Mrs Quinlan’s story has been transcribed verbatim from tapes recorded between October 1982 and February 1983.

I first met Mrs Quinlan in 1981 when her daughter, Mrs P.Dixon became one of four Aboriginal people training at Armidale and New England Hospital. As I was involved peripherally in this training program, I was introduced by the trainees to their families and friends.

Mrs Quinlan decided some time during the following months that she would like me to record her story. She had some doubts about how we might go about it, but she was definite that she wanted to make a statement to leave for her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Further, she wanted to establish her right to Bellbrook which she considers to belong to her and her surviving siblings because her father established the settlement.

Mrs Quinlan also decided that I would need to see Bellbrook, that she wanted to “show me the place” so that I might understand better what she was talking about once we started recording. Consequently a group of us visited Bellbrook on October 8th, 9th and 10th 1982. Mrs Quinlan began telling her story at our camp site on Nulla Nulla Creek. She continued over several Sunday afternoon sessions at my home, a venue she chose.

One of Mrs Quinlan’s greatest worries was “how are we going to put it all together”, the other “but is it going to be really important?”

This document represents the views of many people and groups who have been involved in Aboriginal education. It represents particularly the combined work of all the Aboriginal people who have been members of the South Australian Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee. For over twelve months we have been developing the content of this document to the extent where we believe that we have accurately reflected the views of our community.

We further acknowledge our connections to the the South Australian Education Department and the South Australian Institute of Teachers along with various non-Aboriginal Ministers and educationalists with whom we have spent many hours in earnest debate and discussion. The above has led us to believe that the statements we have made are both urgent and necessary as reflections of an Aboriginal viewpoint.

While this document has a particularly South Australian relevance we have had an involvement with statements made by the National Aboriginal Education Committee and our statements reflect the national view also. We also acknowledge the work done by the N.S.W. Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and the N.S.W. Education Department for we have drawn upon these documents in our statements.

A research report published last year has shaken the very rationale for Aboriginal literacy programs. Eve Fesl says that for the first time, Aborigines have had the chance to say what they want, and that their views are very different from those who have sought to educate them.

Copies of the report, Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities are available from Australian Government Publishing Service bookshops in all States.

There was incredulity in education circles late last year when Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities reported that many Aborigines rejected literacy.

The project, instigated by Anglo-Australians, began with the assumptions of an Anglo value system. There was an assumption that, just as literacy in English had aided, for example, the peasant classes of England in their efforts towards upward social mobility, it would also be the panacea of Aboriginal social ills. That Aborigines might not concur was never questioned.

Even non-Aborigines on the steering committee, who had some inkling that literacy would not be warmly embraced by all Aborigines, were surprised at an overall rejection of English literacy per se.

Yet Aborigines were not surprised, and if one cares to look closely into the past, one sees many abandoned literacy programs – testimony that Aborigines have never wanted them.

The language used by Aboriginal and Islander children has become in recent years a major focus of attention, with concern being felt on two broad fronts. There has been an increasing awareness that many use a mother tongue which is not English; at the same time there has been a growing realisation that many of those Aboriginal and Islander children who do use English as a first language use a form of language which differs from that normally used in the school. Whereas originally the tendency was to see these deviations from mainstream language use in terms of language deficit, they are now increasingly accepted as examples of language difference. A major philosophical shift has therefore occurred in the area of language teaching: an early emphasis on remediation and compensation has given way to a stress on language development; and language programs are now based on a philosophy of acceptance of the child’s language, and on the belief that it is necessary to start from where the child is. Thus programs no longer aim to ‘stamp out’ the child’s language or to ‘overcome’ the influence of the home, but instead have as their goal the extension and broadening of the child’s already existing language abilities. The emphasis has shifted from ‘correctness’ in terms of standard English, to ‘appropriateness’ in terms of language use in different social situations.

The influence that television exerts on audiences, especially children, is a matter for much debate. Films have been given less consideration as a matter for concern, no doubt because they are less ubiquitous and less accessible than television. However, in an isolated traditionally oriented Aboriginal community, films, in both the large screen and the newer video format, provide the single major source of entertainment and information on the larger European society. It is possible, in the absence of other forms of sustained contact with European society, that its influence can provide children with inappropriate and culturally dysfunctional models for behaviour.

From observations at a particular isolated community, films appear to influence people’s ideas about the outside world and their attitudes and behaviours in certain situations. This influence is particularly noticeable in the attitudes, language and behaviours evidenced by children. It is often possible to tell what film has lately been shown in camp simply by observing the children at play. The greater the impact a film has made in terms of ‘action’ and excitement, the greater the length of time will aspects of that film be incorporated into play situations. Children are excellent imitators and it is common for specific phrases from films to be used in children’s games long after the film has been shown.

The imitation of language, situations and attitudes portrayed in films is, however, not confined to play situations. For example, in the isolated community with which I am most familiar, a month ago two young men ‘bailed up’ a visiting European contractor and stole his motor vehicle. The circumstances of the theft, bag over the head to disguise identity, flashlight directed into the eyes to dazzle – as well as the language and attitude of the two men, paralleled an episode witnessed in a film three nights previously. The relation between film and incident was so well recognised at camp that the incident itself became a popular piay-scene for children : “Give me the keys or I’ll blow your head off.”

These descriptions of Outstation Schools were produced during a training course for senior Aboriginal teaching staff from Aboriginal schools which was held at Bathurst Island in early August, 1982. A major aim of the training course was to assist Aboriginal assistant teachers to encourage and develop children’s writing skills. As a means of achieving this all participants spent a significant portion of each day writing. The Aboriginal Child at School has published the article on Outstation Schools at Yirrkala previously, but it is thought appropriate that it appear in context here.

During 1973 the outstation movement at Yirrkala was going in full force. Aboriginal people were moving from Yirrkala to start up their own communities consisting of numbers of their own clan.

During that time Aboriginal people asked many questions about school. So in 1975 the outstation schools were established and were serviced by two visiting teachers from the central school.

The names of the communities and the clans that established their outstations in terms of houses and school are these:

Garrthalala (Djapu); Gurrumuru (Dhalwayu); Gangan (Dhalwayu); Baniyala (Madampa).

Since the above places got established and had a school going the communities listed below got started and are presently operating.

Dhalinybuy (Wangurri); Wandawuy (Djapu); and Bawaka (Gumatj) talking about starting a school; Biranybirany (Gumatj) talking about starting a school.

I’m Moses Mangiru and I’m called Liaison Teacher at Oenpelli. I visit five Home Land Centre Schools. There are about five outstation schools operating.

I need to explain that there are two kinds of staff working for outstation schools. The first kind are Aboriginal assistant teachers who live there and teach every day. The other kind are teachers like myself who live in the central community and visit the outstations about once a fortnight. During the first semester I could hardly visit any of the schools either by road or air. During the first period of the wet season it was very hard because all the roads were closed. The only flight we could use was to share the store and cheque flight to make it a lot cheaper for the Department of Education.

The outstations schools need two or three outstation teachers. Two to go out and visit and one to stay back at the central school to print booklets and make other aids that the teachers need at their schools.

I believe that in the first semester there have not been enough visits. I feel that one of the outstation schools will collapse because they feel that there was not enough visiting from Oenpelli. One of the Oenpelli assistant teacher positions has been moved to Jabiru. This position was at Manmoyi, which is one of our biggest outstations. Children from Manmoyi have moved to the central school at Oenpelli. If there was enough help from visiting teachers for Manmoyi the parents would rather keep their children at Manmoyi than send them to Oenpelli. They only sent them to Oenpelli because there was not enough help for Manmoyi.

Maningrida is in coastal Amhemland, and it is two hundred miles east of Darwin. Maningrida is an Aboriginal settlement. There are two hundred people living at the settlement now, because some Aboriginal people have moved into outstations.

There are one hundred children going to school at the settlement now. In school we have eight classes, and each class has one balanda teacher and one Aboriginal teacher. We have two pre-schools. One is a Kunividji class, the other one is for Aboriginal children who don’t speak Kunividji, and the white children go there too.

Well, we have three Kunividji classes altogether. Pre-school, transition and year one. There are four Aboriginal teachers teaching in Aboriginal languages. One class is where Nancy Gununwanga, an Aboriginal teacher and Brett Westblade, a balanda teacher, both teach in Kunividji. Laurie Magaldagi and Mellanie Mamariyi and myself, we three Aboriginal teachers, teach with little children from preschool and infants. We three Aboriginal girls are working together with Peter Jones. He is a balanda teacher. Nancy Gununwanga takes her own class, 11 or 12 year olds.

We also have two other Aboriginal girls working with the linguist, Kim Djibama and Lena Djabiba. They take a tape and record the children’s stories about what they had been doing during the holidays and weekends. After each class has been recorded, they listen to the tape and then write the story down. Later they print it in a book, and it is used for children to read, or sometimes they go around the camp and sit with old people and get a story from them about olden times of their life.