Loudmouth2 - you state -

"Around fifty thousand Indigenous people have graduated from universities around the country. Since 1990, according to Ed. Dept data, around 140,000 Indigenous people have been to university at sometime (and I mean diploma, degree and post-graduate awards, not just pissy certificates) and around 25,000 are currently enrolled (most of whom will graduate)."

I respond - not all Indigenous children "aspire" to an Academic goal, so what happens to those who don't?

These children need to know that there are other alternatives they can aspire to achieve such as apprenticeship in building, plumbing, engineering, the list continues ..... and is endless.

Not all children, whether they be of Indigenous Culture or not need a University Degree to realise their dreams.

My mother taught me - if you can dream - you can achieve.

Mum - you were right

Hi SAINTS,

My reference to "pissy certificates" was to phony bits of paper which are almost a guarantee that the student has learnt nothing. Very common in more remote areas. I certainly didn't intend to mean those students enrolling in genuine trades or paraprofessional courses. 'Communities' desperately need a wide range of both trades and paraprofessional qualified Indigenous people, in addition to university-qualified staff.

In fact, that's what I got into higher education for, in the naive hope that graduates would find employment in 'communities' in every required field. That happened but nowhere near as much as I had anticipated.

For example, I recall a couple of accounting graduates: with thousands of Indigenous organisations, I assumed that there would be a massive call for Indigenous accountants in organisations. But those two, from the same town, found work in mainstream non-Indigenous organisations, while the Indigenous organisations in that town continued on - and have continued on - with non-Indigenous bookkeepers and accountants.

There used to be Indigenous Job Expos here in Adelaide, which necessarily focussed precisely onTAFE/VET-oriented careers - they're easier to demonstrate: bricklaying, plumbing, hairdressing, etc., than teaching or medical care or accounting. Not sure what's going on now.

We used to run Career Workshops around the State, for kids as far down as Class Six (once for a class of Fours). They referred to the full range of career possibilities. Kids were quite enthusiastic about them, especially the girls.

I'm a bit worried about your last observation: during one major series of Career Workshops (in 1994), I heard a story about a senior non-Indigenous Indigenous Education officer saying exactly that: that not all Indigenous kids might want to go to university. I came to interpret that as meaning that that person didn't think ANY Indigenous kids should be encouraged to to to university.

Back then, another version, even within Indig Studies sections at universities, was: that Indigenous kids shouldn't be enrolling in white courses, they should be channelled into Indigenous-focussed courses. That, of course,they wrote up and ran. My complaints about that got me sacked.

Racism springs eternal.

Joe

Hi Joe,

"In fact, that's what I (Joe) got into higher education for, in the naive hope that graduates would find employment in 'communities' in every required field. That happened but nowhere near as much as I had anticipated."

That applies to all remote/very limited communities, regardless of colour, its a catch 22 situation. Go to Uni and get qualifications, then employment/lifestyle/family considerations are better in the cities. It takes a special person, example a doctor, who is willing to give up the city life and all its advantages to work and live in an isolated disadvantaged community.

One thing you and I agree on, is that education is the key to overcoming disadvantage. Unfortunately the Mother Teresa types are few an far between. How do you get those desperately needed back into working in remote communities?

Paul,

It may sound strange but while graduates are often willing and eager to go out to communities,the managers of the all-Indigenous councils may not be so eager to have them. Nor might the people there, comfortable in their lifelong welfare, nobody wanting any boats rocked. After all, such outsiders could possibly represent an unknown alternative power-base, and upset their control of the constant flow of funds, 'jobs' for relations, and housing.

If I was an Indigenous graduate, unless a 'community' got off its collective arse and initiated obviously-possible projects such as vegetable gardens and orchards, I wouldn't touch any of them with a forty-foot pole.

Joe

Hi Joe,

Just something we have spoken about before, one of the wife's cousins is in this clip, they are around the same age, how it was back in the day. My wife could not speak Pakeha at all well before she started school. Her teacher preferred to give a wrap on the legs for speaking the native language at school. Plus on the first day she remembers the teacher pinning an English name on her tunic and saying that is your name now. Oddly when she went home, instead of her mother saying "that's not your name" she quietly accepted it, and they started to use it at home at times, and she still uses it today. She knows when I'm angry with her, I call he by her Maori name.

http://aotearoahumanityproject.co.nz/hohipere/

Hi Paul,

It must be an enormous advantage for a group of people to have only one extra language: here in Australia, with many hundreds of languages, each probably also with their distinctive dialects, and probably much more mobility as well, that became - in the early days down here in the 'south' - quite problematic. In the earliest days, the missionaries learnt the local language and tried to teach in it - at Adelaide itself, Pt Lincoln, Encounter Bay, Pt McLeay, up in the north-east.

But very quickly, with people moving to missions from all points, the mix of children generally meant that many couldn't speak the local language BUT all could speak English.

At many Missions set up later, a mixture of people from different areas and speaking different languages was the situation from the outset. So the missionaries more or less had to teach in English, at places like Pt Pearce and Koonibba.

At Missions and settlements set up in the twentieth century, so much change had occurred that even when the missionaries quickly learnt the basics of the local language, given that pretty much everybody also spoke a rough and ready English, at missions like Finniss River and Nepabunna and Gerard, English was the lingua franca and the language of schooling.

The last speaker of the full Ngarrindjeri language died in 1963: actually he wasn't Ngarrindjeri, his mother had come down from the mid-north and married a local man. Of course, people still know and use around 200 words of the old language, 'kitchen words'.

My brother had a partner from Parakao, with two lovely daughters and half a dozen grandsons. I remember his partner speaking to her parents there in English while they spoke to her in te reo Maori. Like listening to a telephone conversation. Very common in strongly bilingual societies. Different ball-game from over here, at least down 'south'.

Joe

[TBC]