Hi Lexi,

What is somebody's 'culture' ? Their heritage, the way their ancestors used to live and believe and relate to each other, or the way they live now, the only way they have known ? i.e. anthropological 'culture' or sociological 'culture' ?

The great majority of Indigenous people that I have known have been urban people, many generations away from anything like a traditional life, with generations of mission and settlement life in between. So, with the best will in the world, their traditional world is a very distant one, and their culture has been similar - not the same, but similar - to that of Anglo-Australians for 150-170 years or more.

So to teach many Aboriginal kids 'their' culture may well be to teach something that is as alien as teaching Scottish-Australian kids about the heather and pibrochs and glens and capercallies. In other words, nothing much to do with their contemporary lives. Meanwhile, they may get a very strong impression that modern culture is not for them, they don't have the right to enjoy cultural similarities with other kids, Anglo-, Maltese-, Greek-, Afghan-Australians and so many others who they go to school with, mix socially with, perhaps will eventually marry.

And of course, there are feckwits in the education system who, perhaps unintentionally, will give Aboriginal kids the disastrously wrong impression that education and the good life is alien to them, that it sort of belongs only to Anglos.

So if kids are to be taught 'their' 'culture', then it should be the whole kit and keboodle, not some garbled version of what their ancestors maybe did and how they lived 200 years ago. The kids are living a modern, contemporary, mainly urban culture - in what way isn't it 'their' culture ?

And don't get me started on language :)

Joe

Dear Joe,

I agree with you that kids should be taught the whole "kit and Kaboodle." And, that's the whole point I'm trying to make. They haven't been. They've been taught the anachronism of Australia as a "white country." Little was taught about their history and way of life, about their myths and legends, their beliefs.

Even today, for example, apart from food, the average Australian seems to know very little about non-British migrants or their cultures.

An attempt to preserve migrant cultures in Australia was initiated two and a half decades ago, on 30 May 1978, when the first "Report of the Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants," was tabled in the Federal House of Representatives.Commonly known as the Galbally Report, the document recommended, "inter-alia," "that if our society develops multiculturalism through broad concept of community education, it will gain much which has been lost to other nations..."

This recommendation was based on the observation that "already our nation has been enriched by the artistic, intellectual and other attributes of migrant cultures." Therefore as far as the Indigenous people are concerned all I am suggesting is that schools, and other community bodies should endeavour to implement Indigenous programs and greater Indigenous awarness (as they did with ethnic awareness) throughout Australia.

Many voices have only relatively recently filled out the space once claimed as the "Great Australian Silence," - i.e. the history of Indigenous-Settler relations. Today we can know a great deal about the history of Indigenous-Settler realtions. It is now possible to explore the past by means of large numbers of books, articles, films, novels, songs, and even paintings.

All I'm trying to say is - Sure, teach the mainstream lessons - but also include the "Dream-Time," legends which are also beautiful.

Dear sweet Lexi,

You have such a good heart, but my point was that the culture of Aboriginal kids, especially urban kids, is substantially similar to that of their classmates', and neighbours'. It is urban, modern, contemporary, English-language, music- and clothes- and movie-oriented, just like theirs. It involves 9-to-5, school, TV, cars, interstate and overseas holidays, just like it does for other kids. They need to learn about a multi-faceted world, modern technology, how to handle money, and profit from a vast variety of skills in order to work to provide for themselves, in the towns and cities, for life, just like other kids.

So traditional life, culture, relationships, economy and cosmology are not relevant to their lives, now. To their sense of self, to their historical being, yes, it would be nice to know some of that. But it's not central to their lives, and it hasn't been for 150-180 years.

Down this way, the last person who could speak the full language of the Murray and Lakes died in the sixties - he was born in about 1880, and wasn't even from that particular group. Even David Unaipon, the guy on the $ 50 note, born in 1872, didn't learn to speak the whole language (otherwise HE would have been the last speaker). Of course, the families pass on a smattering of the language, the odd hundred household words, but the language of urban Aboriginal kids is, let's face it, English: that's what they should learn well.

Life changed very quickly for many Aboriginal people, not necessarily for the better and not completely to the manners and life of the invaders, but very quickly the old ways were left behind, superseded by far more efficient technology, mobility, broader relationships, awareness of vastly different worlds. You can't go back from that new awareness, back to some pre-invasion oblivion. Pandora's box has been opened and can never be closed again. But we don't do kids any favours by trying to deny them the real world that they are living and will be working in, even 'for their own good'.

Joe

Dear Joe,

I'm probably not putting it very well. I'm not trying to deny any one anything. I just feel that surely there must be a way to combine the best of both worlds.

In the US - American Indian children are taught about their past - to develop a stronger sense of self. In New Zealand - the Maori's have a stronger sense of self. I delved into my ancestry. I know its history, and culture. So why should our Indigenous peoples' children not be given the same opportunities as others have been? It doesn't mean that I'm suggesting they live in the past - or not be part of the mainstream culture at all. I simply am suggesting that their education be all inclusive - that's all.

Yes, Lexi, you're right - I'm just worried that Aboriginal kids might still be taken out of their clases for 'cultural activities' which have as little relevance to their daily lives as they might to Afghan or Sudanese or Chilean kids. Yes, it's good for all kids to be taught something about their (to them) distant history and culture, but not at the expense of the rest of their education.

Conversely, all kids should be taught something about the history and traditional culture of ALL of their classmates: I'm sure my English-Australian classmates could have benefited from some of the stories and exposure to the superior culture of the Scots - well, of course, they did, since we all had to learn 'Skye Boat Song' and 'Eriskay Love Lilt' and 'Loch Lomond', and 'Lochinvar' etc. My Indigenous kids would have benefited from knowing about the bravery of the Maltese fighting off the Nazis during the War, as they did the Arabs a thousand years earlier, or about Greek music, or Italian painting. It's a very multi-coloured world in many ways :)

Maybe the schools I went to in the fifties were different: in one, the houses (remember them ?) were named Nardoo, Wandoo, Wilga and Mulga. We learnt Jabbin Jabbin Kiro Kar and listened to Harold Blair on the gramophone. We learnt about the close relations between Sturt and Aboriginal groups. Of course, in those days, there were NO Aboriginal kids, or very few, in those Sydney schools: they were still excluded, out on the settlements. But even then, mission and settlement life was not traditional life, English would have been the common language, and traditional beliefs would have been distant memories of the older people, if that. So what would have been people's culture then ?

And now, here we are, in 2011 ..... A hell of a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, even since the fifties. And not just the odd Aboriginal man or woman getting through teachers' college or nursing school, but more than 26,000 graduates of all sorts. Different times, different culture.

Joe

Dear Joe,

Reading your last post put a lump in my throat. As I told you previously, I love reading your posts. And this last one was a
beaut! We're on the same wave-length!