Education must feature Indigenous culture: Garma Festival
Indigenous knowledge must be included in classes from primary school to university, Garma Festival speakers say. HAVE YOUR SAY
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AUSTRALIAN children are being denied access to 65,000 years of knowledge and history according to education reformists calling for Indigenous knowledge to be embedded in the curriculum.
The incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into classes from primary school all the way to university has become the rallying cry of an education forum at the Garma Festival.
Yolngu Elders will host international, Australian, and Northern Territory leaders as they call for ‘Nhana Nathilyarra (looking to the future)” across a number of major reforms in the East Arnhem conference.
Garma’s return after a two-year pandemic hiatus gathered thousands of people together in a celebration of Indigenous community, culture and policy-making.
Professor Marcia Langton said her team at the University of Melbourne had spent eight years developing a program incorporate and recognise Indigenous knowledge into the national curriculum.
Prof Langton said the University of Melbourne had brought together experts from diverse facilities, from physics, education, theatre and music, to indigenous languages, to discuss how indigenous knowledge could be embedded into the curriculum.
She said it was her aim for every student to have the opportunity to understand how Indigenous knowledge could influence their own understanding.
“Remember the issue in the Uluṟu statement of the heart: Truth telling,” Prof Langton said.
“Our children deserve the truth.”
Prof Langton said a “nation building” curriculum influenced by Indigenous knowledge was critical to Australia’s future.
But Prof Langton said she was too cynical to bring forward an Indigenous-led curriculum for history students.
“Every Australian is entitled to know the truth about our country,” she said.
“At present … in schools there’s no relationship or very little relationship to the truth.
“If we had started with history and the frontier wars, our work would have been immediately been rejected.
“There remains a denialist approach.
“Apparently all of you dropped out of a spaceship and landed here,” she joked.
“There was nobody ever here before, it was all yours, there was nobody before you who may have created it.
“That’s about what you learn in school about us, our past and the county in which you live.”
“I’m sorry for being cynical, but I’ve been into too many schools and looked at many curricular.
“Why are Australian children denied 65,000 years of history and culture, and denied even an accurate history of Australian since 1901?”
Prof Langton sarcastically asked “what’s the definition of structural racism again?”.
She said there was very little difference between those who refused to teach Indigenous history because it was “too difficult “ and “too decisive “ and Senator Pauline Hanson, who recently walked out of parliament over the acknowledgment of country.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar called for a Indigenous knowledge to not only be acknowledged, but a mandated part of the curriculum in Australian classrooms.
“How dare we not include and acknowledge the Indigenous civilisations of this continent in our education and learning pathways,” Ms Oscar said
“Having our Indigenous education systems have always been foundational to engaging in our lives and bringing our worlds into being.
“I learned to live in both worlds as many of the young Indigenous people have. And in doing so slipped from one reality to another with the educational tools from both existences.
“(But) we don’t want to see formal education to come at the cost of culture and out identity.
“We share knowledge to live and survive by.”
Ms Oscar spoke of the harms of racist and culturally insensitive teaching could have on young minds, particularly young Indigenous women.
Ms Oscar said she was inspire by the voices of a youth panel, featuring alumni of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.
She said these young people had fought against racism both from their peers and teachers.
“It’s still alive in this country,” Ms Oscar said.
New Zealand High Commissioner and Māori education advocate Dame Annette King told an education panel the denial of First Nations knowledge was a great shame shared across the Tasman Sea.
“Almost across the board Māori currently fare the worst in social and economic outcomes,” Ms King said.
She said a systemic repression of Māori culture and language meant that the number of children able to speak their own tongue dropped from over 90 per cent in 1975 to just 5 per cent in the 1990s.
But she said the was hope, with culturally revitalising education platforms turning the tide and celebrating Māori culture in schools.
She said within her lifetime Māori had become an official language of her county, with language spoken in parliament, media and wider community with ease.
She said the Māori experience was very different to the many hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait languages in Australia.
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Originally published as Education must feature Indigenous culture: Garma Festival
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