Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, November 26, 2003
TEACHING LESSONS IN ANANGU REALITY
THE knock on the door at midnight was a little girl seeking help to steal flowers. Too scared of the dogs to go alone in the dark, she wanted her teacher to help pinch the sunflowers from someone's garden for a funeral the next day. Teacher by day; flower thief by night. Or ambulance driver or even gravedigger. Doing six jobs at once, such is life for teachers in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands. While the white bureaucrats fly in and quickly out of The Lands, the teachers are there to stay. Not everyone could do it. No drugs, no drink, no fraternisation. And losing contact with family and friends through isolation can be especially hard on the young. The other thing they quickly lose is any illusions they had about education. The standard methods they were taught at uni are not always practical in The Lands. Standing in front of the class to teach simply won't work. You need to sit among the kids even though departmental rules discourage it. The kids drape themselves all over you to learn. It's their way. They also dislike being singled out for individual attention, for praise or criticism. No-one willingly stands out from the Anangu crowd. Ask a child to name the colour of his pencil and the boy next to him will say "blue". Ask a girl her name and someone else will answer "Nadia". Even school assemblies may offend traditional law by forcing together children who should be in "avoidance". A man and his mother-in-law could be holding a perfectly normal conversation about the family ... except for standing back to back. Anangu "avoidance" custom forbids them from ever looking at each other. Nothing is ever simple in The Lands and education often comes second to culture. Even so, the schools are the community centres, the places where white and black culture unite for good purpose. Mind you, the real guiding lights are the Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs). Without the support of AEWs, the system would collapse. At Mimili, AEW Ngupulya Pumani's coffee mug was plastered with merit stickers – all thoroughly deserved. The Lands' schools have much the same challenges as any school - "Don't smoke marawana, puyu wi'ya ukiri" - although the chronic health problems are more serious. Ninety five per cent of kids have hearing loss. Almost all have perforated ear drums. If the kids are deaf what hope do they have to learn? At Amata, a school trampoline was used to help clear the kids' respiratory congestion. At Indulkana, the school spent $15,000 on breakfasts annually. At Mimili, the school spent $6000 on fresh fruit. White teachers come away special from The Lands. One of the odd consequences is an uncertainty among them about whether they are still capable of teaching in "normal" schools, as if they need a refresher course in white society. I asked one teacher what she would be her first treat back in Adelaide for the school holiday? A facial, perhaps, or a massage? "A drink," she said. (Des Ryan travelled to The Lands in October 2003 as a guest of the South Australian Education Department.)
Monday, November 17, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, November 19, 2003
QUICK HEADLINES OFFER NO EASY ANSWERS
WHEN I first went to The Lands in the late 1970s, it took me a long time - a couple of years, at least - before I had regained my composure enough to write anything coherent about the place. Petrol sniffing, chronic disease and squalor were too confronting for an ex-altar boy who thought amoebic dysentry was part of the Latin liturgy. I had gone to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, in far north SA, with the old Institute of Teachers to look at teacher housing. The housing was not too bad; it was my framework that needed underpinning. I remember coming away thinking white contact was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Anangu - an utterly useless reaction in the circumstances. Twenty five years later, I went back there recently with the Education Department and the same old problems still existed, no denying it. I saw no manicured lawns or topiary hedges. Yet I came away this time feeling optimistic. For one thing, life in general has moved on incredibly since I was last there. In the '70s, the old man who had taken his first ride in a car was still alive. He had sat in the back staring out the window and after a short drive had tapped the driver on the shoulder: "How do you make the mountains move like that?" And people could still remember another old fella, on spotting his first rabbit, who had quickly scrambled up a tree uncertain what the creature could do to him. Back then, The Lands had no TV, no radio and no mobile phones. The only means of communication was a shared radio telephone that even courting couples had to use for wooing. "For goodness sake, man, just marry her!" was one famous interjection. Now there are phones, computers, the internet and 30 satellite TV channels. A TV is the first item of household furniture even though it might sit on a 44 gallon drum linked by a long line of extension cords to a generator in the bush. The Aboriginal kids, relating to colour, wear the same gridiron and basketball singlets worn by black US players and wear 2PAC T-shirts bearing the message "Me Against The World". I am not a great advocate of American TV as a guiding cultural light but it offers better options than petrol sniffing. Which, by the way, was introduced by black US troops based in Central Australia in WWII. So it goes. At this stage, with a drum roll and a clash of cymbals, I should like to provide solutions to the problems. No such luck. The Lands are easy meat for visiting journalists looking for cheap, lazy headlines. To me, this is not much different than staring at a person with a birthmark covering half her face and saying, "Do you know who have a birthmark covering half your face?" The Pitjantjatjara know the problems and they need support to find solutions that suit their situation, not some whitefella bureaucracy's. The future can been seen in the bright, happy faces of the kids at school. Within them are the answers. They are the reason for my optimism.
QUICK HEADLINES OFFER NO EASY ANSWERS
WHEN I first went to The Lands in the late 1970s, it took me a long time - a couple of years, at least - before I had regained my composure enough to write anything coherent about the place. Petrol sniffing, chronic disease and squalor were too confronting for an ex-altar boy who thought amoebic dysentry was part of the Latin liturgy. I had gone to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, in far north SA, with the old Institute of Teachers to look at teacher housing. The housing was not too bad; it was my framework that needed underpinning. I remember coming away thinking white contact was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Anangu - an utterly useless reaction in the circumstances. Twenty five years later, I went back there recently with the Education Department and the same old problems still existed, no denying it. I saw no manicured lawns or topiary hedges. Yet I came away this time feeling optimistic. For one thing, life in general has moved on incredibly since I was last there. In the '70s, the old man who had taken his first ride in a car was still alive. He had sat in the back staring out the window and after a short drive had tapped the driver on the shoulder: "How do you make the mountains move like that?" And people could still remember another old fella, on spotting his first rabbit, who had quickly scrambled up a tree uncertain what the creature could do to him. Back then, The Lands had no TV, no radio and no mobile phones. The only means of communication was a shared radio telephone that even courting couples had to use for wooing. "For goodness sake, man, just marry her!" was one famous interjection. Now there are phones, computers, the internet and 30 satellite TV channels. A TV is the first item of household furniture even though it might sit on a 44 gallon drum linked by a long line of extension cords to a generator in the bush. The Aboriginal kids, relating to colour, wear the same gridiron and basketball singlets worn by black US players and wear 2PAC T-shirts bearing the message "Me Against The World". I am not a great advocate of American TV as a guiding cultural light but it offers better options than petrol sniffing. Which, by the way, was introduced by black US troops based in Central Australia in WWII. So it goes. At this stage, with a drum roll and a clash of cymbals, I should like to provide solutions to the problems. No such luck. The Lands are easy meat for visiting journalists looking for cheap, lazy headlines. To me, this is not much different than staring at a person with a birthmark covering half her face and saying, "Do you know who have a birthmark covering half your face?" The Pitjantjatjara know the problems and they need support to find solutions that suit their situation, not some whitefella bureaucracy's. The future can been seen in the bright, happy faces of the kids at school. Within them are the answers. They are the reason for my optimism.
