which the Europeans attached to Aboriginal knowledge. Burke habitually chased Aboriginal people away from his camp with his revolver (Woolf, 1974). The earlier explorer, Charles Sturt had been saved from death by scurvy because the surgeon, John Browne, fed him salt bush berries after observing the Yandruwandra people collecting and eating this source of Vitamin C.

The British believed English to be the language of enlightenment and viewed the 633, (Reed 1969) different Aboriginal languages and dialects as immoral and primitive. The British made little attempt to learn any Aboriginal languages and the fact that the languages did not exist in a written form further enforced the view of their worthlessness. Contemporary linguistic studies show Aboriginal languages are grammatically complex and that most species of plants and animals to be found in a tribe’s country were represented in their language’s detailed vocabulary (Robertson, 1983). Obviously, if Burke and Wills had been less impatient and arrogant they would not have perished even in the arid lands of Central Australia. They could have survived by developing a rapport with local Aborigines. However, if one’s object is to take possession of a people’s land by exterminating them, it is better to view them psychologically as sub-human or a relic from a different evolutionary era, as many social Darwinists did, than to develop an empathy with them (Fromm, 1942).

One of the most distressing intoxicants for Aboriginal people is methanol. This occurs in the spirit provided for duplicators used in schools. The spirit duplicators are cheap, versatile, and can print on different colours, so they are deservedly popular. But from time to time the local people sample the duplicating fluid, which is widely known to produce a big high, and to intoxicate like alcohol (ethanol). Many of these people have been lucky enough to wake up with a bad hangover. Others have become blind, or even died.

To traditional Aborigines their whole concept of life, whether it is physical or spiritual survival, is centred on their belief in the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime was the period of creation when the Aborigines’ life-style was planned and the Aborigines’ entire life centred on the need to live in the style prescribed by the mythical Dreamtime ancestors.

An understanding of the Dreamtime is essential to an understanding of traditional Aboriginal culture. Stanner (1979, 23–40) describes the Dreaming as pervading every aspect of life from social organization to food gathering. Not only is it the period of creation when the mythical ancestors roamed the earth, but it is also the life spirit which ties man, society and nature, both past and present, to the living now.

R.M. Berndt (1980) describes the dreaming thus:

The Dreaming therefore constituted a particular view of life, of the place of human beings within a preordained scheme or patterning symbolising a three-sided relationship between mythic beings, nature and people. Each was dependent on the others. People were part of nature, part of particular mythic beings, in social and personal terms.

(Berndt, 1980, 14–15)

Not only did traditional Aborigines believe in the Dreaming, they lived it. It is the Dreaming which provides the blueprint for life.

Central to the belief in the Dreaming is the belief in the mythical beings. These beings were part human and part animal. They roamed the earth in the Dreamtime using super-human powers to create all natural features.

The Education Commission of New South Wales was established in October, 1980, as a response to efforts made by teachers, parents and others to achieve effective community participation in the decisions which affect public education in this State.

Membership of the Commission provides for the representation of teachers, parents, Government administration and other community interests. The Commission is a representative body which acts as the prime adviser to the Minister for Education and, through the Minister, to the Government.

The Commission has statutory responsibilities in terms of its role as the employing authority for teachers in public schools and colleges of technical and further education, and as the Minister’s major advisory body on broad policy and planning matters.

The Commission’s charter in respect of policy, planning and resource issues for public education includes primary and secondary education, technical and further education and higher education. The Commission consults with Departments and other statutory bodies and operates by furnishing reports and making recommendations to the Minister for Education. These may be on the initiative of the Commission or at the request of the Minister.

During its first two years the Education Commission identified nine major issues arising from pressures for change. The Commission has sought to identify viewpoints about the most important aspects of these issues with the intention of preparing proposals for Government consideration.

Viewpoints have been identified through consultation with interested groups as members of working parties, through preparation and distribution of discussion papers, through visiting schools and colleges in urban and rural areas, by holding public seminars, by calling for submissions, and by meeting with individuals and groups in a variety of other situations.

To get an adult to learn one of the One-Two Hundred Most Commonly Written Words lists is like shovelling coal into a smouldering fire. You know it’s going in, but not when it will ignite.

Yet is a necessary segment of their learning, and approaching it in a Ouija Board fashion to make sentences out of the words after a first, few introductory steps helps.

First, adults appreciate an explanation of the list’s origin and worth. It takes only a moment to explain the words were compiled by sampling several thousand articles and books to see which words occurred most frequently. Taking five minutes and having the learner circle some words from the list in any newspaper article proves this to the reader.

Also, give the learner a copy of the list to keep. The learner can track how many have been learned and also have the option to proceed on his or her own.

At this initial stage, some people benefit from having each word from the list on flash cards in order to learn the words. They can also form the cards into simple sentences. When comfortable for the learner and using only the list itself, point to the words on a small portion of the list for the learner to recognise. Try as much as possible to make a coherent thought from the words: was he for it (?) can spark for what (?) for example.

A series of seven films has been produced for the National Aboriginal Employment Development Committee by Film Australia, the production division of the Australian Film Commission. The films are the outcome of eighteen months in the field by Producer Elisabeth Knight and Director K. Gow. They travelled thousands of kilometers with their film crew and visited twenty major locations spanning and circling the continent, from Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory to Broome in Western Australia, to Port Lincoln in South Australia; from Mackay, Queensland to Brewarrina, New South Wales, to Melbourne.

The four We Did It films show Aboriginal people at work, talking about how they got their jobs, what they like about them and some tips for other job seekers. The four films show Aboriginal people from Victoria (12 minutes), South Australia (11 minutes) Western Australia(12 minutes) and Rockhampton and Mackay (11 minutes) in a range of jobs and apprenticeships – nursing, the Public Service, education, horticulture, library work, building and mechanical trades.

Women of Utopia (19 minutes) is a first-class introduction by a group of Aboriginal women of Utopia Station in the Northern Territory to the process by which they make their distinctively beautiful batik fabrics.

This Is Working (27 minutes) features four different projects being undertaken by Aboriginal people in New South Wales, thereby creating jobs for themselves and developing skills and expertise.

Questions of language policy in Australia have rarely been addressed in a comprehensive manner. Migrant communities have long been concerned with an array of issues covering maintenance of their own languages, and access to suitable English teaching and to services through translating and interpreting, but policy in these areas has developed in a haphazard manner, with often little sustained interest shown by Australian institutions.

A good deal of interest therefore has been created by the deliberations of the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, which has since May 1982 been considering the “development and implementation of a co-ordinated language policy for Australia”. The establishment of such an inquiry was pressed both by ethnic representative bodies (migrant and Aboriginal) and by organizations of language professionals – linguists, applied linguists, language teachers and academics. Indeed the language issues that have often troubled migrant communities have also in various ways animated language professionals, who have had to cope for example with a decline in foreign language studies in schools, difficulties in establishing and maintaining community language programs, disorganization of translator/interpreter services, serious underresourcing of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses, and above all a severe lack of data and information which could be used as a basis for planning.

The Commonwealth Department of Education has been a prime mover for such an inquiry since the mid-1970s, and through its contacts, especially with language professionals, has had a chance to develop a coherent outlook on language – at least those aspects related to education. Also, the Department has assisted or itself conducted most of the important investigations into language teaching in Australia over the last decade: no fewer than 22 reports or submissions are documented by the Department since 1975, attesting to the quiet but persistent growth of interest in this area. The work of a small group within the Department resulted in an important document that appeared just after the announcement of the Senate inquiry – Towards a National Language Policy. Written to encourage interest in language policy and to test community reactions, it set out an extensive agenda of issues that are closely reflected in the actual terms of reference of the Senate inquiry [see pp. 45-46 Terms of Reference].

Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, one could detect an inexorable logic in the development of Aboriginal affairs from the time of the initial conquest of the country until at least the Second World War. The assumption of what Mr Justice Blackburn termed the “legal fiction” of peaceful settlement of terra nullius (an empty land) nothwithstanding, the entire country was, in the view of its long-term inhabitants, definitely not empty, nor without law and government. (Even the South Australian Colonisation Committee seems to have concurred in this view by assuring intending settlers that they would be protected from hostile savages, in 1834, two years before formal settlement.

The non-fictional fact of conquest, however, placed at the doors of colonial administrations the responsibility for those conquered remnants who survived the process of settlement. But since the raison d’être of settlement required the fiction of empty and available land, the proprietary rights of its owners had to be denied from the first. To this was rapidly added the impropriety of heathen representing themselves or giving evidence in court, since they could not take the oath. Thus, although Walmadjeri and Tanganekald alike were henceforth British subjects and liable in British law, certain of their legal rights had to be postponed until they could understand their full importance – which could take an indefinably long time during which they might die out anyway. Understandably, with British civilisation at the pinnacle of human evolution, ahead of even the French, the German and of course the Hindu civilisations, and Aboriginal barbarism at or even below its base – George Grey surmised that Aboriginal life must represent some animal regression from that of the Garden of Eden – this period of apprenticeship for civilisation was a necessary burden for those with Christian charity to bear (Rowley, 1972:126)

The answer to the question above may seem obvious, but it often appears that there is misunderstanding among the community at large about who and what Aborigines are.

The Federal Government sums up the answer this way:

An Aboriginal person is one of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island descent who identifies as Aboriginal or Islander and is accepted as such by the community with which he or she is associated.

While Aboriginal people often differ markedly in their outlook and values from non-Aboriginal people, it is not so well known that Aboriginal groups themselves vary in language, culture and social structure.

These differences between Aboriginal people depend on their attachment to traditional cultural values, the degree to which they have adopted a European lifestyle and in the customs of differing regional groups.

Whatever their background. Aboriginal people have a strong sense of identity and pride in being Aboriginal.

A recent educational report acknowledged that in Australia, or at least, Western Australia, Aboriginal people were the most single disadvantaged group in Australia at both an educational and socioeconomic level.

The group this article concerns itself with is the children of the Central Desert area of Western Australia and in particular those children who are eligible to attend high school. Because few facilities exist for high school children in the Central Desert, the children are relocated away from their homelands in order to attend high school. Norseman supplies the facilities to cater for the needs of some of these children and for the purpose of this article, enrolment figures of the Norseman Project Centre will be used to exemplify the issue of the Aboriginal child not at school.

It is a western New South Wales High School with strong winter sunshine filling the classroom. The teacher moves nervously in from the brick corridor with its interchangeable Education Department prints, and stands just inside the door.

“Right, pay attention please,” the Social Sciences and History teacher says. The group gives the teacher their concentration because they have come to expect interesting and controversial work in these sessions. Even though a few of them are tired and full of canteen lunch, they turn in their seats and begin to chew on the ends of biros.

“This afternoon we have a visitor to the school who I am sure most of you know. She is here to help you…understand and come to grips with the Aboriginal Studies segment of your work…and she’ll probably straighten me out on a few points where I might have gone wrong, too, so I’ll ask you to pay attention to Mrs Copago and save your questions up for a minute or two.”

Mrs Copago is a little bit nervous, too, being in the formal atmosphere of the brick blocks, but she has known most of the students since they were drooling, so she quickly relaxes and settles into the task of talking about her culture and her people.

There is no shortage of questions from the students, and from the teacher, and they are all anxious to learn. Mrs Copago does not mind the questions that the students have heard at home, and she explains about unemployment and drinking in the light of the area’s history and racism in Australia. She talks about the skills and values Aborigines have that most Australians do not have and she ends on a positive note with hope for the Aboriginal community of the area and for Australia generally. The students and the teacher are well pleased by the session and Mrs Copago challenges them to change their own values and their family’s by thinking about different, equal cultures, land rights and the history of Australia.

We recently received exchange material from The Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) at Saskatoon, Canada. A brief description of the program might be of interest to those readers involved in adult and teacher education courses for Aboriginal students.

SUNTEP is a four-year off campus Teacher Education Program offered through the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research in co-operation with the Department of Education and the University of Saskatchewan and Regina. It is an enriched program leading to a B.Ed, degree, designed specifically for Metis and Non-Status Indian students who might not otherwise attend university. The program has a number of unique aspects including -

The Commonwealth Schools Commission published, in April this year, Commonwealth Standards for Australian Schools, in which the Commission establishes a range of recurrent resource standards which it judges to be desirable for Australian schools.

In the first part of the report the Commission addressed the principles by which such standards were established as well as the educational context and objectives of Australian schooling, and considered the factors affecting the development of these objectives, the changes in society and education.

In the second part of the report, Basic Recurrent Resource Standards for Australian Schools, recommendations are made for school organisation, school size, class size and student groupings, staffing and other resources.

This article seeks to formalise and link my perception of the Yalata Aboriginal community’s expressed values and objectives with their relationship to practice at Yalata Aboriginal School.

The values expressed here are those outlined by the Aboriginal community; they reflect the community’s felt needs. The process of establishing such needs is open-ended and dynamic, not static. Those needs are expressed through opinions based on experience and resulting legitimate emotion. The community consciousness is now grounded in an emotional strength of purpose that demands the skill to survive well, built on years of frustration and degradation.

The stipulated values can be translated into realisable objectives achievable through appropriate teaching/learning practices.

This article seeks to identify those expressed community values (principles of worth), as related to the Yalata Community School, develop them as a series of attainable objectives, and discuss ways those objectives may be met. Further, it asks the questions, “What are the values/felt needs of the community” and “How does the school try to reflect these values?”