Community meeting in Doomadgee, 6 October 1999 - notes
The meeting was attended by 17 members of the community including four elders who were members of the Stolen Generations. From HREOC: Chris Sidoti, Human Rights Commissioner; Lady Pearl Logan, Queensland Co-Commissioner; and two Commission staff.
School attendance
"School attendance is usually around 60%. It generally starts off well at the beginning of the year but declines as the year progresses."
"We tried doing a bus run for a while to encourage children to attend school. It didn't work very well though. A lot of children used to hide when they heard the bus coming."
"Sometimes there are problems in school that keep children away. Some stay away because of bullying and conflict in the schoolyard. Children sometimes bring community problems into the school."
"There is a pre-school but not many children attend. They are excluded because of community grudges. Some of these feuds between families go back 20 or 30 years. My young kids have never been to pre-school because of old grudges. You'd think we could work together for the kids. They don't know about the grudges."
"There are no role models for these kids. I teach grade 6 kids and yet I go down to the river and see 12 year old kids who I've never seen before."
"At the beginning of the year the police put up a sign saying that children have to attend school and that if they do not their parents will be fined. Imposing fines on parents when their children don't attend school is not a good idea. It will only result in people being dragged into the criminal justice system if they can't pay the fine."
"Maybe financial penalties [for non-attendance at school] could be imposed on parents pursuant to a council by-law rather than through the criminal justice system."
Literacy
"Many parents in the community are concerned that their children cannot read or write."
"My son is 19. He has been attending pre-school and school in Doomadgee for the past 17 years. He still cannot read or write."
"Children drop out of school because they are told they are nobody. They need encouragement. When I was a child someone told me I was clever and that they believed in me. That gave me the encouragement I needed to learn how to read and write." [Aboriginal elder, a woman]
Teaching approach
"The kids want more sport and manual arts. They want to go out bush. They need practical training as part of their schooling too. They don't want to spend all of their time in the classroom."
"Indigenous languages are not taught here. They should bring the old people down to the school so that they can teach the children about language and culture. The school is not really serious about culture. They might employ people to teach it but they are not really committed."
Role of parents
"We have problems when mothers don't care for their children. There is neglect and then the child gets no schooling. Parents should give their children more encouragement to go to school."
"Some kids stay up late waiting for their parents to come home at night, then they can't wake up for school the next morning."
Relations between the school and the community
"There needs to be more communication between the school and the community. The school should go out to the community more."
"There is a lack of communication between the school and the community. The teachers need to talk to the parents more. They need to come into the parents' homes and show them respect. If children see the parents and the school working together, attendance will improve and they will respond better to their teachers."
"A community school run by Indigenous people for Indigenous people may be the answer. It should be a bilingual school and it should teach Indigenous culture."
Alcohol and other community problems
"There are big problems in Doomadgee with drugs and alcohol and gambling. There are people selling 'sly' grog so that they can gamble. The children are the silent victims of this. These things have been introduced into the community on the basis that people have the right to do so. Yet these people are denying children their right to a decent quality of life."
"Some kids go away to do Years 11 and 12. They come back to Doomadgee and find that there are no jobs, so they just start drinking and having babies. Other kids coming up through the system see this happening so they don't see any point going up to Year 12."
"When we [the elders] were going to school there was no drinking and no gambling."
"When we make decisions they must be made communally and collectively in the Aboriginal way. When people say they have the right to drink, they should consider the communal well-being."
"White society has imposed its values on us and this has created mental trauma for Aboriginal people. They introduced many of the problems that are destroying our society. White people take the view that they know what is best for us. They are making all the decisions but still things are getting worse and not better. Blacks and whites need to work together in partnership to solve these problems."
"We went before the local council to discuss these issues but they refused to talk to us. They just left us sitting there."
Health issues
"The school offers free lunches for students three days a week."
"Some children have hearing problems which affect their education. They can't get the special support they need to deal with this problem."
"The Government is putting millions into Aboriginal health and education but it is still getting worse. It hasn't occurred to the Government that they are going about it the wrong way. They still have the mentality that they know what's best for us."
Indigenous culture and identity
"Principals and teachers must be educated in Aboriginal ways."
"Teachers who work in Indigenous communities should be carefully screened for their knowledge and understanding of Indigenous cultural issues."
"Government cuts to bilingual education for Indigenous people is another form of assimilation."
"Indigenous people have been taught the wrong history. When I was a boy we were taught that Captain Cook discovered Australia. This gave Indigenous people an inferiority complex. It made us want to be white and not black."
"The system was created by Europeans for Europeans and not for Indigenous people. We go into the system 2 or 3 years behind non-Indigenous people because we are taught to hunt and to gather, not to play scrabble and add and subtract. We are set up to fail. It is culturally inappropriate for white people to be teaching Indigenous children."
"We acknowledge the good things about white Australia but they must also respect the good things about us and our culture. It's a two way process."
"White people don't have the answers for black people. The Indigenous culture is a spiritual culture and you are a material culture. Your culture does not care about the identity of the child, only the child's academic achievement. The child has to be able to answer the question 'Who am I?'. We should have Reconciliation but we should also understand that we are different. We have to teach our children the spiritual values of our culture."
"Once the children know who they are, once they are accepted as equals, we will see Aboriginal doctors and lawyers working with the white community but also keeping their own culture intact."
Children from outlying communities
"Some of the children from the outstations don't want to come into Doomadgee because there is too much drinking and fighting and conflict. They want to stay in their own communities. We should look at ways of enabling them to do this. They should set up a School of the Air for the outstations. Or maybe they could send teachers and health teams out there. That way the children can get their education but can also learn hunting and fishing and traditional practices."
"One outstation has been taking Japanese students who pay to stay there and learn about our traditional medicines and our way of life. This pays for the outstation's upkeep. It gets no government funding. We would like to expand the scheme so that more people can go there and learn from us."
Last updated 2 December 2001.
