A Shared History

The focus is the present, but always, the foundation is Aboriginal Australia.

It is important for teachers to understand the connections between the Land and Aboriginality. With understanding of the connections of peoples and Land comes a realisation that in our shared history, changes were forced on Aboriginal people. These changes shattered the structures of each society and ignored the sovereignty of all Aborignal nations.

Contemporary Australia has many social justice and human rights issues that are a result of policies and practices, originating 19th century and continuing until the 1967 Referendum. All section of Colonial and Australian society participated in the policies and practices. Some people married out of their culture, some people formed friendship out of their culture; many people exhibited prejudices and successive governments reflected the prejudices in laws and practices.

Since 1967 there has been change. The changes are reflected in the NSW HSIE K-6 syllabus with many opportunities to learn about those who have formed friendships and those who have been prejudice.

In a meeting arranged for school staff, a Yolgnu elder, consultant to the curriculum, explained to us what garma meant, and we were told of a garma site at a homeland centre a couple of hundred kilometres away, which we knew. Garma is a still lagoon. It may appear smelly and threatening to whitefellas, but it is full of life and very productive as a food source. Water is often taken to represent knowledge in Yolgnu philosophy. In the garma, the water is circulating silently beneath the surface; we can read that from the spiralling lines of foam on top. In the swelling and retreating of the tides, and the wet season floods can be seen in the two bodies of water. Each body of water has its own life. What happens in the processes of knowledge production in a school where two different cultures (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal), is to the Yolgnu elders akin to what they can see happening in the garma lagoon. For education to be genuine, natural and productive, both cultures have to be presented in such a way that each is preserved and respected. What is produced by their interaction is quite different from either. It is deep, inexhaustible, and always changing. But moment by moment we can read the surface.
Garma, foundation of life
Christie 1995, unpublished NSW Department of Education and Training paper

The teaching of Aboriginal perspectives is deep and inexhaustible, as deeper knowledge is reached the shared histories are positive. For it is about horrible events in the past. But it is also about sharing the many knowledge traditions in modern Australia; and therefore, building a better future for all Australians.