Yolngu kids school robotics world

At the tiny remote school Dhupuma Barker, Yolngu children have discovered a gift for coding and programming.

Sean Yunupingu, from Dhupuma Barker, at the VEX Robotics World Championship 2023 in Dallas. Picture: Alton Strupp and Shelby Catlett

Sean Yunupingu does his learning in an old transportable cabin on a remote peninsula in northeast Arnhem Land. In Dallas, Texas, this week, he and his Yolngu classmates have announced themselves as serious coders and programmers at the world’s biggest robotics competition.

The students from Dhupuma Barker are competing against children from 40 countries. Some of the young competitors have been put through robotics academies known to charge parents up to $100,000 per child.

The Dhupuma Barker kids chose to call their team the Firebirds and trained for the competition part-time in school hours at their coastal community of Gunyangara.

They finished fourth at Australia’s annual national robotics competition in Sydney.

Now, dressed in bright yellow hoodies in the Texas spring, they are having a ball on their first overseas trip. In July the students demonstrated their robotics skills to US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, who attended the Garma festival.

Ms Kennedy is impressed by the school’s unique approach – students learn in their first language of Gumatj and in English, and elders are in the classrooms daily to encourage and assure. Since her visit, the ambassador has generously supported the kids, including by arranging for them to have a Zoom call with astronauts at the International Space Station.

Their school back home in Gunyangara is a promising collaboration between Sydney’s Barker College and the Yothu Yindi Foundation. The infrastructure is not grand – the school is a couple of second-hand cabins purchased from Rio Tinto by the late Yolngu clan leader Yunupingu.

However, Yunupingu – the visionary leader who died in April after a lifetime of powerful advocacy – knew the school could be something special. It opened in April 2021 and has 35 students from kindergarten to year 6.

Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden is in Dallas with the Yolngu students as they show extraordinary aptitude in daily heats of the competition.

“It’s an immense privilege and joy to see the students approach the competition with such confidence, and that speaks to the success of the school more broadly and our partnership with Barker,” Ms Bowden said. “There are so many proud families back in the Gunyangara community right now willing them on, and the kids know that and are feeding off that encouragement.

“We’d love to see Dhupuma Barker competing in this tournament annually – the Firebirds have shown they can mix it with the best and it’s an incredible experience for them in many ways.

“Yothu Yindi Foundation will be hosting a First Nations delegation from the US at Garma later this year, so there’s also an important cross-cultural component to the relationship we’re building with America, in addition to the opportunities in education, STEM, robotics and the space industry.”

Phillip Heath, principal of Barker College, is also at the robotics competition to support the Yolngu students his school works closely with.

“Barker is incredibly proud to partner with Yothu Yindi Foundation and through this partnership to show to the world that remote does not equal disadvantage in capacity,” Mr Heath said.

“The robotics is showing that, given opportunities, Yolngu kids can do extraordinary things at a world level and not be out of place.

“I’d like to express my thanks to the families that have entrusted us with their children to travel all the way to Dallas to compete with the world.”