My account of what the project does, and our 2009 field trip to the Northern Territory to advance the work and sing I Will Survive very loudly on long dirt-road trips.
Above: Some of the clever authors at Manyallaluk school: from left to right, Kassie, Antonia, Serita, Kianah and (3-Stories!) Delisha.
What is the Indigenous Literacy Project?
The Indigenous Literacy Project aims to tackle the disadvantage imposed on kids in remote Aboriginal communities, who have very low literacy rates compared to Australian kids elsewhere. It gets culturally appropriate and educationally useful books into more than 130 remote area schools around Australia as part of its program. It’s about practical ways that readers, writers, publishers and booksellers can help close the literacy gap in Australia and share the love of reading and writing.
How can I help?
Go to www.indigenousliteracyproject.org.au and see how you can donate, attend a fundraising concert or other event, or get your reading group involved. Every year on September 2, Indigenous Literacy Day, participating bookshops give some of their profits to the Project. So try and be organised in 2010 and do your Christmas shopping at a bookshop on September 2. Remember to ask if the bookshop is affiliated with the Project and donating from the day. If not, feel free to express amazement and explain that if they don’t join in, you’ll have to shop elsewhere. If they refuse, you have my permission to get a bit snippy or shouty.
Who does it?
The Indigenous Literacy Project is administered in communities by dedicated project staff at the Fred Hollows Foundation. Because of their long track record of health projects and respectful conduct in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia, this gives the Project a unique credibility and access to professional and seasoned staff, as well as the back up of experienced support staff when needed.
What is the money spent on?
The money is spent on an ongoing staff position of Indigenous Literacy Project Coordinator at the Fred Hollows Foundation in its Darwin office. This is Ameina Brunker, who we spent time with on the trip. Ameina administers the program. Ameina liaises with teachers, principals, the education department and the children themselves to find out which books would be most appropriate and useful for early learning and primary school level. Then she works to get books from publishers. Most of the books are donated or provided at greatly reduced cost by publishers. Freight is often also donated.
Why do these kids need special help?
When these kids get to school, they come knowing perhaps three or four Aboriginal dialects or languages, plus what’s known as Kriol, a kind of Aboriginal-flavoured English. English as we speak it is their fourth language. So then they arrive at pre-school and find that all the teachers speak a much stranger form of English – all the books are in English. (All the classrooms have aids, usually aunties, mums or grannies of some of the children in the classroom. Most teachers are non-Aboriginal and come from a long way away. The turn-over rate of teachers can be astonishingly high – some teachers only stay for a few months.
To imagine ourselves in the place of these kids, imagine that as a preschooler, you spoke English, Yiddish and a dialect of Botswana with all your family and friends, but at school everything is taught in Norwegian, and all the textbooks are in Norwegian, and everything you write down has to be in Norwegian as well. And not only that, but all the books and all the ideas about how to live life are about Norwegian fishermen on the moon – everything about the lives of the people in the books and on the satellite TV you’ve seen is nothing like you’ve ever experienced. Also, the particular health disadvantages in some Aboriginal communities has contributed to common hearing loss among kids. These are the sorts of disadvantage we’d like to help tackle with the Indigenous Literacy Project.
Is the Indigenous Literacy Project doing any good?
On a recent field trip to the Northern Territory for the project in 2009, committee members, staff, ambassadors and other book industry folk saw how enthusiastic and committed the project staff are, how they are welcomed into remote schools in communities out from the Katherine area, and how bright and enthusiastic the kids are about reading, writing and illustrating their own stories. We saw the libraries set up for kids, and were able to hand over various specially-chosen book packs and other literacy aids directly to the teachers and students.
Where exactly did you go on the Field Trip? What’s it like there?
We visited schools at the Aboriginal Communities of Barunga and Manyallaluk, and attended a concert of the Black Arm Band under the stars with the community at Manyallaluk. All of these are small communities are little townships. As in any small town, everybody
knows each other and there are many extended families. This sense of belonging is even more intense during the wet season when many Aboriginal communities up north are cut off from road and often landing planes for weeks or months during the wet season rains and floods. At any time, a community may have less than a hundred to a few hundred people or more, depending on how many relatives are visiting. Each community has a few houses – not nearly enough, as up to 20 or 30 people may have to live in the same house – perhaps a medical clinic, a school. Barunga, the largest community and a central focus point for the Jawoyn people (Jawoyn rhymes with Darwin), has a high school classroom, too. All the communities have been designated “dry” (no alcohol) for many years, at the instigation of the communities themselves. See below for more on traditional and business activities.
The communities are all within a half to an hour’s drive from each other, about 2 hours or so drive out of Katherine, mostly on a red-brown dirt road. Katherine, where we stayed each night, is a three-hour drive south from Darwin. All these areas are traditional Aboriginal lands legally held by the traditional owners as the result of successful land rights claims. The traditional owners are the Jawoyn people, the custodians of the Nitmiluk National Park, covering the magnificence of “Katherine Gorge” (it’s really a string of 13 extraordinary gorges!) . The Jawoyn people have leased their Park back to the federal Government for 99 years, and their custodianship, creation stories and ongoing relationship with the gorge and the surrounding country is given due prominence in the information shared with tourists who visit.
What’s it like at the remote community schools?
At Manyallaluk primary school there are two large classrooms – one for the littlies, preschoolers up to about 7, and one for the older kids. They have good basic resources, and are air-conditioned by generator. Barunga school is bigger, and has several classrooms; Wugularr is more comparable in size to Barunga. The schools are kept really clean and neat, the kids are given lunch and fruit each day and love to play soccer in the sort of heat that has white lady visitors like me wanting to lie down in the shade and have some intravenous lemonade. You can feel the dedication of teachers and principals who want to make a difference here and have much more complicated jobs than their southern counterparts. At Manyallaluk, principal Oriel told us the kids would benefit from hearing some “books on CD” so they can hear other accents and how English is spoken elsewhere, and teacher Chris at Barunga school told me her younger students are loving anything funny and cheeky stories such as The Ugly Fish; more of that would be great, and they’d also love some more books on science. This is the sort of direct feedback the project can help with.
What did you do at the schools?
Andy Griffiths, Kate Grenville and I helped the kids to write and illustrate their own stories, ably assisted by everyone else on the trip who sat down with the kids and helped them at whatever level they were at – some of the littlies were still learning to write their own names and needed help to write the words, others were off and away – wow, Delisha at Manyallaluk did THREE stories in our one session! It was clear how much the one-on-one help gave everyone a big boost, and while the kids were shy at first, it was all limpet-like cuddles by the end with most of them. We were all really impressed by the ideas and the dedication of the kids. I was especially impressed with the drawings of the kids – as in any school there is always a wide range of styles – as well as the meticulous copying to get it “right”, I was also thrilled to see the less conventional drawings full of a mix of cartoon style, traditional art and exuberant imagination.
Above: That’s me being really impressed when Kianah came up to show her story to the class.
Who went on the field trip?
A happy band of lovely folk including Fred Hollows Foundation staff Ameina Brunker (Indigenous Literacy Project Coordinator) and Literacy Development Facilitator Debra Dank and, Committee members of the Project including committee members and major fundraisers, founder Suzy Wilson of Riverbend Books in Brisbane, David Gaunt from Gleebooks in Sydney, and Kristin Gill the General Manager, Education, Sales & Marketing, Penguin Australia and ace twin-cab pilot. Also there was Lou Johnson, Sales & Marketing Director Simon & Schuster; Murray St Leger, president of the Australian Publishing Association and Managing Director of McGraw Hill Publishing, relatively new Australian and the cheerful target of many Irish jokes and recipient of much sunscreen; our resident reporter, Matthia Dempsey, the editor of the trade magazine Bookseller and Publisher; and the authors were the literary sensation Kate Grenville (The Secret River), king of the kids Andy Griffiths (new book: Robot Riot!) and me.
At various times there was major practical support and help with logistics, transport and catering from Fred Hollows staffers Mia, Tanya and Maddy. When I say support and help what I mean is that along with Ameina, they did everything. (They moved too fast and were getting far too much done for me to get their last names.) Felix Reibel from the Cat Empire was the musical department of the tour, along with colleague Craig Hawker from EMI, he conducted a workshop and helped advise a group of young men in the Springwater Band from Barunga who opened for the Black Arm Band at their concert (of which more later).
What were some of the highlights?
Visiting the schools and being with the kids was the ultimate highlight. Aside from that…
Art
We visited the amazing arts centre at Wugularr (www.djilpinarts.org.au) which holds some of the best pandanus weaving I’ve ever seen in dilly bags, baskets and mats, all coloured with traditional dyes, many prints and sculptures made from wood, decorative didgeridoos and a cool room upstairs with some truly spectacular paintings of the Blanasi Collection with very large and culturally significant works by David Blanasi and other family members. Blanasi family custodian Miliwanga ngal-Mirraitja Sandy (with beautiful grand kids in tow) generously explained the stories of the paintings for us. I have no doubt that the curators of the National Gallery in Canberra and every other major collection in Australia would love to get their hands on this extraordinary display. If it ever tours to a gallery near you, don’t let the time slip by: it really shows the possible depth of story and master techniques of bark painting. Beautiful prints of the work are available. Miliwanga explained how the centre has just produced its first range of “sugar bag” in jars – bush honey.
Stories and Sharing
We heard some stories from two really gorgeous older ladies at Barunga called Queenie and Margaret, who were by turns informative and completely hilarious. You can get a flavour of the twinkle in their eye on this Youtube clip which they made as an invitation to the Barunga Festival one year.
A young man called Jamie showed us his didgeridu “farm” where he was using termite (ant) colonies to eat up through the middle of branches on the right kind of trees, and make them hollow. After he will harvest them and see which hollow logs will be best to make his didgeridus. Wayne showed us some bush tucker and other useful bits and bobs in the bush.
An experienced painter called Paddy demonstrated the “rrark” technique of painting cross hatching with a brush made from blades of native grass, and paints made from ground stones. All the communities we visited welcomed us very generously and were proud to show us some of their culture. All of the traditional owners who we met were very patient with us, and our questions that they must have answered many times before. All the visitors on the trip found this really moving.
Music
While all these traditional communities have their own integrated art, with painting, dancing, stories and songs, the Field trip was lucky enough to coincide with the first major concert brought in from outside, at Manyallaluk. The Black Arm Band (www.blackarmband.com.au) brought in its full cast strength and a full pantechnicon with stand-alone constructed scaffolding lighting rig, giant video screen and amplified sound to perform their audio-visual concert experience, on the flat near a creek, on a clear, balmy night under a canopy of beautiful stars. This was part of the band’s national tour supported by the Fred Hollows Foundation and the Arts Council of Australia and my local council in Melbourne, the City of Port Phillip. (I have never been a huge fan of the local council but if they can contribute to getting what is pretty much a road train down that road to Manyallaluk I am prepared to say things are looking up).
Kutcha Edwards, Lou Bennett (ex Tiddas) and Shellie Morris, who has family connections in the area, sang two songs written with the kids of Manyallaluk School. This was an extension of the knowledge that song writing and story telling are other forms which enhance and extend literacy as well as fun and understanding. The kids all did a beautiful job. Significant concert performers included Ruby Hunter and Archie Roach, Bart Willoughby (ex Warumpi band), heart throb Dan Sultan (star of Bran Nu Dae) Shane Howard (ex Goanna) and, among many knockout women singers, the multi-talented actress and singer Ursula Yovich, and many more all performed. The tech crew also deserved a round of awed applause.
Brush with the Law
I’m afraid that the visiting field trip’s contribution to the art of music mainly consisted of raucous karaoke in the car driven for so long and with such skill by Kristin from Penguin who was so intent on the cornering and the chorus that she nearly ran over an NT police officer intent on breathalysing her at the Stuart Highway turn off, and then kept driving until forced to halt by the hysterical laughter and shrieking of passengers.
I can affirm that the khaki-clad defender of law and order was benignly bemused and the breathalyser result was zero. I cannot confirm or deny that “I Will Survive” may have been being belted out by five women at the time of the incident.
The Bottom Line
All in all, it was a great trip. A lot of driving, a lot of observing, a lot of thinking. A lot of humbling displays of generosity. A lot of bottles of water – 37 degrees in the day time and this is the “cool season”! It was impressive to see what has been done but it also left us all raring to go with more fundraising ideas and a longing to go back and spend more time with the kids.
It was great to be able to see what the Project is doing and could do in the future. Often when you donate time or money you never know what happens next. This time I do, and it’s made me feel even more committed to the Project. Do help if you can.
As the Jawoyn people say, until next time – boh boh (pronounced bor bor)!
