Resources:
Charles Pakana:
Over the past several years, I’ve spoken to a number of educators about how aboriginal cultures and histories can be best integrated into this country’s current education systems. Joining me today to continue this narrative is one of Australia’s most respected authorities on this matter. She is a writer, teacher, television and radio personality, journalist and public speaker among so many other skills. She’s a finalist in the 2024 NAIDOC Education Award. It’s a big thank you for joining me on the program to Yankuntjatjarra and Wirangu woman, Shelley Ware. Shelley, thanks for joining me today.
Shelley Ware:
Thank you for having me.
Charles:
To those who may be new to all this, some who may be, well, you say, denied an education.
Shelley:
Absolutely that.
Charles:
Which I think is a beautiful way of putting it. Why is it so important that we have these histories and cultures in our education system?
Shelley:
We are wanting this generation and next generation to have an impact on Australia as a whole and the beauty that is held within our cultures and histories that can be shared with them so that when they step forward into the world and have positions of power, they have an empathy and connection to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ histories and cultures and that will influence the way that they make their decisions, the way they bring our people into the real conversations and the real important levels within government, within local community, within their homes. And all different levels will be impacted. But once they have that connection, we’ll see a change in the culture of all Australians.
Charles:
What sort of changes do you want to see?
Shelley:
I want to see that everybody… Like we talk about it all the time, we talk about reconciliation, we talk about everyone being equal, but we can’t have equality if we don’t have equity in this country. So understanding that we have different starting lines, that we have different points of view, that we have share in different cultures, and that all of that needs to be acknowledged and it needs to be celebrated. It needs to be changed. We need to put things in place for equity to be in a place where we can start actually having real conversations about equality.
And I would like to see our children feeling safe when they go to school and not leave school as survivors because they’re in culturally unsafe places, but to leave school thriving and then in their true self-determination can create a better world for themselves and the next generation.
Charles:
What does cultural safety look like for you in a school? You’ve brought it up. Let’s dive down into that.
Shelley:
Yeah. So cultural safety is when a child can go in, they can see their own culture being celebrated. They can see that their teacher is proud of it, has their own connection. So their connection to not just the 270 odd years since colonization where everyone thinks that our history of this country starts, but to the 65,000 plus years of this country and celebrating and connecting to the beauty within that.
So when the teachers are celebrating that and their localized community is celebrated as well, and those children’s communities are celebrated in their country and their language and their culture within the classroom, the children are seen. They feel heard, they feel valued, and they feel celebrated. It doesn’t have to be every minute of the day. It’s the subtle embedding of it that makes it beautiful. So when these children are in there, they feel valued. They also, the teacher is a part of their connection to their culture, so they help them leave.
It’s that two-way learning thing that teachers really need to understand. We learn from each other. Teachers should look up two-way learning. They should really understand it because we can gain so much from each other. The children leave better with self-determination, strong in culture, strong in self-identity, because the teachers have played a role and then the teachers can’t unsee what they’ve seen.
They start informing policy. They start asking leadership questions. “Why haven’t we got policies around racism? Why haven’t we got policies around making sure that there are first nations peoples in the school? And why aren’t they here? Why haven’t we got more children?” You can’t unsee it.
Charles:
And we will get down to some of that granular level action a little bit later on. But you’ve been on this path now for what, over 25 years?
Shelley:
Yes. And before.
Charles:
And before. So more than 25 years. So you’ve been advocating over that time for systemic change at a national level. So let’s start there, but with the understanding that I do want to get to a more granular level further on. So what do you see at a big picture level that’s required of federal and state governments to overhaul and bring about an un-whitewashing, if you will, of the current education systems?
Shelley:
Yeah. So when I went to school, there wasn’t anything in the curriculum. I watched one video. That one video genuinely scarred me for life. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I saw terrible genocide of my people on a screen and images that I just wasn’t aware of that had been happening.
Charles:
Do you mind telling me a bit about that?
Shelley:
Yeah. I saw images of babies heads being kicked off by people on horses, and it was a game. They were buried in the sand and it was a game. And that was for me to see in about year eight. I had lived a beautiful life as a young aboriginal girl, unaware, and it wasn’t the appropriate time for me to know that history developing as a young person. I’d had no pre-conversations in my classroom and no post-conversations in my classroom. It was one video. The nun stood up the front, had felt they’d ticked the box, and they were smiling at me through this whole video.
Charles:
Were you the only black kid in the class?
Shelley:
I was the only one in there. So it was so unsafe. It’s probably driven a lot of my work so that our children don’t feel like that. I didn’t go home and tell my parents because I was just so shocked. And it took years before I could come out and talk about it, that that had happened to me. And it wasn’t that I was unsafe in my own home to talk about it because we had beautiful ongoing conversations. It was just that I was just so shocked and just hurt and just didn’t know what was going on. I chose to live in the happiness of what was going on.
I think I just blocked essentially. So we have that space where it’s going on. The good thing is that since that happened as a child, and then I became a teacher, I used to put NAIDOC posters out as a teacher and they wouldn’t even pick those up. So I’ve gone from that revoltingness to teachers completely ignoring NAIDOC for probably the first 15 years of my teaching career. And I couldn’t even get them to do that. And then in the last 10 years, they’d maybe put a poster up, but then I had to do all of the talks throughout the school. And then I left the classroom and that’s when the panic happened.
It was about the same time that it was becoming in the curriculum that you had to do things. So for a really long time, there was a section in the curriculum that you could choose to go in and out of, and there were just a little extras. So teachers who hadn’t made that connection to Aboriginal histories and cultures would ignore it. So the government hadn’t mandated it.
Charles:
This is state or federal?
Shelley:
This is both. So in all of the curriculum, so we have our federal curriculum and we also have our state curriculum that people choose to take from. And then the federal said it’s mandated now for you to have a culturally safe classroom for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Charles:
When did this occur?
Shelley:
This was last year. Maybe a year before. Terrible with time.
Charles:
It’s a bit late coming though, wasn’t it?
Shelley:
Bit late coming. So then what we have is we have teachers all over Australia panicking. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know how to do it. I’m too scared to make mistakes, which we’ll delve into later. The federal government has made this, but then they haven’t put in the money to train the teachers. So teachers are wondering around. They don’t know what to do. So we’re getting a little bit of the ignoring. We’re getting a little bit of, “We tried, but we can’t go on.”
Charles:
It’s all too hard.
Shelley:
It’s all a bit hard. The federal government has done this without any kind of backing or support. So a little bit is happening, but it’s just not enough. What’s happening isn’t strong enough to change generations of people who are denied an education. What needs to also happen within teachers is we promote self-education within our children and lifelong learning, but we don’t do it ourselves. So if the federal government has said, “You are now mandated to create a culturally safe place,” and embedded within the curriculum now not to decide on the extracurriculum stuff, embedded, you have to teach these things that they have no idea about. Majority. Not all. And they need to start going, “Okay, I have to self-educate.”
Charles:
But isn’t the responsibility really on the federal government if it’s mandating these changes to the education system, don’t they need to ante up and say, “Okay, we’re now going to assist you.” Otherwise it’s just a statement for the sake of a statement.
Shelley:
That’s exactly where we landed. So they have put little things in place that goes to the state. So then of course it filters down as it does. So state government-
Charles:
That’s also called passing the buck, isn’t it?
Shelley:
Yeah, a little bit. But they’re busy. They’re busy people. So then it goes into the state. So the state has put in things where they’ve got training programs that are within all of the curriculums. Or I don’t know what they’re called. Those people who do. Those people are doing their thing. I’m doing my thing over here. So there’s training programs available, and they’re also mandated to do them certain hours every year.
Maybe, I think it’s like one or two hours. It’s not a lot of time and it’s not a lot of value. So once they do that, then we have the problem of teachers who think they’re experts, okay?
Charles:
God save us from those.
Shelley:
So that’s another issue. Well, you know the ones that travel to the Northern Territory.
Charles:
Oh, please don’t.
Shelley:
And then they’re culturally, they’re spiritually aware. Now, they’re on country here.
Charles:
It’s a different kettle of fish, isn’t it?
Shelley:
A different kettle of fish. You are constantly on country, by the way. So you can have that spiritual connection wherever you sit, stand and live. So there’s all sorts of historical problems that we’ve got to get rid of in this space. But states trying is just such a big problem because for years we have got teachers that are in my age bracket, even older. Then we’ve got the… It’s only really the new teachers coming in that have had any kind of education and it’s been at university level. And only if a person has decided themselves to connect to the beauty within our culture that they bring that into the classroom. So we are decades behind the ball, decades behind these teachers understanding what happens. But it is up to them as individuals because we as teachers, this is just who we are. We want to continue to self-educate. But why do we do it on everything else? But just not this thing, go, “It’s too hard. I don’t want to offend.”
Charles:
All right. Well, let me just hold off coming down to the teachers self-educating and their own professional development. What I’d also like to touch on is what can parents do? Because the voices of parents when it comes to schools can’t be really underrated at all. That’s fairly powerful force there. What do you want to see parents start to do?
Shelley:
Yeah. Parents, we know we work so closely with the parents. Parents are such an important role in a child’s education. Their whole life, they’re there. We get them for a really long time too during the day. So the parents, when they do start to come to school, they’re just seeing them in the morning and the afternoon, but the weekends and how they live their life every day is really, really important. School holidays, take them to festivals, take them to community events. Connect yourself. When you travel around this beautiful country, find out whose country you are on.
When you cross over, announce yourself saying, “We are here in this beautiful country. We’re going to take care of this country. We’ll do our best. Thank you to the ancestors for caring. My son, we just drove to Torquay. We passed the signs. Like he’ll say, “Don’t worry, mom. I said it.” You don’t even have to say it in your out loud. You can say it in your head with your heart. I’ll cross over into this country. I’m going to look after it. I’m going to care for it. Make it a thing that is important to your children. Connect to all of that beauty. Learn the local languages. It doesn’t have to be the full language. We’re still learning it because it was denied to us from colonization and taken away from us.
So learn little words that can be a part of it. I put my son’s shoes on and I say, “Come on then take off your socks from your Tjina and get me that little Tjina and tickle it.” Like his little foot.
Charles:
Or even go to the toilet, go to djilawah
Shelley:
Go to the toilet. Go to the djilawaj. Just using language.
Charles:
So simple.
Shelley:
So simple. Find out what it is. Connect to that. Connect to the beauty. Have ingredients in your cooking that you’re cooking with that are indigenous ingredients in your garden. Have indigenous herbs and plant. When the plant says you can take out the reeds, weave together. Anything. There’s so much they can do.
Charles:
What about the teachers having a voice at the schools to bring about change?
Shelley:
So it can really be difficult if you have a principal that hasn’t connected to the beauty, hasn’t connected to the truth telling.
Charles:
Sure.
Shelley:
So that can be a really difficult thing for teachers. But we are isolated in our rooms, so we can pretty much do what we want. We’ve got a curriculum. We are mandated.
Charles:
As a teacher, you’re talking about.
Shelley:
As a teacher, we are in our little rooms. We are mandated to create a culturally safe space. You are safe to do that and you should be doing it even if you do not have an aboriginal child in your room. I’ve worked at schools and they’re like, “But we don’t have any aboriginal children. We don’t need to do it.” But you do have a thousand children that you’re caring for that will go into the workforce, that will make real changes and impacts when they’re there to celebrate with them, connect with them, tell the hard truths with them and they will connect. You will connect and you just go on along like you’ve got an aboriginal child in that room. Okay?
They have such an important role teachers and they need to bring it in, bring in their own connection. But they’re the same. On the weekends, connect with the local community. Bring local community into your classroom. Have your uncles and have your aunties come in. And if you can’t get a traditional owner or traditional custodian of that land, have somebody who is a respected community member. Because there’s plenty of us that live off country. I certainly do.
Charles:
Sure.
Shelley:
And I have made connections with the local elders here myself. I have spoken to them about what my role can be. I’ve respectfully done that. I have permission from the elders. Aunty Dy. She looks at my work and she says-
Charles:
This is Aunty Dy Kerr.
Shelley:
Aunty Dy Kerr.
Charles:
Yeah, beautiful.
Shelley:
She’s looked at all the work that I do. We’ve sat. We’ve had conversations. Even a quick text, I can say, “Aunty Dy, what about this?” And she’ll be like, “Yes, beautiful. Keep going, keep going.” And it’s with their permission, I can do it. So I’m seen as what’s called a respected community member. Have those people come in. But your biggest asset is your aboriginal family at the school. Don’t treat them like a poster person that is going to stand up and do all of your welcomes. No, no, no. You do those. You do the acknowledgements. These children shouldn’t have to stand up and be the experts.
Charles:
Absolutely.
Shelley:
They are still learning like the teacher did as a child who they were about their own self, own culture. But the family, invite them in. Have monthly meetings. What do you need? What do you want? What do you see? How can we fix this?
Charles:
What about networks? What about teachers setting up their own networks to share? Because if they’re really responsible for their own professional development, and it seems increasingly they are, the importance of having your peers there to share ideas, to bounce ideas off and to help each other, can’t be underrated surely. Have you seen these sorts of networks emerge?
Shelley:
Oh, yeah. There’s plenty of networks. All schools have them. So you’ll have your principals who will have networks. I speak at a lot of those and travel around Australia doing that, speaking at principal networks. I also do that at teacher level networks. And then you’ll have even within the arts. So the art teachers will have their own networks and they’ll meet. So that’s very much been a system that’s been set up for a really long time. So all you need is one passionate person to say, “Hey, let’s go. Let’s do this properly.”
Invite people into those networks and learn from them. We want to be a part of that. We want to do it. And it can be difficult. And one of the difficult things is your local land councils. They’re overworked. There’s not enough people. So you’ve got to make that connection yourself. People will say, “I find it really difficult to get people from the local land council, from the local aboriginal corporation to come out.” That’s an Australian wide thing because there’s just not-
Charles:
Absolutely.
Shelley:
Just not enough people in those roles. So they’re working their absolute hearts out to make it happen. So that’s why we’ve got to bleed down and we’ve got to take that on ourselves as individuals to do what we can. Make mistakes. The biggest thing I hear from teachers, “I don’t want to offend. I want to make mistakes.” I genuinely offend people every day. I genuinely make mistakes.
Charles:
We were talking of one just a few minutes ago before this year.
Shelley:
A hundred percent. I make mistakes all the time. I’m happy to be growled at. And you know what? If an auntie and an uncle are growling at you, they love you. They care and they want that change. If they are walking away in their silence, then you’re in trouble.
Charles:
Yeah, absolutely.
Shelley:
They’re in big trouble.
Charles:
What are some of the other challenges that are facing the education system? Well, let’s just keep it at the teacher level.
Shelley:
At the teacher level, it’s definitely around that not understanding and then being denied an education, not being able to find people to help them. But then I also get that people don’t know where to find resources. Some of our resources aren’t on page one, okay?
Charles:
Yeah.
Shelley:
We as aboriginal people have only really been invited into the economy for 40 years. Let’s face it, my dad couldn’t get a bank loan.
Charles:
Okay?
Shelley:
I’m 52. He could get a bank. Am I 52? I think I’m 53 now. Goodness me, that happened quickly.
Charles:
Don’t age yourself that quickly, for goodness sake.
Shelley:
So I was 10 when my dad could get a bank loan. So that meant that that… I mean, businesses couldn’t get a bank loan. So it was a long time. And we’re only really getting that right now in this decade.
Charles:
And this all contributed of course to the gaps that currently exist.
Shelley:
All of the gaps currently exist. So what happens with that is we also don’t have money to put the tiny little words at the back of websites because we also are very new to that. We’ve been on Instagram and a Facebook community for a really long time.
Charles:
So talk about the resource that you’ve been developing and to our audience, we will have up on our website easily downloaded to accompany this particular interview.
Shelley:
Absolutely. And those have the little words that I’m talking about. And they will be the ones you’ll find. The other resources will be page two, three and four. So look there. The resources that I’ve been writing… I’ve been writing with SBS Learn, for, I think I’m in my seventh year. So NAIDOC resources are available and they have always matched the themes of NAIDOC and they are aligned with the curriculum. And if I do say so myself, they’re brilliant.
Charles:
You’re not the only person saying it, so you’re forgiven to say that.
Shelley:
What’s brilliant about them is if teachers only printed out those resources for the last seven years, and a lot of teachers do this, I probably get stopped three times a week in the street from teachers who say, “Thank you. Thank you for these resources.” They have helped me take the steps forward. It is all of the books you need. We never repeat an activity. We never repeat a book, a video, anything. So all new things that people can access and all of the themes still relate to today.
Charles:
So what are some of the typical resources that our listeners are going to find?
Shelley:
So within these resources, different to other ones, it’s not aligned with a book or it’s not aligned to a film. So what I’ll do is I’ll start with the books that they should have. It goes up from early years, right up to year 10, and they’ll have the books and I’ll write activities. So match to that theme there. Then there’ll be a bunch of activities that they can do. I try to get in art. I try to get in all of the different areas. A lot of writing. There’ll be journal poetry. Lots of different things that they can do. And then we’ll have extra resources that they can access and help them connect, learn, self-educate.
I diarize myself when I want to spend time learning even more about my own people, because if I don’t diarize that time, my life just keeps going. So it will be part of my week where I’ll listen to a podcast by lived experience of an Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander person. So they need to start doing that. But it’s all there. There’s nothing for them to worry about. Print them all off, bind them together, put them on there. When you’re trying to look for something, it’s all there. Get those books. Put them in your classroom library. Put them in your school library so kids can borrow them. They can read them. Language is starting to come through. It’s so much.
Charles:
There’s some great resources out there for languages, aren’t there?
Shelley:
Oh, there are.
Charles:
I mean, Aunty Gail Smith has just come out with 12 books.
Shelley:
Oh, has she? I haven’t seen it.
Charles:
Yeah, amazing. These are nursery rhyme books.
Shelley:
Oh, I’ll be straight up to them.
Charles:
And she’s come out with them in language. There’s a series of 12, and I believe that she’s done that in partnership with Moonee Valley City Council, which is a really great initiative on the part of that council. Of course, the Bangerang have recently, as our listeners will be aware, just come out with their very first dictionary. There’s so much work being done.
Shelley:
So many more dictionaries.
Charles:
It’s amazing work. So as I mentioned to our listeners, we will have links, if not the resources themselves online at vicaboriginalnews.com.au accompanying this interview with Shelley Ware. Shelley, there’s obviously so much more that we do need to talk about with this. I’d love to explore some of the resources in detail. Can I invite you back?
Shelley:
I’d love to come back.
Charles:
We’re aware that you’re heading off to Tiwi for a couple of weeks.
Shelley:
I am. And that’s with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation who have amazing language resources too.
Charles:
And you’re an ambassador for the ILF, aren’t you?
Shelley:
I am. I am.
Charles:
We need to talk about that as well. So until next time, Shelley, thanks so much indeed for your time.
Shelley:
Pleasure.
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