Two laws to learn

Tu Tangata, Issue 18, 1 June 1984, Page 38

Two laws to learn

by Gwenyth Wright

Bi-cultural education is not always welcomed by established educational authorities but this gives a tenacity to the struggle. One such struggle across the Tasman is now taking place amongst the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Yipirinya is fighting for the principle of Aboriginal people controlling the education of their young people a right the people have always had for their old people to educate young people in Aboriginal culture, language and customs. Yipirinya independent school was registered in September last year after five years of determined operation by the people themselves. In 1979 a meeting was held and the people told the Department of Education: “We got to start this school. Can we have some money for this Yipirinya?” The answer was “No”. They started the school anyway using whatever money they had to buy the things they needed. Friendly churches gave donations and finally the Government came to the party in 1983. “We worked for five months without money at first,” writes one of the

founders of the school, Nanette Sharpe, in the Yipirinya School Council Newsletter, “then we got only ten or fifteen dollars a week after that, but we still worked. We didn’t want our kids to go to school in town because the white kids got cheeky, calling them ‘black’, and the teachers used to hit them for nothing. We had no school-house then, only a shed, but we taught the kids in Arrernte and English and did our teacher training as we went.” The old people say: “Yipirinya is the true school of Alice Springs. It goes back to the beginning to the caterpillar (Yipirinya) which travelled the Alice Springs country in the dreamtime. The white schools are new. They don’t go back to the beginnings.” The Arrernte name for Alice Springs is Mparntwe. Alice Springs is caterpillar country. All the places in and around the town were formed by three caterpillars which came from the west during the dreamtime. Artist Wenton Rubuntya uses this symbolism in his paintings and indicates the sacred sites of the caterpillar dreaming. Some of the sacred places have been lost, one registered site destroyed recently by the Northern Territory Government. Says Rubuntya: “We want an interpreter school, a bilingual school. This is more than two languages. There are two laws to learn. The people must interpret the white law, but must know their own law first. We are all Australians, but our people are shy. They can’t take part.”

Yipirinya’s bicultural programme is run on a concurrent model, with equal time allotted to Arrernte and English. An Arrernte story is read to the children followed by activities related to the story. Then it is read in English with lessons in English to follow. The children have no difficulty understanding the story when they have heard it first in their own language. The school is now properly housed in classrooms and so are the teachers, who used to live in tents and makeshift accommodation while waiting for a share of resources for housing and essential services. The children at Ypiprinya have the whole community to learn from. The old people take them on picnics and show them how to collect bush tucker, how to dig for goannas and find witchetty grubs. Bush medicine is used for their ills. They are shown the right wood for making music sticks and how to prepare mulga wood for boomerangs. Non-Aboriginal staff employed by the school council give professional and practical help to Aboriginal teachers and teach oral English. Pupils go on aeroplane rides as part of a bicultural theme on transport. They swim in a swimming hole at Ingitjina and learn of sacred places, ancestors and the dreaming. And of how “white fellas” break their own law sometimes when registered sacred sites, protected under Northern Territory legislation, are bulldozed to make way for a road.